User GuideUser Guide - Cal Polyamaccarl/CalPolyPublications... · This program is an executable Microsoft FoxPro 8.0 application. ... Except with regard to technical or programming

S ta tewide In tegrated B i l l ing System (S IBS)

Telecommunications Bill Analyzer Telecommunications Bill Analyzer Telecommunications Bill Analyzer Telecommunications Bill Analyzer

Commissioned by the

California Department of Transportation Division of Research and Innovation and

Division of Traffic Operations

Use r Gu ideUse r Gu ideUse r Gu ideUse r Gu ide

Vers ion 1 .e

Version History:

V1c June 30, 2004 V1d July 13, 2004

V1e November 18, 2004

Prepared for the

California Department of Transportationby

Loragen Corporation San Luis Obispo, California

SIBS Telecom Bill AnalyzerSIBS Telecom Bill AnalyzerSIBS Telecom Bill AnalyzerSIBS Telecom Bill Analyzer User Guide Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Loragen Corporation

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.......................................................................................................................... 2

2 WHAT’S NEW IN VERSION 1E................................................................................................................. 2

3 HOW TO USE THIS DOCUMENT ............................................................................................................. 3

4 WHAT THE PROGRAM DOES ................................................................................................................. 4

5 HARDWARE AND OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS................................................................. 5

6 INSTALLING THE PROGRAM.................................................................................................................. 5

7 RUNNING THE PROGRAM....................................................................................................................... 5

8 IMPORTING BILL DATA FROM CALNET CDS ....................................................................................... 8

9 SELECTING A BILL TO ANALYZE ........................................................................................................ 10

10 BILL SUMMARY VERIFICATION ........................................................................................................... 11

11 SPECIFYING PERSONS THAT CAN BE ASSIGNED RESPONSIBILITY FOR BTNS OR LINES....... 13

12 ASSIGNING RESPONSIBILITIES FOR BTNS AND LINES................................................................... 14

13 CREATING A MANAGER REPORT ....................................................................................................... 15

14 CREATING A LINE USER REPORT....................................................................................................... 18

15 CHARGES BY SERVICE TYPE .............................................................................................................. 20

16 INVESTIGATING A CHARGE IN GREATER DETAIL............................................................................ 21

17 KNOWN ISSUES AND POSSIBLE REMEDIES ..................................................................................... 24

18 TECHNICAL SUPPORT AND CONTACT INFORMATION .................................................................... 25


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1 Acknowledgements

The development of the original version of this computer application and supporting documentation was

requested by the California Department of Transportation, under a workplan modification to Task Order

4133. The present version was developed and is supported exclusively by Loragen Corporation of San

Luis Obispo, California. Asfand "Sid" Saddiqui and Pete Hansra of the Caltrans Division of Research and

Innovation served as the original Caltrans project monitors. The primary Caltrans technical liaison was

Robert Copp of the Caltrans Division of Traffic Operations, Sacramento. Mike Donelson of Caltrans

HQIT originated the request for this program, and defined the need for assistance understanding and

auditing Calnet/SIBS monthly telecommunications statements. Martha Hicks and Antonette Clark of

Caltrans Operations provided valuable input on the features needed for audit purposes. Kevin of

Calnet/SBC customer support provided valuable information on the structure of the Calnet CD bills.

This program is an executable Microsoft FoxPro 8.0 application. The use of FoxPro was required for

compatibility with the Calnet format for the monthly statements and associated database tables.

The program was designed by Art MacCarley, Ben Hawkinson, and Chris Ackles. Programming and

implementation work was performed by Chris Ackles and Ben Hawkinson. All upgraded features were

implemented by Chris Ackles. Documentation was written by Art MacCarley.

As a work for hire, this program is the property of the State of California and the California Department of

Transportation. Distribution and use by other agencies is authorized with the permission of Caltrans.

Except with regard to technical or programming references, all statements made and opinions expressed

in this document are exclusively the responsibility of the authors. The document does not constitute a

standard or specification. It does not necessarily represent the views or policies of the California

Department of Transportation or its operating divisions.

2 What’s New in Version 1e

Version 1e adds a number of new features to the Investigation window, requested by Caltrans users. It is

now possible to specify a Line Number without a Billing Telephone Number (BTN), and generate either a

summary report (totals of interstate, intrastate and intralata) charges for the specified number, or a

SIBSTelecommunications Bil l Analyzer User GuideUser GuideUser GuideUser Guide


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complete listing of every individual charge associated with the line number. Six buttons replace the

previous four. Two buttons have been added: “BTN Detail” and “Line Detail”, which generate

comprehensive lists of every item associated with the specified BTN or Line Number respectively. The

prior “per BTN” and “per Line” buttons have been changed to make clear their summary function for either

a specified BTN, or a specified Line Number. Entry of a Line Number without a BTN and clicking Line

Summary or Line Detail will reveal the BTN(s) associated with that Line Number. Also, entry of a BTN

without a line number and clicking BTN Detail or Line Detail will reveal all lines associated with that BTN.

