We are proud to announce Emerald 2.5 Release Candidate 1 is now
available from our Web Site. Below are the release notes for Emerald
2.5.
-- Dale E. Reed Jr. (daler@iea-software.com)_________________________________________________________________ IEA Software, Inc. | RadiusNT, Emerald, and NT FAQs Internet Solutions for Today | http://www.iea-software.com--------------207DA1743C9A9BD29F836C2FContent-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; name="release.txt"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bitContent-Disposition: inline; filename="release.txt"------------------------------------------------------------------------Emerald Release Notes Emerald Management SuiteVersion 2.5 IEA Software, Inc.November 25, 1998 www.iea-software.com------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. OVERVIEW DOCUMENTATION UPDATES
2. NEW FEATURES MDI WINDOW LAYOUT WEB BROWSER ADVANCED SEARCHING OF USERS MORE CC BATCH FORMATS GROUP SPECIFIC ITEMS DISPLAY/SORT ORDER ADDED FOR MOST ITEMS PAYMENTS NOW INCLUDE A USER SELECTABLE TYPE AND COMMENT CHARGE TYPES TAX SUPPORT BILLING CYCLES BALANCE FORWARD SUPPORT AUTO BATCH UNIQUE GROUP LOGINS GROUPS CAN HAVE THEIR OWN INVOICE FOR PRINTING AND EMAILING PAYMENTS ARE NOW SHOWN ON THE NEXT INVOICE INCIDENT TYPES, ACTIONS, E-MAILING DIRECTORY LIMIT SIZE PER ACCOUNT TYPE DEFAULT FTP DIRECTORY PER GROUP DEFINABLE INTERVAL PER RATE FOR BILLING DEFINABLE SALES PERSONS LIST DEFINABLE REFERRED BY LIST
3. CHANGES LICENSE POLICY LICENSE OVERFLOW HANDLING CASE SENSITIVE DATABASE SUPPORT PAY METHODS CONSOLIDATED TO A SMALLER SET E-MAIL INVOICES ARE NOW BASED ON CRYSTAL REPORTS EACH INVOICE LINE ITEM NOW HAS ITS OWN QUANTITY AMOUNT BLANK LOGIN, SHELL OR EMAIL FIELDS ARE NOW STORED AS NULL CRYSTAL REPORTS 6.0 PRINT ENGINE NEW SECURITY MODEL
4. RADIUSNT RADIUS VENDOR SPECIFIC ATTRIBUTE SUPPORT FOR RADIUSNT CALLER-ID AND CONNECTINFO NOW SHOWS IN CALLS ONLINE DEFAULTS FOR SEVERAL RADIUSNT FIELDS SNMP SUPPORT FOR RADIUSNT DNIS CALL RESTRICTIONS PER ACCOUNT TYPES SERVER AND SNMP TYPE TRACKED PER RADIUS SERVER
5. RADIUSNT 2.5.200 FEATURES SMART CACHING ACCOUNTING QUEUING RADLOGS CALLERID MULTIPLE ODBC DSNS SUPPORTED
6. UPGRADING OVERVIEW DATABASE UPGRADE ASSISTANCE SERVICE COPYING YOUR DATABASE UPGRADING YOUR DATABASE MANUALLY UPGRADING YOUR DATABASE UPGRADE SCRIPTS
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1. Overview
Welcome to the Emerald 2.5 release. Please take a moment to read theentire release notes before upgrading or installing Emerald 2.5.
These release notes are broken down into three sections. The first twosections describe what is new and what has changed since Emerald 2.1.The last section talks about how to upgrade an Emerald 2.1 database toEmerald 2.5.
Documentation Updates
Emerald 2.5 includes a brand new set of documentation split out intospecific areas. The following list summarizes the full documentationset.
Emerald User's Guide
The Emerald User's guide has been re-written to include more details,examples and references for the basic operations of using the Emeraldclient.
