MBLOX RESELLER GUIDE. User guide

Transcription

1 MBLOX RESELLER GUIDE User guide This step-by-step guide will show you how to set-up your Reseller Account. From creating sub-accounts and applying your company s branding, to setting up pricing and adding services for your clients.

2 CONTENTS 1.0 OVERVIEW GETTING STARTED BRANDING SETTING UP THE DEFAULT BRANDING TEMPLATE CREATING MORE TEMPLATES THE CREDIT SYSTEM SETTING A DEFAULT RATE TRANSFERRING CREDIT TRANSFERRING CREDIT USING CURRENCY TRANSFERRING CREDIT USING CREDITS ADDING SERVICES ASSIGNING PRICING TO A SUB-ACCOUNT SERVICE SERVICE GROUPS CREATING NEW SERVICE GROUPS EDITING SERVICE GROUPS ASSIGNING DEFAULT SERVICE GROUPS SIGN-UP AND LOGIN INTERGRATION MANAGING SUB-ACCOUNTS CREATING SUB-ACCOUNTS VIEW BALANCE DAILY STATISTICS LOW BALANCE WARNING EDITING ACCOUNT SETTINGS FURTHER INFORMATION & ADVANCED INTERGRATION

3 1.0 OVERVIEW This document describes all the features of a Mblox reseller account, including creating sub-accounts, applying your company s brand to the customer system, specifying pricing and availability of services, setting up the credits system and transferring credit to and from your sub-accounts. The structure of this document can be seen as a step-by-step guide, taking you from the initial state of your account to the fully configured reseller system. 2.0 GETTING STARTED Your manage.mblox.com customer account is a central area that holds your balance in currency (Euro or Sterling), as well as your contact information. The account does not offer the ability to send SMS until you have added a service. At the time of writing this document, the following services are available on a reseller account: SMS Connection Dynamic HTTPSMS Dynamic BatchSender Dynamic Windows SMS Server HLR Lookup For SMS connections by SMPP and UCP For SMS connections by HTTP Non branded web interface for uploading batches of numbers Downloadable re-brandable Windows software to allow SMS to be integrated easily into other systems using a file based approach Non branded web interface for looking up lists of mobile numbers to identify whether they are ported or invalid These services have been selected for reseller accounts because they do not use Mblox branding and do not incur any setup or recurring fees. Note that you do have the ability to charge your customers a setup fee on a per service basis, and can also customise which services are available to each customer (See 6.0 Service Groups). All of the services on a customer account share the same currency balance. In order to re-sell Mblox services, your customers must also have a central online customer account with their own balance. This is called a sub-account. Sub-accounts can have the same services as described above added to them, and can display the account balance and prices in terms of credits. Funds are assigned to a sub-account by you, via an internal transfer from your own customer account balance. Most importantly, sub-accounts are fully re-brandable and automated. These reseller features are not available on your customer account by default, but can be activated for your account upon request. Conditions may apply. 3

4 There are 3 main differences between a reseller account and a standard account: 1. A sub-account section will appear on the side menu giving you the ability to create and edit sub-accounts, and to control credits and services. 2. All available services will be changed to non-branded versions. Some services wil be removed ( 2SMS and Long Number). This will not affect existing services on your account. 3. You will have the ability to create a branded interface for sub-accounts. 4.0 BRANDING The sign-up page, login page and customer system can all be rebranded to suit your business. The figure below describes the parts of the screen which are affected by branding: 4

5 Main Dominant Colour Company Logo / Graphical Banner Subsidiary Colour 1 Icons with Main Dominant Colour Title with Main Dominant Colour Subsidiary Colour SETTING UP THE DEFAULT BRANDING TEMPLATE The sign-up page and login page are branded by the default template. To edit the default template, go to the sub-accounts page, choose Edit Branding Templates from the Actions section, then click Edit Default Template. The template form takes you through the details required: Company Name The name of your company / service. This will be used in place of Mblox throughout the system. Company Website When your customers log out they will be redirected to this URL. Company During the signup procedure, or if the user asks to reset their password, and in some other cases where we contact customers on your behalf (see section 8.0 Managing Sub-accounts) we will send from this address. Certain services, such as the batch sender, have support forms, which will send mail to this address. Company Logo URL This logo replaces the banner image at the top of each page. It must be 765 x 93 pixels, otherwise it will be distorted to fit. 5

