Integration with other solutions

The Cost & Billing Solution is designed to be source-agnostic. It operates on generic concepts that are independent of any external system. All integrations with external systems are handled by dedicated adapters. These adapters translate source-specific concepts into the generic Cost & Billing model. This way, the Cost & Billing core never references external modules directly.

Tip

For more details on the external integration architecture, refer to Architecture.

Sample integration with MediaOps Plan

Cost & Billing provides a sample integration with MediaOps Plan. Resources, resource pools, workflows, and jobs created in MediaOps Plan are synchronized with Cost & Billing, where time-based costs and billable charges can be calculated.

To support this integration, the following components are available:

• MediaOps Plan Adapter: The sample component responsible for synchronizing resources, resource pools, workflows, and jobs from MediaOps Plan into the generic Cost & Billing data model.
• MediaOps Plan Calculation Script: The script responsible for performing the time-based cost and billing calculations for this sample integration.

Integrating with another solution

The sample solution with MediaOps Plan includes a dedicated adapter and calculation script, but the same Cost & Billing core supports any integration. To connect a different external solution:

• Build a new adapter for that solution. Cost & Billing has a dedicated Dev Pack that will allow any new adapter to interact with the Cost & Billing domain.
• Build a new calculation script for the new integration. The calculation script created for MediaOps Plan manages basic time-based concepts. This script can be reused or customized depending on the requirements.
• No changes to the Cost & Billing core are required as long as the billing model is already supported. If a new billing model is required, Cost & Billing will have to be modified directly.

One adapter must be developed per integration.

The sample MediaOps Plan components simplify the development: the MediaOps Plan Calculation Script can be reused when no integration-specific calculation logic is required, while the MediaOps Plan Adapter can serve as the foundation for implementing the new adapter.

Synchronization

Synchronization between the external system and Cost & Billing is performed through the adapter and can be triggered in two ways:

• Scheduled daily sync: A routine that runs automatically once per day, keeping Cost & Billing up to date with the external system.
• On-demand sync: A button in the Cost & Billing interface that allows you to trigger a synchronization at any time. (See Syncing items and groups and Syncing billable events.)

Because of the daily sync strategy, changes made in the external system during the day are not reflected in Cost & Billing until the next sync runs. If you cannot find an expected event (e.g., a job created mid-day), you can trigger a manual sync to reconcile all differences between the external system and Cost & Billing. Note that this may take some time depending on data volume.

Items, groups, and events that no longer exist in the external system are not deleted from Cost & Billing. They transition to a Missing state, preserving historical billing records and rate card links.