Emerald Administrator's
The Emerald Administrator's Guide is brand new and includes in-depthdetail of installing, maintaining, and administering Emerald. This alsoinclude a full explanation and breakdown of all tables and fields in theEmerald database, which is an invaluable resource for writing reports orinterfacing an external application to Emerald.
RadiusNT User's Guide
The RadiusNT User's guide has been updated to include in depth detailsconcerning installing and using RadiusNT with Emerald. All of theadvanced Enterprise features of RadiusNT, which is included with anEmerald license, are also explained in detail.
Emerald Billing Guide
The Emerald Billing guide is new to Emerald 2.5 and specifically focusedtowards the billing aspects of Emerald. It is designed as a step-by-stepguide to quickly and easily walk you through configuring the billingportions of Emerald and billing your customers.
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2. New Features
MDI Window Layout
Emerald now has a multi-document interface, so that all windows andscreens are contained in one application. Multiple child windows can beopened at the same time to allow for easier and faster access to theareas of Emerald used the most. Web Browser
A web browser is now included in the Emerald Client and Admin to allowfor convenient access to web sites and local HTML documents. Severalmenu options are also defined for one-click access the Emeralddocumentation and IEA Software web site search engine. In order for theweb browser to work, you must have Microsoft's Internet Explorer 4.0 orhigher installed on the machine. If IE is not installed on the machine,the installer will disable the built in browser. Advanced Searching ofUsers
More search options for users are now available. These include a simplesearch, a more flexible search for MBR and Services, as well as advancedsearching. The advanced searching included options like open incidents,expired accounts, free services/MBRs, inactive services/MBRs, custombilling, and serviceless MBRs. More CC Batch formats
Emerald 2.5 now supports 10 different Credit Card processing systems forbatch processing of credit cards.
System Name Batch Support AVS Support --------------- -------------------- ----------- Soft Deposit Batch Out/Batch In MAPP-PC Batch Out/Batch In AVS MAPP-PC 9.x Batch Out/Batch In AVS Card Soft Batch Out/Batch In TelePC Batch Out/Batch In PTC Batch Out/Batch In AVS PC-Batch Batch Out/Batch In IC Verify Batch Out/Batch In AVS CyberCash Batch Out/Batch In AVS PC Authorize Batch Out/Batch In AVS Domain POS Batch Out AVS PC Transact_IT Batch Out
Emerald also supports a new generic format for those systems where youcan define the import and export formats.
Group specific items
You can now specify where an item can be globally available to allgroups or only available to a specific group. In order to Emerald towork properly, you must have at least one global item in each type, orhave a group specific item for each group. Group specific items areavailable for the following areas: AccountTypes, ChargeTypes,InvoiceTypes, Regions, Discounts, PayMethods, and PayPeriods.
Display/sort order added for most items
When Emerald displays a selection list or drop down box, it will nowsort the items based on the sort order value for each item. The itemsare sorted from lowest to highest. This replaces the old behavior ofalphabetical order. Payments now include a user selectable type andcomment
When a payment is now made, you can select one of the definable paymenttypes as well as making a comment about the payment (usually the checknumber). Charge Types
There is now a new section to define Charge Types. A Charge type may bemanually applied to an MBR at any time while editing the MBR. You canalso associate a charge type to be the setup charge for a service type.Tax Support
The tax support for Emerald 2.5 has been completely re-written to handletaxes from single, dual, and piggyback. You are allowed to define anynumber of tax entries needed, which include the type and percentages ofthe tax. Then you can associate those tax entries to Charges andServices. These tax entries will show up in detail on the invoices. Alltax items are track by their original type for easy reporting. BillingCycles
You can define Billing Cycles, which are a set of rules on how and whento bill a user. This includes whether the user is a balance forward orrenewal, and how far in advance to bill the customer based on whetherthey are paying via an electronic method or are being invoiced. Billingcycles are the base of the new Auto batch feature. Balance ForwardSupport
Each MBR now has a running balance. When the billing cycle for the MBRis configured for Balance forward, the user is automatically billedunless their balance is greater than the defined limit of the MBR. Theprevious balance is listed on the invoice along with any previouspayments and new charges. A new field, BilledThru, is also available toshow when the MBR has been billed up to, since the expiration date isnot used for billing in balance forward. Auto Batch