6 Main Dominant Colour This colour will be used for headers, icons, and the menu text and icons. It should be a relatively dark colour. Subsidiary Colour 1 This colour will be used as a background to some sections on the page, and also as the background colour of the link section and page footer. Since it is used as a background, it should not be too dark. Subsidiary Colour 2 This colour will be used as the menu background, and the background of some sections of the page. This should be the lightest colour of the three. Once you have completed the details, you can click Preview to display a sample page using your branding details. It is recommended that you use this facility, as it allows you to check that your chosen colours work well together on the page, and with your logo. When you are happy with your template, click Submit. Once saved, you can view the sample page using the (view sample) link next to the Edit Default Template link. You can edit the template at any time, for example if your logo changes and you need to update it. 3.2 CREATING MORE TEMPLATES You can also create other templates and assign them on a per-account basis. These templates will only take effect inside the account. If additional templates are not required, the default template will be used throughout the system. The only difference between the default template and other templates is that other templates must be given names, allowing you to distinguish between them. Note: The default template will always be used for the login and sign-up pages. 4.0 THE CREDITS SYSTEM Note: This only applies if a sub-account is allowed to view their balance (see section 8.1 Creating sub- accounts). Otherwise all pricing information is hidden anyway. In order to hide the actual pricing of messages, we provide a mechanism to display the currency balance of an account, all pricing information and statistics, and all service costs, in terms of Credits. You simply choose a scaling factor for converting the values in the account from currency to credits. So if, for example, an account s balance is 6.420, and you decide a credit should be equivalent to 0.020, the account s balance will appear as Credits. You can then sell your customers a number of credits at a price you choose. For example, if you have set your credit price to be as above, the value of 1000 credits within the system would be , but 6

7 you could sell your customer 1000 credits for making a 5.00 profit. 4.1 SETTING A DEFAULT RATE To simplify account creation, you can set a default rate for all new accounts. This is used when someone signs up using the sign-up page (see section 7.0 Sign-up and Login Integration) and when you create an account (see section 8.1 Creating sub-accounts). 1. Go to the Sub-accounts page and find the Default Credits Rate section. 2. Enter your default conversion rate into the text input field. 3. Click Update. 4.2 TRANSFERRING CREDIT Our system allows you to transfer credit between your account and a sub-account either in currency or in terms of credits. On the Sub-accounts page, a section labelled Sub-account details lists all sub-accounts on your account. Clicking on the username of a sub-account takes you to the settings and billing page for a sub-account (see section 8.2 Editing account settings for a description of the settings part of the page). The first area of the billing section allows you to set / change the credits rate on a particular account. WARNING: If you clear this setting, the sub-account will be displayed using the real currency values of their balance, services and coverage TRANSFERRING CREDIT USING CURRENCY If no credits rate is set on the sub-account, this will be your only option. From this section you can enter an amount in currency to be transferred, and whether it is to be transferred into or out of the account. Note: You cannot transfer amounts smaller than 0.001, and you cannot cause the balance of your account or the sub-account to fall below zero. If a credits rate has been set, this form will also display the equivalent number of credits next to the text input field. 7

8 1. Enter the currency amount to be transferred into the text input field. 2. Select whether the credit should be transferred from or to the sub-account. 3. Click Transfer on this form TRANSFERRING CREDIT USING CREDITS To simplify the process of transferring credits, you can simply enter the number of credits to transfer into this form. The equivalent currency value will be displayed on the form, next to the text input field. 1. Enter the currency amount to be transferred into the text input field. 2. Select whether the credit should be transferred from or to the sub-account. 3. Click Transfer on this form. Note: You must use the correct Transfer button on the relevant form for the changes to take effect as you expect. 5.0 ADDING SERVICES There are two ways to add services to a sub-account. Firstly, if you have set up a service group (see section 6.0 Service Groups), then you can use the Log in as user function and add services as though you are the customer. Alternatively, you can add services to sub-accounts directly, without logging into the sub-account. To do this, go to the sub-accounts page in your parent account, find the Sub-account details section, and click on the username of the sub-account you want to add a service to. At the bottom of this page, you will see a list of any active services on this account, as shown below: 8

9 To add a service, choose the type of service from the drop down box and click Add Service. If there are any configuration options, you will be prompted for them on the next screen. The final screen will give any necessary connection details for the new non-mblox branded service. Pass these details on to your customer. Note that when adding services directly from the parent account, it is not possible to charge a service setup fee to the customer. 5.1 ASSIGNING PRICING TO A SUB-ACCOUNT SERVICE When SMS services are set up, they will initially be assigned the default pricing. If you have arranged special pricing with us, you will need to copy this pricing from an active service on your parent account or from one of your sub-accounts. To do this, click on the username of the SMS service belonging to the sub-account for which you wish to configure the special pricing on. On the next page you will see a drop down list of available service for which you can copy pricing from. Choose a service from this drop down box to view the pricing that is currently set up on that service. If you have configured a credits rate for the sub-account, the equivalent cost in credits for each destination will also be shown. An example of this screen is shown below. To copy this pricing to the sub-account service, click the Assign button. You will then be shown the pricing which has just been assigned to the sub-account service. Please confirm that pricing has been assigned correctly. If a problem has occurred, please contact technical support immediately through the Support section of your account. 9

10 6.0 SERVICE GROUP Service groups allow you to make services which are available on your account available to your subaccounts. You can set the price for each service in the group, and allocate default groups based on account type, so anyone using the sign-up page (see section 7.0 Sign-up and Login Integration) will have the appropriate services at the prices you have chosen available to buy immediately. Note that if no default group is assigned to an account type, new accounts of this type will not be able to add any services until a service group has been assigned to that account. When a sub-account purchases a service, the cost will be deducted from the sub-account balance and transferred to your own parent balance. Credit must be available on the account before services can be added, even if you have set a cost of CREATING A NEW SERVICE GROUP To create a new service group, go to the Services page and find the Sub-account service groups section. Simply enter the name of the new service group into the text input field and click Create. Please note that service group names must be unique. The new group should appear in the list below Edit service groups. 10

