Main Menu

PortaBilling’s front-end design and functionality are simple and intuitive. The web interface of the PortaBilling® home page is the main point of entry to all system objects and tools. Divided into eight functional blocks, the icons below link to pages containing tools for system management, VoIP networking, billing, customer help and generating statistics. Each second-level page contains a link back to the home page.

These are the nine functional blocks:

Management	Global system maintenance tasks, such as adding administrative users, defining access levels and creating mailing lists, templates and quick forms.
Billing	Tasks related to billing, such as managing the list of services provided and the rate plan definition; maintenance of currencies and exchange rates.
Rating	Tasks related to charging customers for services, such as managing destinations, destination group sets, tariffs, products and discount plans.
Participants	Tasks related to different entities in the system, such as representatives, distributors, resellers, customers, vendors and account management.
Networking	Configuration of network components: registering new nodes (network endpoints) in the system; configuration of CPE profiles; tools for configuring and testing call routing.
Routing	Configuration of various parameters which affect call routing, and a tool to check how routing will be done for a particular destination number.
Statistics	A variety of statistics and reports are available, reflecting the status of the system or providing information on call records, costing and revenue.
Help Desk	Tasks available to help desk staff for assistance in troubleshooting problems that clients may inquire about.
Fraud Protection	Tasks related to fraud protection, such as configuring geo / risk profiles.

All of the functions available from the home page (main menu) are also available using the drop-down menus:

The Home icon on the left also contains a menu with shortcuts to all the other PortaBilling® interfaces:

Admin – Shortcut to this interface; same result as clicking the Home icon.
Reseller – Reseller self-care interface.
Callshop Reseller – Callshop reseller self-care interface.
Customer Self-Care Portal – Customer self-care interface.
CC-Staff – Customer care staff self-care interface (reseller's helpdesk).
Account Self-Care Portal – Account self-care interface (interface for account owners).
Vendors – Vendor self-care interface (interface for your termination partners).
Representatives – Representative self-care interface (interface for your sales agents) or distributors.

The top right-hand side of the interface provides users with the following information:

The time zone where the current user operates. Click on this link to select a time zone for your current session. (1)
Login name of the user currently logged in. (2)
Context help for the current page. Click this link to open the help page in your browser. (3)
Logout button. Used to end the current session or, when necessary, to re-login as another user. (4)
View Log. This link is only available to users with corresponding access rights and where applicable. Clicking it will open a window showing all logged activities performed on the current page. (5)

The toolbar often also shows a list of available actions relative to the current page:

This toolbar acts as the equivalent of the “File” menu for the application, i.e. the usual location for the “Save”, “Close” and “Add” operations.

Delete an object in the database

If you see the Delete icon next to an object name in the list of objects, this means it can be deleted from the system. Note that only objects which are not used elsewhere in the system may be deleted. For instance, in the screenshot below, the DID supplier costs, Prepaid cards and SIP Phone Subscribers tariffs can be deleted, whereas the rest of tariffs are being used by some product or connection.

Show objects

The Objects icon is only available to the Root user; when clicked next to any web element (such as a data field or select menu) it displays an ACL control. Move your mouse over the ACL control for the given element to see the object properties, as illustrated below. These object properties can be used by the administrator when configuring access levels for certain users in the system. See the Access Levels section for more information.

Sorting tables

This feature is available for all xDR browsers in order to sort the displayed information according to different criteria, where necessary. The table header cell with the orange triangle shows the sorted row. A triangle pointing downward indicates descending order, while a triangle pointing upward means ascending order.

Sorting is available for all columns with a bi-directional white arrow in the top left-hand corner of the header cell. To sort a column, simply click on the header; click the same column again for the opposite sorting order.

Another handy feature for sorting tables is that the table header is always visible, even if you scroll to the bottom of a large table which does not fit completely on the screen.

Tab controls

Some forms (e.g. customer or account information) contain so much information that it is not feasible to display it all on a single page. The standard practice in this case is to divide the information between multiple tabs, each of which contains only a portion of the information and can be individually selected for display. To provide a better user experience with a high number of tabs, PortaBilling® provides two rows of tab controls.

When you click on a tab’s name, it is selected (black font on a white background) and you can see the associated information. Note that even if a tab from the upper row is selected, the row order does not change, and all the tabs stay in their original location. Thus you can always remember where a particular tab control is located on the form; see below for an example where a tab from the upper row has been selected.

Current release and build information

In the bottom left corner of the main menu page, you can see information about the maintenance release and build of the software currently installed, e.g. MR54-1 means “Maintenance Release 54” and “Build 1.”