In addition, the ability to use “wildcard” characters to specify either BTNs or Line Numbers has been

added. The percent “%” character located anywhere in the number matches any number of digits from

the number with every possible permutation of digits for which there are valid numbers in the presently

loaded bill. The underscore “_” character matches exactly one digit in the number with every possible

digit for which there are valid numbers present in the bill. The use of wildcard characters allows the user

to investigate all numbers having a given prefix or extension, and also to help find Line Numbers or BTNs

for which only a subset of the digits are known.

3 How to Use this Document

The SIBS Bill Analyzer User Guide is intended to serve as both a comprehensive manual for use of the

program, and a tutorial for training a first-time user of the program. The format and progression of topics

follows the typical process required to input and analyze monthly SIBS telecommunications. The usual

steps in this process are:

1. Import data from the Calnet CDs.

2. Select a particular monthly bill that you wish to analyze or generate an individual phone bill.

3. If persons responsible for each line or BTN have not yet been assigned, you should do so.

4. Generate reports

• Bill summary to verify all totals in the Calnet summary statement

• Manager report (responsible for one or more BTNs)

• Line user report (individual phone bill)

• Report by service type

5. Optionally

• Print any report

• Export reports as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets

The User Guide starts with a summary of all features, advises on computer requirements, explains how to

install the program, and then takes the user through a tutorial process including all the steps above.


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4 What the Program Does

The SIBS Telecommunication Billing Analyzer Program provides computer-based tools to permit State

agencies to more easily understand and audit SIBS telephone and telecommunications bills. These tools

are intended to supplement but not duplicate the function of the Calnet data display and graphing tools

provided by with each monthly bill CD set. The current version of this software provides the ability to:

• Verify summary totals on the Calnet pdf statement from actual itemized charges in the database

tables provided on the monthly Calnet CDs.

• Assign individual responsibility, on a permanent basis, for each Billing Telephone Number (BTN)

and individual line number, which could be either a voice or data circuit or a pseudo-line number

used by SIBS to assign a non-line-specific service or miscellaneous charge.

• Generate detailed reports for all charges associated with each line number, for possible

distribution to individual line users as individual phone bills.

• Generate detailed reports for each manager including all BTNs for which they are responsible.

These include summary costs for each line number associated with each BTN. These provide

managers with telecom cost information for each employee or data communications line for which

they are responsible.

• After responsible entities have been identified for all legitimate BTNs and line numbers,

unassigned BTNs or line numbers may be interpreted as unclaimed, unused or incorrect charges.

• Generate total costs for each type of service or feature for which charges are being assessed,

including taxes and surcharges.

• Bills for both voice and digital data lines are accommodated.

• Identifies all charges for a specified line number or BTN.

• Identifies the BTN(s) for a specified line number.

• Export report data to Excel.

The program is designed to be expandable to accommodate additional features requested by the State,

or changes in data formats that may occur with a re-bidding of the Statewide telecommunications

contract. Additional features planned for later versions include fully automated red-flag checking, which

will perform a complete preliminary audit of the statements, identifying possible anomalies worthy of

investigation by the agency users or auditors. The ability to analyze and automatically identify red flags

based on multi-month historical trends for individual lines, BTNs, service types, data circuits, responsible

entities, etc., is also planned.


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5 Hardware and Operating System Requirements

The Bill Analyzer program will run on any PC platform using Windows 95 or later Microsoft operating

systems, and Intel Pentium ® or American Micro Devices Athlon ® processors. However, since the

program creates, manipulates and searches very large databases, the processor performance, memory

complement and operating system will directly effect the speed with which reports are generated and

queries are performed. Also, since the database is permanent, growing with each additional month of

billing data, the hard disk capacity ultimately limits the database capacity. It is therefore advisable that

the platform on which the program is to be installed and used conform to the specifications below:

• Pentium 4 processor, 1 GHz or faster clock speed

• 512 Mbytes RAM

• Windows 2000 or XP

• 60 GByte or greater available hard disk capacity

• Multi-read CDROM drive 6 Installing the Program

Insert the Billing Analyzer CD in the CDROM drive. Click My Computer, then the icon for the CDROM

drive to explore the CD. The Bill Analyzer CD does NOT auto-execute upon insertion into the drive.

