AAPT Impact: Product Overview
AAPT Impact: Product Overview
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Welcome to AAPT Impact, AAPT's Virtual ISP (VISP) service that will
enable you to offer DSL and modem dialup Internet services to your
customers. It is ideal for
ISPs with a sales and marketing focus, providing everything you need to
add Internet services easily to your existing billing and support
infrastructure. As your customers' ISP, AAPT Impact enables you to
extend Internet product offerings as your own branded
Internet services to the market.
AAPT provides online administration tools that make it easy to
create and manage accounts through our web site. We also provide a
Registration Interface Specification, giving you
the option to customise your own registration server and front end. You
are also able to monitor end user registrations from start to finish on
the DSL end user order status website.
Impact uses your domain name and will support multiple domain names for your user accounts if required. The product allows your users to purchase a DSL connection with a dial connection available as a backup, or they can choose to have a dial connection only. You also have the option of offering additional mailboxes and personal web space to your customers.
Adding new user accounts and managing existing user accounts is made easy with AAPT's secure administrator's web interface. End users can be efficiently administered through a comprehensive range of online tools, detailing dialup and DSL usage while also providing administrative functions such as change of details, passwords, account activation, upgrades and cancellations (see the Online Administration Guide).
AAPT will invoice you monthly based on the contract you have signed with us, but you decide how you wish to bill your customers. To help you plan ahead, AAPT provides user usage data to you daily and monthly via a secure web site. This usage data is delivered in xml format.
Impact offers your business an exciting opportunity to strengthen customer relationships by providing customised Internet services that complement your existing product suite. And you can rest easy with the knowledge that AAPT's fast and versatile network and quality service are behind you.
This document is designed to provide a quick reference guide for the
AAPT Impact product. For more information, it refers you to the
following documents:
The first Impact service that you order with AAPT is known as your Master Office. Usually, this is for the domain that most of your users will register with. The components of your Master Office are:
The Registration Key is used to create Impact user accounts in your
domain. See Account Registration Process section for more information.
The administration username and password will allow you to manage accounts within the group and access information necessary for the billing and management of your user accounts.
The Group Name is the unique identifier linked to your domain and is
required for picking up your users' usage details from the secure web
site. The usage data is provided in XML for your convenience.
The details listed here (key, username, password and group) are included in your AAPT Impact Welcome Letter. Please keep this document secure, as it will allow access to fully administer all of your user accounts.
To create users using a different domain name you will need to request the creation of a Sub-Office. This is a two-step process:
The sub-office is associated with your main Impact service, but has
its own group, registration key, admin username and password. This will
allow you to create and manage accounts for the new/secondary domain.
The usage data for billing Sub-Office users is included in the
daily and end of month files for the Master Office (ie. using the
Master Office Group Name). This reduces the overhead to you, as you
only need to access a single secure location to retrieve all of your
customers' usage data, regardless of the domain they belong to.
You can set up user accounts directly using our generic Registration
pages, or if you choose, you can customise and brand your registration
process. To do this you need to have specific programming skills, or
someone within your organisation who can do this for you.
AAPT provides you with direct access to our registration server via an on-line registration process. Once you have created a user account the dial-up connection is immediately available for use. If you have ordered a DSL service, it is ordered as part of the registration process and the provisioning of the service scheduled. Your users can use the dial-up connection until the DSL connection is provisioned.
How you choose to sign up your customers will vary. You may choose any of the following alternatives:
Access to the AAPT registration server is via: https://dialup.connect.com.au/cgi-bin/rego/register.cgi
This is a secure web-based front-end that guides you through the
sign-up process. You will need to registration key for your group to
create accounts.
Please refer to the section on Registration in the Online Administration Guide for more
detailed instructions on how to create accounts for your customers.
Do you want to provide your own registration interface to customers?
Or integrate the registration process into your own system for
streamlined account creation? AAPT provides a simple, yet flexible
Registration Interface as an alternative to the interactive
sign-up process described above.
The Registration Interface is a non-interactive application that accepts name-value pairs via an HTTP POST request and responds in a specific format. If you wish to use the Registration Interface, you will need to develop a script or application that can:
To use the Registration Interface, you will need a copy of the
Registration Interface Specification (RIS). This can be obtained
from
your account manager. The RIS is a technical document that explains:
The DSL provisioning process follows the steps detailed below. This
process is provided as a guide only to help you understand what happens
once you register a DSL user online.
