Create a Basic Plan

This topic will walk you through the creation of a basic plan.

When you are finished, you will have a bare-bones plan that is available in the store for purchase. The goal of this topic is to get you familiar with the basic development process and the various parts of Service Design Center.

What we will create is a plan that allows voice calling. The plan will have no restrictions on where voice calls can be made and will allow 100 minutes of voice calling for 1 month. 

Idea and Planning

Before you dig in and start making stuff, you want to know what your goal is. Mapping out the details of what you want to have at the end is the first stage of the process.

In this scenario, you want to create a basic voice plan. But even the most basic of plans requires plenty of details to get it right. Among the questions you want to answer:

• Do you want your customers to only make calls, only receive calls, or both? For this tutorial, both.
• On what networks (or on what parts of your networks) do you want your customers to be able to make and receive calls? Are there any networks on which you want to prevent your customers from making and receiving calls? For this tutorial, on any network.
• How long do you want the voice plan to last? Or more specifically, how long is the plan cycle? For this tutorial, 1 month.
• Is it a one-time plan or one that can be renewed? If the latter, how many times? For this tutorial, it will be a one-time plan that cannot be renewed. (Note that a plan that doesn't renew can still be re-purchased.)
• How much will you charge for the plan? For this tutorial, $1.00.
• What will you name the plan? What will you name the policy that the plan is based on? For this tutorial, we will use the name Simple Voice.

To keep things simple, we'll make some assumptions:

• The plan can be used only by the customer who buys it.
• No notifications will be associated with the plan.

There are 3 basic steps:

1. Create the policy.
2. Create the plan.
3. Add the plan to a store category.

Create the eCommerce Policy

eCommerce policies are what allow plans to use the cellular network. So before you can create a plan, you have to create the eCommerce policy that your plan will be based upon.

1. To begin, go to the eCommerce Policies section: Policy > eCommerce Policies.

There are two types of eCommerce policies: service polices and entitlement policies, and there are three types of each: voice, messaging, and data. For a voice plan that you want to put in the catalog for customers to buy, you want to create a voice service policy.

2. Click the New button, then click Voice, and then click Service Policy.

This takes you to the Add Voice Service Policy dialog box.

This is where your planning begins to pay off. When you create a plan, you attach a service policy to it. The name you use here is the name you will have to find when you create the plan. For this scenario, we'll call the policy "Simple Voice."

3. Enter Simple Voice into the Name field, and then click Save.

A new eCommerce policy is like a blank canvas. Like when you create a new document in a word processing program, you start with nothing and you fill in the content. The content, in this case, is an eCommerce service policy.

Policies do all the work, and service policies do all the work to define what service can be used, when, and how. This is a voice service policy, so we know that it controls voice service. But how?

Policies contain components. Components contain policy events, and those are connected to filters. The filter-policy event combination in a policy component is what does most of the work in a policy. So we want to add a component.

4. Click Add Component, and then click New.

As with most things, we have to give the component a name.

Keeping things consistent, we'll give it the name "Simple Voice."

5. Enter Simple Voice into the Component Name field, and then click Save.

Now that we have a component, the first thing to do is to add a filter to the component. Filters contain criteria, and normally, you'd have to decide what voice filter criteria to add. As it turns out, we don't want to add any. Criteria in filters restrict when the policy event gets evaluated, and there are no restrictions we want in this voice policy. No filtering means that calling will be allowed to anywhere.

However, a component requires a filter.

6. Click Add Filter, and then click New.

And like with most new things we add, the filter needs a name. We'll stay consistent with our naming: "Simple Voice."

7. Enter Simple Voice into the Name field, and then click Save.

Next, we add a policy event to the component.

8. Click Add Policy Event, and then click New.

And we're done with the component. Here's why.

• There are two choices for a policy event action: Allow and Block. We want to allow voice service, so we leave the action at its default: Allow.
• Network groups define where devices can and cannot connect. Because this is a simple plan—customers will be able to make voice calls anywhere they can make a connection to a network—we won't add any restrictions here. (This includes both your own network and domestic and international roaming networks.)
• Policy event criteria add further restrictions, so we won't add any of those either.

There are two more steps necessary to make the eCommerce policy complete, adding voice accounting and adding network enforcement.

Voice accounting defines how voice calling is charged. A voice accounting policy includes settings for voice call grace period, accounting increment, and minimum charge duration for any plan that uses the policy. All the increments are measured in seconds, and common values are 15 seconds for the grace period, 5 seconds for the accounting increment, and 30 seconds for the minimum charge duration.

