Usage Groups encompass the monitoring, alerting and automatic triggering of actions based on user-configurable Thresholds. These can be configured in terms of volume (e.g. bytes/seconds), overage cost or allowance utilisation and can be used to trigger actions such as email notification and device suspension etc.
There's two types of Usage Group - Agreement-based, and Account-based.
Agreement-based Usage Groups are automatically instantiated for each Agreement and facilitate usage monitoring Thresholds to be applied to Agreements. For example: sending email notifications as utilisation of inclusive allowance passes 50%, 70% and 90% - with a final Threshold to suspend the Subscriber at 100%.
Automatic Evaluation
Usage Groups are evaluated automatically against usage data as it's received from the Networks.
The time between usage occurring and it being reported by the Network will vary; therefore it's conceivable that billable usage may be incurred before automatic action is triggered.
Threshold Types:
BYTES - Volume of data transferred during data calls
SECONDS - Duration of voice calls
PERCENT - Proportion of inclusive usage on Agreement [Agreement-based only]
MONEY - Overage incurred relating to Agreement in account currency [Account-based only]
Threshold Actions:
- NOTIFY_WARN - Standard warning for when Threshold is breached.
- NOTIFY_CRITICAL - Critical warning reserved for a higher Threshold.
- SUSPEND - Notifies and suspends the associated agreement once this Threshold is breached.
- /UsageGroup/GetThresholds - get all thresholds for a group.