¶ Catalog management
If you would like to better understand the structure of smartbilling's catalog, you can refer to the definitions page in this Wiki.
The Actions box provides the means to add the principle catalog objects: Categories, Products, Charges and Services. It also provides access to the catalog Export and Import features which allow you to export entire catalogs as .csv and JSON files which can be edited offline and divided into groups and can then be imported, as a whole or in parts, to other smartbilling instances.
The View box provides access to lists of the principle and subsidiary catalog items, and within those lists, the relevant items can be added, edited or deleted to suit the users' preferences.
The Categories section is a tabular view of the catalog, vertically by category and horizontally by principle catalog object and also by a column of customer subscriptions belonging to the category. Clicking on the numeric values in each cell of the table brings users to a filtered list of the principle catalog objects within the relevant category.
¶ Categories
Categories are a means of classifying catalog Items. Smartbilling supports two levels of categorization, parent & child. The screen shot above illustrates a possible set of catalog categories that might be used by a telecommunications provider; the child categories are shown indented.
The following table displays whether the categories in the above screen shot are parent categories or child categories.
Category Category type
Voice Services parent
Analog child
VoIP child
Hosted PBX child
SIP Trunks child
Internet Services parent
Broadband DSL child
Broadband Cable child
Wireless LTE/5G child
Microwave/WiLAN/Satellite child
Fibre child
Services, products, charges and contract types can be categorized within either parent or child categories.
Take note, however, that services defined at the parent category level can only include products and charges from within that parent category. Services defined within the child category inherit the objects defined within the parent category for that child, so they can 'see' the products and charges from both categories. smartbilling allows you to freely create categories of catalog objects to meet your requirements. The list presents examples of typical categories in the Telecommunications industry.