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49 lines
3.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
49 lines
3.8 KiB
ReStructuredText
6.2. Rating logic
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Let's start with the most important function: finding the cost of a certain call.
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The call information comes to CGRateS having the following information: subject, destination, start time and end time. The engine will lookup the database for the activation periods applicable to the received subject and destination.
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What are the activation periods?
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The activation period is a structure describing different prices for a call on different intervals of time. This structure has an activation time, which enables the complete on the activation period at some point in time and one ore more (usually more than one) intervals with prices.
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::
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Interval {
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Months
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MonthDays
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WeekDays
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StartTime, EndTime
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Weight, ConnectFee, Price, BillingUnit
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}
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An **Interval** specifies the Month, the MonthDay, the WeekDays and the StartTime and the EndTime when the Interval's price profile is in effect.
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:Example: The Interval {"Month": [1], "WeekDays":[1,2,3,4,5], "StartTime":"18:00:00", "Price":0.1, "BillingUnit": 1} specifies that the Price for the first month of each year from Monday to Friday starting 18:00 is 0.1 cents per second. Most structure elements are optional and they can be combined in any way it makes sense. If an element is omitted it means it is zero ore any.
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The *ConnectFee* specifies the connection price for the call if this interval is the first one from the call.
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The *Weight* will establish which interval will set the price for a call segment if more then one applies to it.
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:Example: Let's assume there is an interval defining price for the weekdays and another interval that defines a special holiday prices. As that holiday is also one of the regular weekdays than both intervals are applicable to a call made on that day so the interval with the smaller Weight will give the price for the call in question. If both intervals have the same Weight than the interval with the smaller price wins. It is, however, a good practice to set the Weight for the defined intervals.
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So when there is a need to define new sets of prices just define new ActivationPeriods with the StartTime set to the moment when they become active.
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Let's get back to the engine. After it finds the applicable ActivationPeriod(s) it will split the call duration in multiple time-spans attaching the appropriate ActivationPeriod and Interval to each them. The final price will be the sum of the prices of these times spans plus the ConnectionFee from the first time-span of the call.
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The other functions relay on a user budget structure to manage the different quotas for postpaid and prepaid clients. The UserBudget keeps track of user monetary balance, free SMS and minutes for every destination, Internet traffic and offers the volume discount and received call bonus.
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Let's take them one by one.
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CGRateS provide api for adding/substracting user's money credit. The prepaid and postpaid are uniformly treated except that the prepaid is checked to be always greater than zero and the postpaid can go bellow zero.
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Both prepaid and postpaid can have a limited number of free SMS and Internet traffic per month and this budget is replenished at regular intervals based on the user tariff plan or as the user buys more free SMS (for example).
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The free (or special price) minutes must be handled a little differently because usually they are grouped by specific destinations (e.g. national minutes, ore minutes in the same network). So they are grouped in buckets and when a call is made the engine checks all applicable buckets to consume minutes according to that call.
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Another special feature allows user to get a better price as the call volume increases each month. This can be added on one ore more thresholds so the more he/she talks the cheaper the calls.
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Finally bonuses can be rewarded to users who received a certain volume of calls.
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