You just have to add a voice accounting policy to the eCommerce voice service policy. You can do this in two ways, by creating a new voice accounting policy or by linking the voice service policy to an existing voice accounting policy.

In addition, voice accounting policies can be linked at the voice service policy level or to a component in the voice service policy. For simplicity, you will link an existing voice accounting policy to the voice service policy.

9. Click the down arrow next to None next to the Advanced Voice Accounting Policy that is outside the component, and then click From Library.

10. Click the name of a voice accounting policy, and then click Save.

Network enforcement allows policy enforcement for devices that do not have the embedded ItsOn client software, and for voice service polices is in the form of bucket IDs. The bucket ID that you add to a policy should be configured to match the policy configuration in the policy component(s).

11. Click the down arrow next to None next to Bucket ID, and then click From Library.
12. Click the name of a bucket ID, and then click Save.

Now we're done creating the eCommerce policy that will be used to power the plan. However, it cannot be attached to a plan until it is tested and published.

Create the Plan

The first step to create a plan is to go into the eCommerce section of Service Design Center.

1. Click eCommerce, and then click Catalog & Notifications.

From there, you go to the Products list.

2. Click Catalog, and then click Products.

Before you go further, you'll want to understand the concept of sandboxes. A sandbox is a view of the catalog that combines everything that is deployed plus all the changes you make in that sandbox. When you're working in the eCommerce section of Service Design Center, you're always working within the context of a sandbox. For now, we'll just work in your default sandbox, so you don't need to change anything here.

3. Click the Add Product button, and then in the Add Product dialog box, click Plan.

Even for simple plans, there are a number of fields that you have to fill out. The various fields are all detailed in Plan Settings. Before we explain the necessary ones for this simple plan, let's first attach the voice service policy we just created. To do that, look in the Service section. One of the settings is Service Policy.

4. Click the Lookup button. In the Select dialog box, click Simple Voice, the service policy we just created.

5. Fill in the rest of these settings:

6. Click Save.

You have your first plan. But it's not available for purchase yet. In the eCommerce section, all changes have to be promoted, approved, and deployed. Adding a new plan is considered a change. 

All the changes you make are listed on the My Changes page.

In this case, there is one change: The plan you added.

The first step is to promote your change.

7. Click the change in the table, and then click Promote.

The Description section helps you track your changes through the promote-approve-deploy process. It is given a default title that includes the change action, in this case an add, what is being changed, in this case a product, and the name of the item being changed.

8. We don't really need to change or add anything here, so just click Promote.

Changes that have been promoted but have not yet been approved move to the Pending Approvals table on the My Changes page.

Approvals are similar to promotions, except on the Approvals page.

The Items pending action list shows the plan you just promoted.

9. Like with promoting, when you approve a change, you select it and then click Approve.

10. Click Approve.

That's all you need to do to create a plan. The next step is to make it available to customers in the store.

Add the Plan to a Store Category

The store experience for your customers is defined by the use of categories. Categories (and sub-categories) are used to organize all the products you sell. One category is used as the "root" of the normal store browsing experience. Sub-categories of that category define the sections of your store. See more about this in Categories for Displaying Plans in the Store.

For this part of the exercise, we're going to assume that your store categories already exist, that you have a /special root category and a /special/voice-plans sub-category of the root category (also known as a parent category).

The first step to add a plan to a store category is to go into the eCommerce section of Service Design Center.

1. Click eCommerce, and then click Catalog & Notifications.

From there, you go to the Categories list.

2. Click Catalog, and then click Categories.

You should see something similar to this.

This is an example of a store experience with 6 sub-categories. Yours may look different, but the important part is that you are looking for a category for voice plans that is a sub-category of the SPECIAL category.

3. Click Voice Plans.

The plans in a category are listed in the Products tab.

4. Click the Products tab.

The Products tab not only lists the products that are displayed in that section of the store, the Display Order value determines the order in which those products are displayed. For now, we don't really care about where this plan will be displayed, so just scroll through the list and note the largest number.

5. Click the Add button.

A dialog box appears that lists all of the published plans. The plan you just created should be at the bottom of the list. Scroll down in the dialog box until you find it.

6. Click the name of the voice plan you just created, enter a Display Order number that's larger than the largest one you saw in the list, and then click Save. Click Save again on the category detail page.

You should see the voice plan in the All Products list. Note that it is in yellow text with a pencil icon next to it. That's because you've just made a change, a change in the category.

In the Create a Plan section, you promoted, approved, and deployed the plan. You take the exact same steps again, this time for the change you made to the category.

7. Promote, approve, and deploy the change to the category.

You're done! Your new Simple Voice plan is now available in the store for your customers to buy.