It's been a long time since you did the college information program."System docking"Four words are becoming more and more pious."Synchronized interface with existing systems"Five minutes, but seamlessly when you land, it means data formats are to be shared, interface protocols are to be agreed, synchronized frequency is to be reciprocal, unusual processing is to be planned, each being a specific workload. The campus network Authentication & Billing system’s interface needs usually come from three directions: the teaching system, the financial system, a cartoon or a unified identification platform, with different challenges in each direction.
Accuracy and traceability of accounts
The billing system is not only accurate, but also documented at the time of financial audit. Students pay the net, when they charge what packages are filled, how much is spent, how much is left and how much is refunded, each one being accounted for.
The most common problem with actual interfaces is that the accounting data and financial systems in Authentication & Billing are not consistent."Time to account"Different definitions——The financial system is recognized by the success of bank transfers, and the billing system by the success of a replenishment, with a delay in network or payment channel reconciliation time difference that is small on single transactions but accumulated over a month or a semester, is a confused account.
The problem is that the refunds are made. Students who leave or go out of school need to have their account balances refunded, which is initiated by a billing system, audited by the financial system and eventually returned to the students through the original payment channel. Any error in the middle of the cycle will not reach the student. The student calls and asks, "The Center says it has issued the refunds, the Treasury says they've confiscated the application, both say they're okay, and the problem is stuck there."
The reconciliation of accounts must identify three matters in advance: the criteria for determining when to pay, which should be harmonized between the two sides; the operational requirements of the refund process, with written records; and the reconciliation mechanism for unusual transactions, which recommends that automated reconciliations be performed once a week and discrepancies identified and tracked in a timely manner.
Synchronization of account data and boundaries
The teaching system and the Authentication & Billing system are connected, with the most central demand being a synonym: fresh enrolment, student information in the teaching system, account openings in the Authentication & Billing system; students graduating from school, changes in status in the teaching system, and changes in the number of accounts in the billing system. This logic sounds simple and has three holes to do with it.
The first pit is the synchronous frequency. The data update of the teaching system is not real time, and the billing system cannot be synced in seconds. The middle window is a risk window.——The student is still using the Internet, and it costs. Who will pay for this cost is a problem.
The second pit is defined as the data boundary. The student information field in the teaching system, how to use it in the billing system, which fields are synchronized and which fields are not synchronized, and the understanding between the two sides is often inconsistent. For example, students ' professional information, teaching systems are used for faculty management, and fee-based systems may be used to grade bandwidth strategies.——Students in the same faculty share a bandwidth pool. If the systems have different system codes, the mapping relationship is not confirmed in advance, and the bandwidth strategy is confused when the account numbers are open.
The third is the processing of historical accounts. Students graduate, leave school in the teaching system, and do not sell them simultaneously in the billing system? How long does the account balance have to be kept for searching?
Interface permission negotiation and locking
The most difficult thing to do is not technology, but coordination. The teaching system is usually a commercial software purchased, interface documents are supplied by the original plant, and the company’s openness to interface directly determines the difficulty of matching. Some manufacturers are willing to cooperate with open interfaces for extra charges, others are unwilling to open data statements only to export rights, and some have clearly restricted third-party systems in their contracts, leaving the interface open to contract changes.
One of the most grotesque cases: schools want to connect to a cartoon platform, to achieve a cartoon door ban and campus network certification."The interface is closed, but engineers can be present to assist."The cost of the place-in-house is different, the school calculates the cost and eventually abandons the docking programme.
So, during the tendering phase, it is necessary to clarify the interface rights in relation to the demand: whether the other system provides a standard interface, what are the frequency and co-mingling limits of the interfaces, what is the policy for the interface changes, and what are the options for each other when they do not work together. Writing these terms into the contract is much more proactive than negotiating after going online.
The most immediate consequence of the failure to get them is that two systems become information islands. The data seen by the network centres in their billing system and by the teaching service in their educational systems are not matched. The network centres deal with student complaints, they need a check on account status, the teaching services have an online centre for accounts, the teaching services need to know student fees, and the Internet centers need to find financials for balances.
The more hidden consequence is a decline in data quality. Data discrepancies between the two systems are becoming increasingly acute without regular reconciliation mechanisms, and eventually become a mess that nobody can move.