Click on the SETUP.EXE icon to start the installation process. A standard Microsoft Installation Wizard

will begin. Follow the prompts. You will be asked to select the directory into which you wish to install the

program. Usually this would be a directory under c:\Program Files, although any directory may be

selected. Only the Bill Analyzer program is installed in this directory. You may select a different directory

to store the database information in during the data import process, to be described later. At the

completion of the installation process, an icon for the program will be installed on the desktop. If you

wish, you may move or delete the icon without harming the program; if deleted, you’ll just have to launch

the program from its directory rather than from your desktop.

7 Running the Program

The Bill Analyzer program maybe executed by double clicking on either the start menu icon, or the

BillAnalyzer.exe program icon found in the directory in which you installed the program.


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Upon launching, the program will briefly display a splash screen, followed by a blank window with four

menu bar selection options, each with a number of submenu selection options described below:

File

Select Bill to View

After at least one CD has been imported, this permits selection of the specific bill you

wish to analyze.

Import Bill from CD

This is how to import billing data directly from the Calnet/SIBS monthly data CDs into the

Bill Analyzer database.

Select Data Directory

This allows you to select the directory into which the billing data is to be stored. This

need not be a subdirectory under the directory into which you installed the program (the

default). In anticipation of a large and growing database, we suggest that the data

directory be created on a hard drive with a large amount of available space.

Exit

This terminates the program. All imported data and associations are retained

automatically. Same action as clicking in the upper right-hand corner of the main

program window.

Analyze

Bill Summary


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This provides the ability to instantly verify every line item on the PDF Calnet summary

statement by calculating these totals from the actual data included on the CDs.

By Service Type

The costs for each type of service or feature for which charges were assessed on the bill

are summarized and itemized by service and feature type. Taxes and surcharges are

included. This summary view of the phone bill reveals the costs associated with specific

features and services, which might otherwise be buried among thousands of line number

charges.

Manager Reports

This generates a report intended for managers who have been identified (see ownership,

below) are the responsible entity for any number of BTNs. Charges for each line under

each BTN are summarized, along with taxes and surcharges that Calnet assigns to

BTNs, not to individual lines or services. A total cost associated with all BTNs for which

the manager is responsible is generated at the bottom. The Manager Report may be

used, for example, to assign telecommunications costs on a departmental-by-department

basis.

Line User Reports

This generates a detailed report of all charges for an individual line number. Every

charge to this line number is itemized. A Line User Report may be distributed to each

person responsible for an individual line as a surrogate “phone bill” for that line which

includes all charges associated with that line number. Taxes and surcharges cannot be

included on a per-line basis since Calnet/SIBS does not assign taxes and surcharges by

line number.

Investigate

This gives the program user access to more complex analysis tools, which requires some

understanding of the underlying FoxPro database language and query structures. This is

also intended as the access point for possible future automatic red-flag identification and

historical analysis features. This is an “experimental” area for implementation of new

program features.

Ownership

Assign BTN/Lines

This allows the assignment of managers to specific BTNs and employees to individual

lines, and shows the current assignments if any. A line user can be assigned

responsibility for one or more individual lines. A manager can be responsible for one or


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more BTNs as well as one or more individual lines. The assignments created using this

tool are the basis of the manager and line user reports described above. Assignments

are made using a tree-like structure. Line numbers associated with each BTN are listed,

and a list of possible contact persons is shown. A person is selected form this list and

assigned as either a manager for a BTN or line user for a selected line number under a

given BTN. Possible responsible persons are entered using the Modify Contacts feature

described below.

Add or Modify Contacts

This provides a way to enter the names of employees into the permanent database for

possible assignment as a manager of one or more BTNs or user of one or more lines, via

the Quick Assign BTN/Lines or Assign by Contact ID features above.

Help

About

Information about the program version and how to contact us for technical assistance.

User Guide

This tab brings up the User Guide (this manual) in a pdf viewer window. The manual is

searchable by keyword using the viewer features. Items in the table of contents are

actually hot links to the corresponding sections in the manual.

The program can be ended at any time by click the upper right corner “X box” of the main window, in

addition to the Exit tab under the file menu. Doing so does not harm the database, even regardless of

when this is done. It may be reassuring to also know that if for any reason the entire program is

terminated by killing the process (via the Windows Program Manager accessed by Ctrl-Alt-Del), this also

does not harm the database. However, as with any program, accidentally cutting the power to the

computer does run the risk of damage to data on the hard disk, although the risk to the database is small.

8 Importing Bill Data from Calnet CDs

The first step in using the Bill Analyzer is to import the

phone bill data from monthly Calnet statement CDs.