11 6.2 EDITING SERVICE GROUPS The service group editor has three sections. The first allows you to edit the name of the group. The second section contains the list of services which are in the group, and the prices associated with them. The third section shows which other services are available but not in this group. To add services to a group, click the Add link next to the service. When the service appears in the Group Entries, enter the price of the service, in currency. Changes to the service group will be saved when you click Save. 6.3 ASSIGNING DEFAULT SERVICE GROUPS Once you have set up service groups, they can be assigned by default to each type of account. Go to the last section on the Sub-accounts page, labelled Default service groups. Here you can see the available service groups. After a service is added, you must, if necessary, contact Mblox to request configuration of custom routing. 7.0 SIGN UP AND LOGIN INTERGRATION Once your default branding template has been set up (see section 3.1 Setting up the default branding template), it will be used on your sign-up and login pages. The URLs to these pages can be found towards the top of the Sub-accounts page. Please note that until your default branding has been set up, these pages will retain the Mblox branding. You can either provide links to these URLs directly, or set up a sub-domain under your company s domain, for example if your company s website is at you could use signup.company.com and point this to your signup URL. It is recommended that you do not provide access to the sign-up or login pages until you are happy with your system configuration. For more information on creating and managing sub-domains please contact your website support or hosting solution. You may also wish to create your own HTML signup and login pages which post form data directly to the Mblox CGI scripts. To do this, you must include the ari parameter and value as a hidden field. 8.0 MANAGING SUB-ACCOUNTS This section describes how to create a sub-account for your customer, and the features which are available. 8.1 CREATING SUB-ACCOUNTS Go to the Sub-accounts page, find the Actions section and click Create sub-account. You will be asked for the following details: 11

12 Account Type Choose the account type from the list which best describes your customer s company. Company Name Country Username Password Verify Password Branding Template Allow Login View Balance Daily Stats Low Balance Warning The name of the company for which you are creating the account. The country in which the customer s company is based. A username for your customer to log in with. A password for your customer to log in with. Enter the same password again to ensure it has been given correctly. Your customer s address. The branding template to use when this user logs in (see section 3.0 Branding) Select this option if you will allow the user to log into the system. Select this option if your customer should be shown pricing information (in credits) in the account and services. Disable, allow or activate daily statistics s (see below). Disable, allow or activate low balance warning s (see below). When you have correctly given all the appropriate details and options, click Save to create the account. Most of these details can be changed at a later date. The exception is the password, which cannot be changed from within your account. However, you can use the Log in as user feature to enter the subaccount and access the Change Password form on their My Information page VIEW BALANCE When View Balance is selected, the customer will be able to see pricing information in the account, including their balance, service costs and pricing to destinations on services, and also see their balance and pricing information within certain services (e.g. Batch Sender, HLR Lookup). If a credits rate has been set (see section 4.0 The Credits System) these values will all be given in terms of credits. If View Balance is turned off, no pricing information will appear in the customer s login area or in any of their services DAILY STATS Daily statistics s are sent to anyone who requests them. This lists details of where messages have been sent, how many and at what price. To allow this option, but not turn it on, choose Enabled, off. To allow this option and turn it on for this account, choose Enabled, on. Choose Disabled to deny this option to the user. WARNING: Although s sent by our system are branded with your chosen settings, the headers mention Mblox since they are handled by our mail exchange. 12

13 8.1.3 LOW BALANCE WARNING Low balance warning s, if active, send an when a user s balance drops below a specific threshold set by the user. For sub-account users this is given by them in credits. A warning will only be sent once. When a payment is made, the marker is reset so a user can be warned again. WARNING: Although such s sent by our system are branded with your chosen settings, the headers mention Mblox since they are handled by our mail exchange. 8.2 EDITING ACCOUNT SETTINGS To change the settings on an account, find the username of the account on the Sub-accounts page in the Sub-account details section. Click on the username to go to the sub-account details page. The first section of this page shows the current settings of the account, and provides two links. Click Edit account to change any details or settings on the account. The other link, Log in as user will take you into the sub-account as though you had logged into it. You will see the account as your customer sees it. This allows you to set up services as if you were your customer, for example if they have difficulty or if you have not provided your customer with login access. The next section on this page, Billing, allows you to transfer credit between your account and your customer s account (see section 4.0 The Credits System). The last section allows you to view services on the sub-account, add new services and assign pricing (see section 5.0 Adding Services). 9.0 FURTHER INFORMATION AND ADVANCED INTERGRATION In addition to the facilities described in this document, we also offer an HTTP Billing Interface which allows you to request information about your account balance and sub- accounts, and transfer credit between your account and a sub-account, all with a simple HTTP request mechanism. This may be useful for automatically managing sub-account balances with your existing billing or credit card processing system, or for alerting clients of low balances or of their coverage & pricing. Information about the Billing API and the specification document can be found here: If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected], or alternatively at [email protected] if it is concerning a technical issue. 13