Since Emerald now knows how and when to bill each user, a new feature isavailable called Auto Batch. This feature will find any users that needto be billed (based on their Billing cycle information) andautomatically run a batch for those users. Unique group logins
Each group can be configured to allow logins to be unique for that groupor for the logins to be globally unique (can not match a login inanother group). This allows installations where full logins are used tohave the same login in different groups. Groups can have their owninvoice for printing and emailing
Each group can have their own specific invoice for printing andemailing. If a group specific invoice is not defined, the system-definedinvoices will be used. Payments are now shown on the next invoice
When a payment is entered in Emerald, it will show up on the user's nextinvoice or renewal notice. Incident Types, Actions, E-Mailing
Incident Types can now be defined in the Emerald Admin. When an Incidentis created, the Operator can pick a type for that incident. Eachincident type can have a default e-mail address associated to it aswell. When the incident is saved, a copy of the Incident will be mailedto the e-mail address. Incident Actions are now supported as well. Thisallows for operators to add additional or follow-up information about anincident. This is also commonly used to document the steps for serviceturn-ups. The actions can be e-mailed like the original incident was aswell.
Directory Limit Size per account type
You can specify a Home Directory limit per service. This is used byEmerAuth to enforce mailbox and FTP directory limits. Default FTPdirectory per Group
Each Group can have its own default FTP directory. If the group's FTPdirectory is blank, the system default FTP directory will be used.Definable interval per rate for billing
Rates are no longer based on per-hour usage. You can now define theinterval for each rate, in seconds. This allows you to charge persecond, per minute, per hour, or whatever other interval you want tobill. You should check your rates after the update to verify they arecorrect. If you change the interval, you must also change the charges toreflect the new changes.
Definable Sales Persons List
You can now define a list of Sales Persons in the Emerald Admin thatwill be available in the drop down list.
Definable Referred By List
You can now define a list of Sales Persons in the Emerald Admin thatwill be available in the drop down list.
Database Maintenance
The Emerald Admin now includes a Database Maintenance section. Thisallows you to check your database, upgrade your database and performoperations such as deleting old call records and expired accounts.
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3. Changes License Policy
The license policy for determining the number of Master Billing Recordshas been changed from counting each MBR to only counting those MBRs thatare active License Overflow Handling
If Emerald finds the number of MBRs are more than the number of MBRs youare licensed for, it will allow you to manage the current accounts, butnot add new accounts for run billing. Case sensitive database support
Emerald has been modified to support case sensitive databases. Thisincludes changes not only to the executables, but also to the databasecreation scripts and procedures.
Pay Methods Consolidated to a smaller set
The Pay Methods have been consolidated to allow for simpler and fasterprocessing. This includes changing all of the Credit Card types fromtheir respective names to just "Credit Card". The type of the creditcard type is not required for CC processing. Other changes includeremoving the spaces from before the other pay methods. E-Mail invoicesare now based on Crystal Reports
Email invoices are now based on Crystal Reports. This allows you tocompletely customize (including making it HTML) the invoices that areemailed. A new Email client has been written for Emerald to send theemails with that is significantly faster than the only method. Eachinvoice line item now has its own quantity amount
A quantity field on each line item has replaced the invoice monthsfield. This resolves total calculations that could have been incorrectin previous versions. Blank Login, shell or Email fields are now storedas NULL
The login, shell and email fields are now correctly set to NULL whenthey are left blank in the client. The old clients set them to a singlespace, which caused a potential security issue. Crystal Reports 6.0Print Engine
The Crystal Reports 6.0 print engine is now included in the Emeralddistribution. If you install a previous version of Crystal Reports onyour computer, you may need to re-install Emerald for printing to workagain. All of the reports distributed with Emerald are also version 6.0reports. New Security Model
The security model has been completely changed from the Emerald remotelayout. The new model allows for each operator to be in an OperatorGroup, and then for you to specify permissions per operator group. Thisis based on a new set of views to increase security.
