Time Travel is a simulation feature which imitates the key behaviour and characteristics of subscriptions and billing configuration , It is a virtual time travelling tool which is available only in Test mode and facilitates the ability to go back in time and test features, such as subscription management, billing and collecting online payments within a specific time frame.
Upon launching the Time Travel tool, all contact and organisation related data (e.g. the product catalogue, subscriptions, orders, financial transactions configuration) will be staged, and new ones should be created with a limit of up to five (5) contacts and five (5) organisations (parent organisations). When exiting the Time Travel tool, all contacts & organisation and their related records (e.g. financial transactions) will be deleted.
Venturing into Time Machine
When you access the Time Travel tool you’ll go back in time. Having all of the required configuration in place, you can check the behaviour of core processes by moving forward to the present and verifying the results such as a services being billed, promotions applied or pending changes being performed.
1) To access the Time Travel tool you must first change to Test Mode by enabling the toggle at the bottom of the side bar menu.
2) Navigate to the system settings by selecting your signed-in user name at the top right-hand corner of the screen > Settings > Platform > Tools > Time Travel.
3) Choose how long in the past you wants to travel back to (one week to two years).
4) Click to Enter Time Travel
You should now see the time line at the top of the screen.
5) Start preparing your test data
Create your contacts
Subscribe a service to these contacts either through the ordering flow or by adding services directly to each contact from the contact screen
Every time you exit the time travel, all your test data will be deleted. This means that your test data is available only for one time travel journey, so make sure you complete all the necessary tests before exiting time travel.
6) More forward in time
Depending on each subscriber’s billing period, move forward in time using the time line at the top of the screen
Once you select to move forward in time, any subscriptions and billing related features will be triggered such as:
Performing changes scheduled up until that date
Billing the subscriber (issue invoices and/or credit notes depending on scheduled changes)
Collecting money (if you have a test Payment Gateway service enabled on your test environment)
Deactivating services due to insufficient funds or outstanding amounts
Cancelling services which have been inactive for a long period of time
7) You can then perform some additional manual processes before moving even further forward into the future, like scheduling more changes, adding more services, topping up the CRM.COM Wallet.
Time travel allows you to perform any required tests of your main processes and their configuration over a period of time.
8) Exiting the Time Travel tool - once you are satisfied that you have completed all your testing, you can exit Time Travel by selecting the options icon (…) next to the time line bar > Exit Time Travel. Remember that when you exit all your test data (contacts/ subscriptions etc.) will be deleted.
9) Start Afresh - when you select this option all time travel data will be deleted, you’ll go back to the initial time set and you can start testing again.
Reference Material
You may also find it useful to refer to the following manuals for further reading in relation to Time Travel.
Contacts
Subscriptions
Product Catalogue
Integrations
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