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 & organisations 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 configurations in place, you can check the behaviour of core processes by moving forward to the present and verifying the results, such as 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 sidebar menu.

Enable Test mode

2) Navigate to the system settings by selecting Settings > Platform > Tools > Time Travel.

3) Choose how far in the past you want to travel back (between one week to two years).

4) Click to Enter Time Travel

You should now see the timeline 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 timeline 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, and 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 timeline 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

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 Venturing into Time Machine
2 Reference Material
- 2.1 Contacts
- 2.2 Subscriptions
- 2.3 Product Catalogue
- 2.4 Integrations