HeroTill enables its users to use any one of the following card vendors:

• PayFast 
• PayPal
• Sage Pay
• VCS
• PayU (redirect-gateway)
• Snapscan
• Zapper 

To be able to use any one of these card vendors with your HeroTill, you need to ensure that you have a merchant account with them.  To do this, you can visit the relevant card vendor’s website and sign up with them.  PayU has two different gateways that you can sign up for.  If you would like to integrate PayU with HeroTill, you will need to choose the redirect-gateway and not the enterprise gateway. 

Please note that walled garden entries have been added for the new payment gateways.  It is the responsibility of each ISP to ensure that the hotspot routers are updated with these settings. 

Click here to view the VCS setup guide: VCS Setup Guide

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Automatic Tickets for Ratings Received

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HeroTill has made some improvements to the Public Links for Quote Templates.

The Public Links can now be located by navigating to Sales > Sales Settings > Document Templates > Select to edit a Quote Template.

On the popup that appears of the Quote Template, the user can now add a Public Code specific to the Public Link. To the right of that field, the actual Public Link is displayed.

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Users can now enable/disable the option to Sync customers to Sage One by Customer Groups.

To enable/disable the setting, users must navigate to Customers > Customer Groups > on the list of Customer Groups select to edit a group. Under the Billing tab there is now a toggle button to Sync Customers to Account System.

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Users now have the option to enable PayU MEA and SnapScan as Payment Gateways within HeroTill.

To enable these options, navigate to Setup > System Settings > Payment Gateways. Users will need to enable these options using the toggle buttons and by entering the required setup information.

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Due to the recent introduction of the Cancellation module, a bug was picked up on the cron job. This bug did not take into account existing data from the old Expiry module. Thus, previously expired customers were being reset when their database variables did not meet the new Cancellation module requirements.

This bug has now been fixed and a migration has been run to include a new defualt setting under the Billing Setup. This setting is date enabled to specify from which date should customers be reset (that were previously marked for cancellation but never approved for cancellation) to active.

To check this setting, users can navigate to Billing > Billing Setup > Billing Setup again > under the Customer & Radius Account Cancellation Approval Settings menu > Automated Cancellation Reset Start Date – enter date here.

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Webinar:  Month-end Billing Run

Video:  Billing Run (Part 1)

Video:  Billing Run (Part 2)

The billing run wording has been updated and a Pop-up has been included to ensure that the user is aware of all the items that are included in the billing run.

We have updated the wording to clarify that:

–  invoices dated at the end of the month will also be included in the billing run:

–  that generated invoices will be emailed to the customer:

–  that the debit batch will include all invoices in the specific billing range as well as the monthly recurring invoice date

We have also changed the Generate Debit Batch screen.  

The batch description and from and to dates have been moved to a pop-up screen.  Click on the Generate batch button to complete these details.

When generating your debit batch, invoices added to a previous debit batch will not be taken into account.  You will also not be able to remove a debit batch from the system once you have passed the debit order run date. 

The way radius sessions are disconnected at month end have been improved.

HeroTill will always try to disconnect any radius session that crosses over month end. This is done to ensure that the accounting update information can be applied to the correct month. The usage data contained in accounting updates are cumulative so cannot be used for accounting purposes if the session originates from the previous month.

Once these sessions are disconnected they will automatically reconnect in the new month, and will continue to log usage info via their accounting updates.

Previously the month end disconnect happened as follows:

When an accounting update is received by freeradius the session start date is checked. If the session was started in the previous month then a disconnect request is sent to the NAS.

This disconnect is not always successful. Reasons can include a network timeout, NAT configuration that means the disconnect request goes to an IP other that the registered NAS ip, or the NAS inbound port may not be set to 1700.

If the disconnect fails, an entry is added to a database table, so that a secondary background job can attempt to disconnect the session by using the mikrotik API.

This background job in HeroTill tries to log into the mikrotik router via the milrotik API, and disconnect the session. IT will disconnect a PPTP, PPoE or Hotspot based radius session.

If the NAS IP is not matched to a mikrotik router, then HeroTill will be unable to log into the router via the API. IF the API credentials are incorrectly configured under the matching network device then HeroTill also not be able to log into the mikrotik router via the API.

If there are 10,000 sessions to disconnect this month end disconnect process can be quite cumbersome and can take a few hours to complete, as every disconnect request can take a second or two, with timeouts taking up to 5 seconds.

To speed up this process we have now introduced the bulk disconnect feature.

This means that HeroTill will now log into the NAS, and drop all radius sessions on the NAS that was started in the prior month, in one go. This results in a much faster disconnect process.