Create Database Enhanced
The Create Database section has been greatly enhanced to check thevalidity of the information entered before starting. This includesmaking sure the information entered does not conflict with a currentobject in the database.
Calls Table Modifications
The calls table has been modified to include three new fields, ServerID(matches ServerID in the Servers table), AccountID (matched AccountID inthe SubAccounts table), and Status (set to NULL initially, and 99 whenthe record has been processed by the consolidation procedure).
Scheduled Tasks
Several scheduled tasks are now included in the insttask.sql script.This script is not installed by default or by the update procedure. Whencreating the Emerald database, you can check the "Install Tasks" to havethe tasks installed (only if the database name is "Emerald").
Two of the main functions of the scheduled tasks are to update the newServerID and AccountID fields in the Calls table. These are scheduledfor the night. If you calls table has a lot of records, you may want tomanually command in those tasks before scheduling them. Other tasksinclude a weekly Check Database, and two tasks to delete start recordsfrom the Calls table and trim out old records from your RadLogs table.
Consolidation Procedure
The Consolidation procedure has changed completely. Rather than tryingto do all the users in one query (which required a large tempdb), theconsolidation does one user at a time. The consolidation does not deletethe records anymore either. It simply marks them as already beenprocessed. You can use the new database maintenance feature to deletethe records at a later time.
While the consolidation is running, you will see a progress bar, statusinformation about the current user being consolidated, the total numberof users to be consolidated, and the number of call records processed sofar. There is also a stop button to stop the consolidation. Stopping theconsolidation will not cause any problems, since it marks the processedrecords as it goes (allowing the next run to pick up where it left offfrom). Running the consolidation should not cause any problems withRadiusNT either (authentication or accounting).
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4. RadiusNT
Emerald 2.5 fully supports all features of RadiusNT 2.5. If you haveRadiusNT 2.5.124 already installed, there should be no problemsencountered after the upgrade.
A new version of RadiusNT (2.5.200) is included in the Emerald 2.5archive that adds several new features, which are listed in the nextsection. If you encounter any problems with RadiusNT 2.5.200, pleaserevert back to using RadiusNT 2.2.124.
RADIUS Vendor Specific Attribute Support for RadiusNT
Vendor Specific Attribute (VSA) support has been added to the EmeraldAdmin to add Vendors, VSAs, and VSAs to the Service Type Defaults anduser specific attributes. Caller-ID and ConnectInfo now shows in CallsOnline
The Calls Online view will now include the Caller-ID and ConnectInfoRADIUS attributes, if the NAS sends those attributes in Accountingrequests. Defaults for several RadiusNT Fields
Defaults have been added to several of the Calls table fields to supportthose clients that do not send the required fields in Accountingrequests. One example of this is Lucent ComOS 3.8, which sends adminAccounting requests without a NAS-Port attribute. SNMP Support forRadiusNT
When editing a Server and Server Port you can specify optional SNMPsettings. RadiusNT uses these for SNMP concurrency checking. DNIS callrestrictions per Account Types
You can define a DNIS group, which includes a set of DNIS numbers. Ifyou specify a DNIS group for an Account Type, any service of thatAccount Type can only call from one of those DNIS numbers. Server andSNMP Type tracked per RADIUS server
The server type for each RADIUS server is now tracked. These are usedfor re-porting the server and allowing RadiusNT to properly handle theSNMP concurrency control.
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5. RadiusNT 2.5.200 Features
RadiusNT 2.2.200 includes several new features to improve performance.Not all of these features have been fully regression tested, so pleasetest this new version carefully before putting it into production. SmartCaching
Smart Caching allows RadiusNT to cache information from the database sothat it does not have to do a lookup each time. This can greatly improvethe authentication performance of RadiusNT while lightening the burdenon SQL Server as well. Accounting Queuing
When RadiusNT is receiving a large number of accounting requests in ashort amount of time, it may queue the accounting requests to improvespeed. It will then send all of the accounting requests to the databasewhen it either reaches the maximum number of records allowed to queue,or when the requests slow down.