In an effort to speed up DSL end user transfers from another provider, Telstra has launched a process that allows an end user to change carrier without hindrance from the losing carrier. This means that if an end user is changing to AAPT from an ISP who also uses Telstra's Layer 2 DSL service, we don't have to request the losing carrier to cancel the DSL service first.
Telstra will process our DSL request and notify the losing ISP of their churned user. It is, however, the responsibility of the end user to request a cancellation from their previous ISP, otherwise they may still be liable for ongoing charges.
End user transfer is not related to customers changing location or transferring their DSL service.
Please note this process is not yet available. It is estimated AAPT will have this functionality shortly.
For Further details regarding the DSL process please review the Impact DSL User Guide.
To minimise rejections based on the 'Exchange not DSL enabled' reason, you must pre-qualify end user phone numbers at the following web address:
http://www.connect.com.au/accessadsl.cfm
This qualification process will also supply the exchange code needed when entering the order into XML.
AAPT provides you with a number of tools that will enable you to manage
your end user accounts. Members of your technical help desk can be
given access to these tools. This is defined as 'Administrative
Access'. The level of administrative access a member of your staff
receives can be customised.
Access to the Administration tools is via: https://dialup.connect.com.au/cgi-bin/admin/findex.cgi
You will be prompted for an administration username and password to
enter these pages. The username and password contained in your
Welcome Letter has administration priveleges and other accounts (eg.
for staff members) can also be granted administration priveleges.
Below is a list of Administration tools. For a
step-by-step guide on their usage, please see the Online Administration Guide
Your customers have access to a limited set of tools that operate
only on the individual user's account. Your customers can:
You can check the progress of all your DSL service activities online using the following website:
https://dialup.connect.com.au/dsl
To log into this website, you will need your Customer Username and Password. This is different to the Impact administration account. The username is in the format of "123456@customer.connect.com.au". If you do not already have this username or password, please contact the Support Helpdesk on 1300 738 866.
AAPT provides you with formatted usage logs on a daily basis and also
an end of month user summary file. All files are in XML format so they
can be easily integrated into your existing billing system. These files
contain DSL and dial usage information for each user.
Access to the usage logs is via: http://info.connect.com.au/customer/reports/
You will be prompted for a username and password. Please use your administration username and password as detailed in your Impact Welcome Letter. In addition you will need to have your 'Master Office' Group Name also detailed in your Welcome Letter.
NOTE: All 'Sub-office' usage details will be included in files under the 'Master Office' group name.
Impact usage is available by selecting under the 'Impact' heading the 'Fetch Processed Impact Logs' button. You will find daily usage details in the files named YYYYMMDD.xml (these are generated two days in arrears) and the monthly summary in the file named eomYYYYMM.xml. The .txt versions of the files should not be used as these will cease to be generated in the near future.
For further details and a step-by-step user guide please refer to the
Impact Billing Log User Guide.
Impact offers you several types of reports that can be accessed by
various methods:
For a detailed analysis of traffic usage for a particular user, you can use the 'Show ADSL Usage' tool to display a graph of the usage for a specific period.
For instructions on how to use this facility, please see the Impact Administration & Support Guide.
A daily status report will be sent to the e-mail address that you have supplied on your original order form. If you wish to have this e-mail address changed, please contact the Support Helpdesk on 1300 738 866.
This report will be sent daily and includes the status changes of all your DSL orders. Only orders that have had a change of status will appear in this report. You may check the status of any order, at any time, through the web interface.
Our DSL provider sends reports to AAPT daily and we in turn send you two reports; one at 4pm and 4am. It may take up to 48 hours before you see the status of your orders change. This is unavoidable due to report timings with our DSL provider. However, our reports will indicate the actual day your DSL services are completed by our DSL provider, as well as the dates the event was logged into AAPT's systems.
Our online reports are refreshed every 5 minutes, so information can be obtained quickly online. For example: If you upload 20 end user orders at 4pm today, within 5 minutes, you will see those orders on our DSL website. At 6pm on the same day, your orders will be batched and sent to our DSL provider.
On the following day, our DSL provider will receipt and enter your
orders into their provisioning system. Between 5-7pm that day, our DSL
provider will report back to AAPT, where we in turn update the status
of your orders. You will receive this update at 4am the following day.
AAPT's technical customer service team can be contacted directly
between 8am and midnight on weekdays, and between midday and 8pm on
weekends.
If you have any enquires regarding any of AAPT's products or services, or solutions to suit your needs, please direct your enquiries to your Account Manger.