What's new in SAP Convergent Charging 2021 FPS1

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SAP Convergent Charging 2021 FPS1

New Release

PUBLIC

 

 

February 2022

We’re delighted to announce the general availability of SAP Convergent Charging 2021 FPS 1. Thanks to customer feedback we have introduced some major innovations that simplify the management of Allowances from the SAP Convergent Charging Cockpit, enhanced our auditing and security capabilities, and delivered a number of key innovations to improve the user experience and expand our supported operating systems.

This blog provides you with the latest and greatest SAP CC 2021 FPS 1 highlights of our pricing and charging platform, part of the SAP Billing and Revenue Innovation Management (BRIM) suite.

 

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AUDIT ENHANCEMENTS

In the latest SAP Convergent Charging 2021 FPS 1 release, when customers make changes to pricing objects in the Convergent Charging catalog (e.g., mapping table, range table or rate plan), we now allow customers to add an optional text message describing the reason for the change.

This new feature greatly enhances audit tracking and the overall auditing experience as it provides more tools to system administrators to understand the reasoning behind changes, as well as allows administrators to track changes based on a given message.
You can learn more about the new auditing features from the following article on the SAP Help Portal: Audit Enhancement (New) - SAP Help Portal

 

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OAUTH 2.0 SERVER-TO-SERVER SUPPORT

Another additional security enhancement is the added support for OAuth 2.0 server-to-server scenario between SAP Subscription Order Management (SOM) and SAP Convergent Charging. The new OAuth 2.0 server-to-server authorization flow between SOM and Convergent Charging records the SOM user identifier in the audit log for changes that impact Convergent Charging.

This new feature allows SAP CC to know which users have made changes to objects managed in SOM, hence providing end-to-end auditability of BRIM. It also allows BRIM to better comply with integration security requirements (SEC-230).
You can learn more about this security compliance requirement by navigating to the following link on the SAP help portal: Technical Features - SAP Help Portal

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MANAGING ALLOWANCE PLANS FROM THE COCKPIT

Allowances are powerful pricing tools used in SAP Convergent Charging to allow customers to consume subscription and usage-based services that are limited in time and/or in quantity. Examples could be a prepaid service allowance or a spending limit.

As of the 2021 FPS 1 release, customers can now use and manage their allowance plans from the SAP Convergent Charging Cockpit.
To enable allowance plans support in the cockpit, we have introduced a couple of new concepts related to allowance plans:

 

Pre-defined Allowance Plan Templates

An allowance plan template is a set of dependent catalog objects used to create an allowance plan, and that can be imported and configured into a pricing catalog, to address common use-cases requiring allowances
The allowance plan template includes an allowance plan along with an optional set of mapping table classes and range table classes (e.g., to define the structure of the table used to define notification thresholds).

As of the 2021 FPS 1 release, there are 4 types of Allowance Plan Templates currently supported:

Template Name	Template Description
Prepaid Service Allowance	A pre­paid ser­vice allowance allows a cus­tomer to buy a quan­tity of ser­vice in advance and to con­sume it after­wards.
Prepaid Service Allowance with Notifications	A pre­paid ser­vice allowance allows a cus­tomer to buy a quan­tity of ser­vice in advance, to con­sume it after­wards, and to be noti­fied about the level of deple­tion.
Spending Limit	A spend­ing limit is used to limit the con­sump­tion (e.g., mon­e­tary, vol­ume, dura­tion) of a service / prod­uct by a cus­tomer.
Spending Limit with Notifications	A spend­ing limit is used to limit the con­sump­tion (e.g., mon­e­tary, vol­ume, dura­tion) of a ser­vice / prod­uct and to notify the cus­tomer about the level of spend­ing.

Allowance Templates significantly improve the simplicity of using allowances in your Rate Plans, as they take away the complexity of having to setup your own Allowance Plans and all dependent objects from scratch.

For more information about Allowance Plans, please check out the following article on help.sap.com: Allowance Plan Templates - SAP Help Portal

 

Allowance Creation in Pricing Trees

We have also introduced a new operator for the Pricing Tree to create allowances in a provider contract from one-time, recurring or usage charges of a rate plan.
The new operator component called the Allowance Creation component allows the user to define the allowance plan, validity dates, and parameter values of the allowance to be created.

For more information please refer to the following article on help.sap.com: Feature Overview - SAP Help Portal

 

Allowance Use in Pricing Trees

To use allowances, a pricing specialist needs to send an allowance event to allowances of a provider contract, from one-time, recurring or usage charges.

To enable this feature, we have added a new operator component in the pricing trees to generate an allowance event from an allowance event class of an allowance plan.

For more information please refer to the following article on help.sap.com: New Pricing Components in Pricing Trees (New) - SAP Help Portal

Ability to test the creation and use of allowances in pricing trees

In addition to using Allowances in your pricing tree, you can also test them using the execution test tool. The Pricing specialist can:

• See the allowances created during the execution of the pricing tree


• View the details of the created allowances


• Add one or multiple allowances to simulate the availability of allowances in the context of the pricing tree


• Set their validity dates, parameters, counters, e.t.c.


• Mark/unmark allowances modified along with their modified properties as favorites for better readability in the panel


• View the modified allowances along with their modified properties


• View errors and notifications triggered by allowances

For more information please refer to the following article on help.sap.com: Testing of Charges When Using Allowances (Changed) - SAP Help Portal

 

Enhanced export and import of rate plans in the Cockpit

As of SAP Convergent Charging 2021 FPS 1, we have added the ability to manually transport a rate plan referencing one or multiple allowance plans from the development system to a test or production system, from the SAP Convergent Charging Cockpit.

 

For more information please refer to the following article on help.sap.com: Export and Import of a Rate Plan and Its Related Pricing Elements (Changed) - SAP Help Portal

 

New How-To Videos for Allowance Management from the Cockpit

In addition to this blog and provided links, you can learn more about all the new Allowance Management features by watching the following How-To videos posted on the SAP Help Portal: Creating an Allowance Plan from an Allowance Plan Template - SAP Help Portal

• How to Create an Allowance Plan from a Template


• How to Use an Allowance Plan in a Rate Plan

 

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OTHER ENHANCEMENTS

In addition to the features mentioned above, SAP Convergent Charging 2021 FPS 1 also introduces other enhancements:

• Improved User Experience with support for new Fiori Themes


• Added Support for AIX 7.3

 

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MORE INFORMATION

SAP Convergent Charging 2021 FPS 1 has been released to customers on February 24, 2022 and is available on the SAP Software Download Center.

For more information on SAP Convergent Charging 2021 FPS 1, check out the following links:

• What’s New in 2021 FPS 1


• Delivery and Release Information Note (RIN) for SAP Convergent Charging 2021 FPS 1


• Product Page on SAP Help Portal


• Questions and Answers for SAP Convergent Charging in SAP Community