This process can also be initiated manually from either the “NAS List” or “Active Radius Session” screens.

New “Bulk Disconnect” buttons have been added, that utilises this new feature.

When used, it will also give you feedback as to the disconnect result on each NAS.

For this new method to work effectively EVERY NAS (with the exception of the Telkom OpenServer entries) needs to be added as a network device in HeroTill, and the API configured accordingly.

Note that If a NAS is not linked to a network device then the original disconnect process will still be used, and will result in delayed disconnections and reconnections.

Users can add a logo to Invoices (and Credit Notes).

This can be done by navigating to Billing > Billing Setup > Inv & Credit Note Setup.

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How to top-up your account

Customers who run out of their bundle have the option to either manually top-up their account or to enable the auto-top up functionality.  This can be done in the following ways: 

• The customer can submit a top-up request to their ISP.
• The customer can do top-ups or configure auto-top up settings from their online portal.
• The customer can do top-ups, configure auto top-ups settings or view a list of previous top-ups from the customer mobile app (if enabled with their ISP).

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Webinar:  Customer Suspensions

Webinar: Customer Cancellations

Videos:  Suspensions Overview

Video:  Cancellations overview

Users can customise which notifications are enabled between Suspensions & Cancellations and the SMS notification start and end times.

The setup is located by navigating to Setup > Notification > Notification Settings group box.

The user can choose to enable Account Cancellation Notifications and/or Account Suspension Notifications using the toggle buttons. The start and end times for sms notifcations can be set here as well. Refer to the screenshot below.

Note, each of these fields also have an Audit Trail button to keep track of the history of changes per field.

– Audit Trail button

The IOS and Android version 1.1.1 update is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store respectively.

The Settings tab has now been renamed to “More”. It is the last tab on the menu list at the top. The Top Up section has now been moved to the “More” tab.

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The Audit Trail for Radius User Accounts has been updated to include logs when a radius cancellation is reset, unblocked, cancellation date cleared and when the Auth Type has been rejected.

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ICASA Regulations Governing Data Usage

New regulations require Telecommunication Service Providers (not only mobile carriers) to benefit customers in terms of the following:

Usage notifications:

All licensees are required to send usage depletion notifications to consumers when their usage is at 50%, 80% and 100% depletion levels. This will enable consumers to monitor their usage and control spend on communication services.

Rollover of data:

All licensees are required to provide an option for consumers to roll over unused data. This is to ensure that consumers do not lose unused data as is the current practice.

Transfer of data:

All licensees are required to provide an option for consumers to transfer data to other users on the same network.

Out–of-bundle billing:

All licensees are no longer allowed to charge consumers out-of-bundle rates for data when their data has run out without the consumers’ specific prior consent. This will ensure that consumers do not default to out-of-bundle data charges which are significantly higher than in-bundle charges.

Non-compliance with respect to these regulations may result in Fines of up to R 5 000 000.

See the information below for more detail on how to enable the required settings. 

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How to transfer data 

Customers have the option to transfer their data to other customers or radius accounts.  The data transfer can only take place for customers who are on the same network and who have capped packages.  To enable this function, the ISP will need to enable the data transfer toggle switch found under radius settings.  

For the customers:

Who can transfer data? 

• Only customers who are on capped packages can request to have data transferred.
• Data can only be transferred to other customers who are on capped packages. 
• In other words: 
  • Capped to capped = Yes
  • Uncapped to capped = No
  • Capped to uncapped = No
  • Uncapped to uncapped =No

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How to set up usage notifications

Usage notifications can be set up in two different ways: 

1. You can set up and apply global usage notifications settings to all your active customers
2. or you can add individualised usage notifications settings to your customers. 

1.  Global settings for all customers

We have added global settings which can be applied to all customers on capped packages as well as prepaid customers.  To set this up, go to the setup menu and then click on the notification option.  

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A new user specific setting has been added that will allow you to override all hyperlinks within HeroTill to open in the current window.

This setting can be located by clicking on My Account > scroll down to Application Settings > Force Open all Hyperlinks in the current Window – set to ON or OFF.

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Webinar:  Customer Suspensions

Webinar: Customer Cancellations

Video:  Suspensions Overview

Video:  Cancellations overview

Bulk Suspensions

Users now have the ability to set a bulk list of customers to queue for suspension.

Thsi can be done by navigating to the menu for  Accounts Workflow /Suspensions. Her the user can tick the relevant customers and bulk approve them to queue for suspension.

Note, a tooltip has been added to the Approve Suspension button and it has been coloured to red.

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