i-BGP :: Case / Implementation of accounting codes

Objective:

Implement a customer service of accounting codes for voice products on the network. Accounting codes are used to classify customer calls per categories defined by the customer. Corporate customers most commonly use it to classify calls per department or per project.

Situation:

The accounting code feature is supported on some switches and not on others. Switch A includes an implementation of the feature that writes the accounting code in the EDR field ACCT_NUM. However, the billing system expects to read the accounting code at the front of the DIAL_NUM field.

Solution:

With the Open Converse Console, the solution to this problem is to add the following line in the definition of the export file:

Called Number = if (ACCT_NUM <> ‘’, ACCT_NUM + DIAL_NUM, DIAL_NUM)

Where Called Number is the name of a field in the export file and ACCT_NUM, DIAL_NUM are field names from the import file. If the ACCT_NUM field is not empty then Called Number will be equal to ACCT_NUM + DIAL_NUM otherwise it will be equal to DIAL_NUM.

Conclusion:

In this case it has been very simple to support a new switch implementation of a service. Had it been necessary to go through the development cycle, the process would have taken much longer to implement and it would have generated administrative work necessary for maintenance. The time to market of a new feature was literally brought down to minutes rather than months.