RadLogs CallerID
If CallerID is sent to RadiusNT in the Authentication request and theAuthentication Request fails, RadiusNT will include the CallerID in theRadLogs entry. The RadLogs table must have the CallerID field whetherthe NAS sends CallerID or not.
Multiple ODBC DSNs Supported
RadiusNT can now use multiple ODBC connections, in a fail overconfiguration. Although this is not a supported configuration by theRadiusNT Admin, you can specify multiple ODBC DSNs in the ODBCDataSourceregistry entry, space delimited. The preference of use is indicated bythe order of the entries. The first one will always be used unless it isnot available. Otherwise RadiusNT will try the next one until a goodconnection is found.
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6. Upgrading Overview
Emerald 2.5 is backward compatible with 2.1/2.2 in the sense that 2.1clients should still function. However, they will NOT be able to takeadvantage of the additional billing options. Once you have startedbilling with 2.5, we do not guarantee that you can go back to billingwith pre 2.5. There are several new fields that need to be taken intoaccount which pre 2.5 does not know about.
You should also carefully look at your customer configuration if youchange your billing from renewal to balance forward. The main problem iswith the balance field. This field usually is not correct and will causeerrant invoices for customers the first time you billing with Emerald2.5.
Database Upgrade Assistance Service
IEA Software is offering a database upgrade assistance service for thosecustomers who do not feel comfortable with upgrading their database orwant help. If you are interested in this service, please contact IEASoftware sales to arrange a time for this. The service is available fora nominal fee.
Copying your database
Before doing anything, create a copy of your database to test against.Do not just try and upgrade your production database without firsttesting the upgrade on a copy. You should always have a backup of yourEmerald database as well.
The following procedure is the same whether you are creating a seconddatabase on the same SQL Server or on another SQL Server. The onlydifference is that during the transfer stage you will pick the secondSQL server rather than the same one.
1. Run SQL Enterprise manager and Connect to your SQL Server.
2. Select Manager...Database Devices from the pull down menu and clickthe new database device button (the first one on the tool bar).
3. For the name of the new Database device, call it Emerald25. Thelocation should be where you typically store your SQL database devicefiles (like d:\mssql\data or where ever you have enough disk space).Remember this, because when you eventually delete the database anddevice, you will have to remove the file itself manually.
The size of the database device should be larger than the size of thecurrently used portion of your Emerald database, although it doesn'thave to be the same size of what is allocated for the database. You canfind this out by double-clicking your emerald database and subtractingthe used from the total size). Give yourself a few extra megabytes forbreathing room.
4. Once the device is created, close the database device box, and select"Manage...Databases" from the pull down menu and click the new Databasebutton (the first one on the toolbar).
5. For the name enter Emerald25. For the database device, select theEmerald25 database device you create in step 3. The size should be thefull amount of the database device.
6. Click the "create now" button. Once the database is created, doubleclick the bar of the database to bring up the edit database window. Onthe options tab, check Select/Into bulk copy, no checkpoint on recovery,and truncate log on checkpoint and click ok.
7. Now that you have your test database created, you need to copy yourproduction database to it. Close the Manage Database window, and choosethe Tools...Database/Object transfer option.
8. When the transfer window opens, make sure the source server is yourcurrent SQL Server and the source database is your current Emeralddatabase. The destination server should be your current SQL Server also,unless you are transferring to another server (in which case it shouldbe the new server). If the other server isn't listed, click the newdestination button and register it. The Destination database should bethe database you created above.
9. Once you have the settings correct, select the "Start Transfer"button. You will see the progress of the transfer. When the transfer iscompleted, you may receive a message noting there were errors. If so,you can click the View Logs button to see the errors. Most likely theerrors are with the ServerAccess table, which is not real problem(remember above we recommended dropping it).
