[asterisk-users] Asterisk Realtime Billing Question???

Thu Oct 21 03:23:11 CDT 2010

thanks mate,

for useful and good information provided by you, i am not asking you that
please write down your all LOGIC and explain everything to me, as per your
explanation i can see it will deduct amount for only 1 call but what
actually i am searching for is if user made 5 concurrent calls and i have to
limit
all calls and each destination number having different rate may be some of
them ISD and some of them local. that will create more problem to me, i
think there is some solutions for this . could you suggest any reference for
the same, it will be more helpful to me.

thanks in advance,
regards
Dhaval

On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:49 PM, Sherwood McGowan <
sherwood.mcgowan at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 1:30 AM, DHAVAL INDRODIYA <
> dhaval.it01034 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Sherwood ,
>>
>> well , i think you did not understand my question , i want real time
>> billing
>> like as i mentioned that if i want to dial 5 number with different call
>> rate how can i access same
>> balance into those 5 people, if all are connected how can i periodically
>> update billing , as you suggested it will assign total balance to those 5
>> people but actually we can not do like this as total balance of user $100 ,
>> as per your suggestion it will give $100 for those 5 people which is
>> practically wrong i think.
>>
>> give your thougts.
>>
>> regards
>> dhaval
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Sherwood McGowan <
>> sherwood.mcgowan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On Thu, Oct 21, 2010 at 12:24 AM, DHAVAL INDRODIYA <
>>> dhaval.it01034 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello All,
>>>>
>>>> after so long time i posted a new question regarding billing, hope
>>>> anyone have some solution.
>>>>
>>>> I have situation in that i want to do billing of more than 1 call in
>>>> real time below are scenario and explanation.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Scenario:
>>>>  A customer called my DID number and after that from here i dial few
>>>> number let say 5 number. once number are placed into DIAL
>>>> i will put this customer into conference [MEETME] , once a Members are
>>>> picked up call they will also patched into conference and
>>>> talking is started, every thing working fine with DIAL-PLAN and DB look
>>>> up.
>>>>
>>>> Now, i want to do billing on customer dialed my DID, and from that
>>>> actually it DIALED 5 numbers, how can i DO real time billing
>>>> into this situation, like numbers can be different It can be
>>>> ISD,STD,Local and also free .
>>>>
>>>> if customer having initial balance of $100 then how can i check balance
>>>> every time.in a situation once balance is nil then i want to disconnect
>>>>
>>>> calls . is any one facing this type of situation.
>>>>
>>>> give me some  idea ,
>>>>
>>>> regards
>>>> Dhaval
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> _____________________________________________________________________
>>>> -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
>>>> New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs:
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>>>>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Dhaval,
>>> This sounds very much like a system I'm working on for a client right
>>> now. I'm not permitted to disclose much about it due to the NDA i signed,
>>> but I'll risk giving you a point in the right direction.
>>>
>>> First, you should create a table in your database that has a column
>>> called callid, and other columns that you will have to decide upon. This
>>> table will be called something like '*call_references*'. Oh, and you'll
>>> want to define callid as the primary key for records in that table, but DO
>>> NOT make it an autoincrement, you're going to populate it with a value that
>>> is described in the next step.
>>>
>>> Second, at the beginning of the original call you mentioned, define a
>>> variable that will be unique to that call. I personally have done this by
>>> stripping all non-digits from the caller's callerid (using
>>> Set(newcid=${FILTER(0123456789,${CALLERID(number)})} ), and then adding the
>>> to ${EPOCH}. I did it this way: ${MATH(${newcid}+${EPOCH})}.
>>>
>>> Next (this is where I have to start being a bit vague), you're going to
>>> perform an INSERT query, creating a new call_references record (using that
>>> variable I just showed you how to construct as callid's value).
>>>
>>> Now, when you defined that variable, you should have preceded the
>>> variable name with two underscores ( __ ), which will tell Asterisk that
>>> channels spawned by the current channel will inherit that variable and it's
>>> value.
>>>
>>> Voila, you now have a method for storing realtime data such as billing
>>> information between MULTIPLE calls.
>>>
>>> I wish I could tell you more, but I can't violate my client's
>>> Non-Disclosure Agreement.
>>>
>>> Hope this helps you out!
>>>
>>> Sherwood McGowan
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> _____________________________________________________________________
>>> -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
>>> New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs:
>>>               http://www.asterisk.org/hello
>>>
>>> asterisk-users mailing list
>>> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>>>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> _____________________________________________________________________
>> -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
>> New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs:
>>               http://www.asterisk.org/hello
>>
>> asterisk-users mailing list
>> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>>
>
> Well, you got the right guy, I've written several different RT billing
> setups for clients ranging from small residential ITSPs all the way up to a
> wholesale carrier in Austria. . .
>
> What you'd have to do is have a column called "freeze" in your table that
> you keep customer accounts and billing info in (mainly, the balance). Then,
> you'd need a 'frozen' table, with three columns: id, accountid (or some
> other name/reference that references the customer in question), and amount.
>
> Now, the "freeze" column in the account table defines how many minutes
> worth of funds (at the rate the call is being charged to the customer)
> you're going to make unavailable to the customer until the call is
> completed. You multiply the value from "freeze" against the rate the call is
> going to be charged at, resulting in "amount_to_freeze". Subtract that
> number from the customer's current balance, and then create a record in the
> "frozen" table with that customer's accountid and put the value of
> amount_to_freeze into the "amount" column.
>
> Finally,when the customer's call(s) completes, calculate the total charge
> for the call, check to see if it's more than `frozen`.`amount`, and if it
> is, subtract `frozen`.`amount` from the total charge, and then subtract the
> remaining amount from the customer's balance. If the total is *not* more
> than than `frozen`.`amount`, you'll subtract total from `frozen`.`amount`,
> and then ADDING the remaining amount to the customer's balance. (Being the
> doofus I am, I called that procedure "thawing", LOL)
>
> In addition to the freezing of funds, you'll need to perform some magic and
> limit the length of the customer's calls based on the balance of the account
> just before freezing funds. This will need to be in conjunction with having
> a maximum number of concurrent calls the customer can have, and taking that
> into account when limiting each call.
>
> It sounds complicated but I wrote this type of system several times, the
> first couple were native to Asterisk using AELv2 (no AGI calls, more secure,
> less resources hogged, etc), and then I wrote the last one using MySQL
> stored procedures to perform just about ALL of the calculations and logic.
> Basically at the beginning of a call, Asterisk would execute a stored
> procedure called something like freeze_and_limit and passing two arguments,
> the accountid and the rate per minute their call is going to cost (could
> have also just fed the SP the destination and let it calculate THAT too).
> MySQL would return the number of milliseconds the customer's call could be.
>
> Alright, hopefully THAT gets you heading in the right direction, because if
> I write much more I'd be getting into EXACTLY how I wrote up the "FLaT"
> (Freeze, Limit, and Thaw) system, and that would be depriving me of
> potential consulting fees I'd normally get for just implementing it for a
> customer.
>
> Cheers mate, and good luck :)
> Sherwood McGowan
>
> --
> _____________________________________________________________________
> -- Bandwidth and Colocation Provided by http://www.api-digital.com --
> New to Asterisk? Join us for a live introductory webinar every Thurs:
>               http://www.asterisk.org/hello
>
> asterisk-users mailing list
> To UNSUBSCRIBE or update options visit:
>   http://lists.digium.com/mailman/listinfo/asterisk-users
>
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