The services screen gives a user the ability to view and change the available services in the service catalogue of the Exivity deployment. When creating new services, it is required to use a Transformer with the service or services statement.
To view the details of a service that has already been created, click on one of the services listed in the 'Catalogue' > 'Services' screen:
The numbered items from above screenshot refer to the following list:
The description or friendly name for this service
The unique key value of this service (see service)
The time stamp when the service was created
The time stamp when the service was updated
The DataSet where this service relates to
Where to obtain the service name from (in header or in data). The value will be used for the service description (see 1)
The source column that has the consumed quantity
The Instance column refers to the chargeable instance column value (i.e. VM ID) which is required for automatic Services
The interval that defeines the frequency of how often this service is being charged. Meaning: automatic (every occurrence/record/hour), daily or monthly
When using proration, this checkbox will be enabled. Proration takes into account whether to charge for a portion of a consumption interval. For example: when having 10 days of consumption for a monthly service with a rate configured of € 90 per unit that has proration enabled, will result in a line item of € 30 for that services monthly charge
The Billing Type provides information whether this is a service that has manual (using manually provided, adjustable rate value) or automatic (using rate column) rates configured
COGS (Cost of Goods) of a service will have its own rate configuration, which can be either manual/automatic per unit or manual/automatic per interval
Exivity will in a future release allow the user to change and create services through the web interface. At this time, this feature is disabled.
In case you need to change the configuration of an already populated service, the GUI enables you to do so. To change an existing service you will need to make sure that you have first selected the appropriate report from the Report Selector and the left top of the screen. To change the configuration or delete a service, you will then need to follow these steps:
Navigate to the Catalogue > Services menu and click the white Edit button at the top of service list. The system will warn you that any changes made to existing service, may require you to re-Prepare the currently selected Report Definition.
If you have confirmed the warning message, you will be able to select one, multiple or all of the services within the currently selected Report Definition. You can then select the Delete button next to the Edit button, to delete all selected services.
If you want to change the configuration of one of the services, you should first select the service which you'd like to change.
When you have the service that you want to change selected, you can change any of the available parameters such as the Instance Column, Interval, etc. Once you are satisfied with your changes, you may press the Update button.
Ensure to re-Prepare your report in the Report Definitions in case you have made any changes.
The 'Rates' screen allows you to configure manual rates for services that do not have a rate provided with their data source. Before you can use this screen, it is required to the necessary service(s) via the engine. When that requirement has been fulfilled, you may configure Global and customer specific rate configurations. The following rate types are currently supported for automatic, daily and monthly services:
automatic per unit
automatic per interval
automatic per unit & interval
manual per unit
manual per interval
manual per unit & interval
Automatic services obtain the rate and/or interval value from a column you specify, whereas manual services allow the user to manually specify a rate and fixed interval money value. For manual services, if a service definition has proration enabled, the charge on the cost reports is calculated based on the actual consumption (see ).
By default each service has a global rate configured, which will be applied to all accounts that consume this service. However, it is possible to use customer specific rates by overriding a service rate for one ore multiple accounts.
A manual service can have up to 3 rate values that can be changed: the unit rate, the interval money value and the COGS rate. To change these values, go the 'Catalogue' > 'Rates' screen and click on the service name for which you want to change the global rate value:
To change the rate values of this service, consider the following:
Effective date is the date from when this rate is applied to the service. A service can have one or multiple revisions. You may add new rate revisions by using the Add Revision button. Existing rate revision dates can be changed using the Change Date option
The Per Unit rate value is the value that the service charged for, every (portion of) configured interval service. In this example, if this would be a daily service that is charged 1 euro per Gigabyte of database usage, and each day a 100 GB database is consumed, a value of € 100 will be charged per day (and € 3100 if used for entire month of December)
The Per Interval charge is applied every occurrence of the consumed service, regardless of the total consumed quantity of that service. In the previous example at 2, this would mean every day a value of 110 euro will be charged for a 100 GB database: 100 euro because of the standard rate + 10 euro for the fixed interval charge. Considering the same consumption for the entire month of December, the total charge for that month will be 31 x € 110 = € 3410
It is possible to configure a COGS rate for this service. This is applied the same way as the Per Unit rate
To delete an invalid or wrong revision, use the Remove Revision button. Do bear in mind you cannot delete the last rate revision for a service
If you are planning to make more changes to other services in the same report definition, use the Save Revision > Without Preparing option. This will avoid running the re-preparation several times, and allows you to start the re-preparation only after you've made all of the required rate changes.
To save your changes, which will also initiate a re-preparation of the applicable Report Definition. click the Save Revision button (see to learn more about report preparation)
Exivity enables you to create account specific rate adjustment policies. An adjustment policy allows you to apply a discount or a premium using one of these modifiers:
a certain amount of money (i.e. $ 100)
a certain quantity (i.e. 100 GB/hours)
a percentage (i.e. 10%)
This Adjustment can then be applied to a single service, multiple different services, or one or more service categories.
To create a new adjustment policy for an account, follow these steps:
From the menu on the left, select 'Catalogue' > 'Adjustments'
Then select the Account from the list of accounts for which you want to create an adjustment policy
After selecting the account, click 'Add Policy', and provide a meaningful name for your policy in right screen where it says 'Adjustment name'
Provide the Start date, by selecting the initial month when this adjustment policy is applied
Provide the End date, by selecting the month when this adjustment policy will be discontinued. This is optional, since an adjustment policy can be applied permanently.
Select which Service or Service Category this policy is applied to. You are able to select multiple using the check boxes that are provided.
Select a Type for this adjustment. This can be either a Discount or a Premium
Select the Target, meaning: is this Adjustment targeting the total Charge or the total Quantity of the selected service(s)?
Select the Difference setting, to indicate an Absolute value (i.e. 100 units, or 100 dollars) or a Relative value (such as 10%)
Lastly provide the Adjustment value. In the example shown in the image above, there is a value of '10' provided in the Amount field, which will adjust the total charge with -10% given the provided parameters.
When you're done, click the Add Policy button. Your changes are now applied to all charge related reports.