Upgrading your Database
The Emerald Admin includes a new feature to automatically upgrade yourdatabase. This is basically just an automated version of the manualsteps listed below. The Emerald Admin includes a new section in theDatabase pull down menu called maintenance. This is where you can run acheck on your database, update your database, or clear out old records.
The first thing you should do after making a backup of your database,and before doing any of the upgrade steps, is to run the check databaseoption in the Emerald Admin. This will run the SQL Server DatabaseConsistency Checker to make sure there are no problems with yourdatabase before the upgrade.
Once you have run the Check Database option, you can run the upgradeoption. You should make sure that no one else is accessing the databasewhen the upgrade is running. The upgrade can takes from several minuteson small systems to over an hour on larger systems.
Manually Upgrading your Database
These steps outline what is necessary to update your database, if you donot use the update option in the Emerald Admin. If you have done custommodifications to your database, you should look through the dropold.sqland updttabs.sql scripts very carefully.
1. Drop the tables listed at the top of the dropold.sql script. Theseinclude a couple of tables that are no longer used and several othersthat have either been replaced or had problems.
2. Drop your Consolidation and DeleteCalls stores procedures. Both havechanged (even from the original 2.5 scripts sent to people) and needs tobe updated or consolidation will fail.
3. Run the insttabs.sql, updttabs.sql, codetabs.sql, instproc.sql andinstview.sql scripts in isql_w (or the SQL EM query tool). See below fora description of the changes in these scripts. All of the scripts havebeen enhanced to only change the database as needed.
4. You will need to apply permissions to the new objects. If you have ageneric setup, run the instperm.sql script. Otherwise use SQL EM andedit the group permissions for the different groups. Several new groupshave been added in the instperm.sql script for the new security model aswell.
Upgrade Scripts
The main portion of the upgrade is handled via the same scripts thatcreate the Emerald database. The scripts have been heavily modified toprevent most problems that might occur with running them against 2.1,2.2 or beta 2.5 database.
insttabs.sql
This is the normal script that comes with Emerald to create the tablesin the database. Running this script on an earlier database will causeany missing tables to be added.
Before running this script, you should check several tables. If thesetables exist, drop them. They are old and have been replaced:
- RadRoams - RadRoamServers
There is a secondary script (not part of the main update) for updatingthe RadiusNT tables from Emerald 2.2 and lower to work with RadiusNT2.5's Vendor Specific Attribute support. If you will not be using VSAsupport, you do not need to run the additional script.
The ServerAccess Table has changed, with a new primary key. It isstrongly recommended that you drop your current ServerAccess table andallow this script to re-create it.
When this script is run, you may receive errors concerning "objectalready exists in the database". Those can be safely ignored. Any othererror needs to be noted and corrected, as it will cause problems inother steps. The scripts must be ran in the order listed, or they willnot work correctly.
updttabs.sql
This is the update script to add missing fields to existing tables. YouMUST run insttabs.sql first, since some fields that will be added aredependent upon new tables to be added first.
This script will also update data in a couple of tables to correctdatabase consistency issues. You should look over this script beforerunning it if you have made any changes to your database structureoutside of Emerald.
codetabs.sql
This is the update script that populates all the tables in the databasewith default information. It will not re-populate tables that alreadyhave data in them.
instproc.sql
This is the normal script that comes with Emerald to create the storedprocedures. Running this script on an earlier database will cause anymissing tables to be added.
You must drop your Consolidation and DeleteCalls procedure so that thenew one in this script can be installed. The Consolidation script for2.2 and lower is not compatible with Emerald 2.5.
instview.sql
This is the normal script that comes with Emerald to create the securityviews. Running this script on an earlier database will cause any missingviews to be added.
instperm.sql
This is the normal script that comes with Emerald to set permissions onthe objects. Since new tables and procedures where added to yourdatabase, you should re-run this script to set permissions correctly. Ifyou have changed permissions on your database to be other than thedefault layout (Emerald group) you may need to manually update thepermissions.
insttrig.sql
This is the normal script that comes with Emerald to add a trigger tothe calls table. It is recommended that you drop the trigger on yourcalls table and re-create it with the one in this file.
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