Insert one of the Calnet billing CDs into the CDROM

drive. If “Autorun on CD insertion” is enabled on your

computer (it is on windows computers by default), it is

advisable to hold down the left SHIFT key on your


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computer just after inserting the CD to prevent the Autorun program on the Calnet CD from automatically

installing the pdf bill document and associated icon on your desktop.

From the File tab on the main menu bar, click “Import Bill from CD…” You will be presented with a

windows-type file location box titled “Import a Calnet Bill”, which you should use to navigate to the

CDROM drive in which you have inserted one of the Calnet monthly bill CDs.

Generally, the complete CD set for a given month includes one voice CD and one or more data CDs. The

voice CD can be identified by it’s serial number, C60-731-7439-555. The 555 may or may not be included

– it is the Caltrans customer code. This is usually followed by the release date, e.g., 20040317 which

means year 2004, month 3 (March) and day 17th. Once the contents of the Calnet Bill CD are displayed

in the window, select the file with the suffix “.B51”. Every Calnet Bill CD contains a .B51 “Bill Payer

Summary” file, which we use as an index for the bill CD.

Once the .B51 file has been selected, click “Import”. If this is the first time you have imported either a

voice or data bill, you will be given the chance to name the bill type something more intuitive than the

numeric code given it by Calnet. For example, you may wish to name this and all future voice bills as

“Voice” rather than Calnet number “C60-731-7439-555”. Also, if this is the first time you have imported

any Calnet CDs, you will be given the chance to designate the directory into which you want all imported

data to be stored. This directory can be changed later if you wish, using the “Set Data Directory” tab on

the File menu plank, but be aware that you must select the proper directory in which data has been


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imported in order to analyze the corresponding bills. Choose this directory carefully since the permanent

database will grow in time and could become quite large after many months.

While the data is being imported from the CD, you’ll see a number of real-time status messages

describing the progress of the import. This process should take about a minute depending on the speed

of your CDROM drive, hard disk and the amount of computer memory. When completed, you’ll see the

message box “xx files imported successfully” where xx is usually 16 or 17 files. Click OK to dispatch this

box. Any number of Calnet Billing CDs can be imported by repeating this process. Once a CD is

imported into the database, the information is permanently stored; there is no need to ever import this CD

again. Each month, the new set of Calnet CDs should imported, then stored for archival purposes.

It is advisable to keep a backup copy of your data directory. This may be done by making a backup copy

on a separate storage device of the entire “billdata” in which your billing database is stored.

9 Selecting a Bill to Analyze

The next step is to select a bill that you wish to analyze by clicking “Select Bill to Analyze” from the File

menu. You’ll see a selection window titled “Select a Bill” containing a list of the bill types that you have

entered, list either by their Calnet number or the more intuitive name you may have assigned them during

the first time that you imported a bill of this type.

Even though the permanent database may include every type of bill over an unlimited number of months,

the Bill Analyzer program can only analyze one bill (originally contained on one CD) at a time. Calnet

segregates bills in the monthly CD set by service type: one CD contains all voice line charges and related

services. One or more CDs contain data line charges, and the number of data CDs varies month-to-

month. The criteria for inclusion of particular data charges on a particular CD are not clear to us, but the

assignments appear to be consistent month-to-month.

As an example, consider the selection of the “Voice” bill dated February 17, 2004, from a database

including voice and data line bills spanning December 2003 through March 2004. The resulting selection

window is shown below:


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The dates on the right indicate the issue date of each imported Calnet voice bill in the database. Click to

highlight one and then click “OK”. This will dispatch the bill selection window. No new window will appear

at this point, but the main menu bar will show the name and date of the bill that is currently loaded for

analysis. This bill will remain active for all subsequent analysis until another one is selected.

10 Bill Summary Verification

To the right of the File menu on the main menu bar is the Analyze menu tab. There are 5 functions on

this menu as previously described. The first is “Bill Summary”. Click this to display a form, shown below,

that has exactly the same cost categories as the PDF billing statement summary provided on each Calnet

CD. Click the “Computer Bill Summary” tab at the bottom of this form, and the total costs in each

category will be calculated from the actual data in the database. These numbers should match exactly

those that appear on the Calnet PDF Summary Statement. If they do not match, there may be a billing

error in the statement and further investigation is warranted.


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11 Specifying Persons that Can be Assigned Responsibility for BTNs or Lines

We skip for the moment to the “Ownership” menu on the main menu bar, to permit us to assign

responsibility for BTNs and line numbers to entities such as individuals, managers or departments.

Before responsibilities can be assigned, it is necessary to create a list of possible persons that can be

given responsibility for BTNs or lines. This is the purpose of tabs on the “Ownership” menu.

On the “Ownership” menu, select the third entry, “Add or Modify Contacts”. A form titled “Add or Modify

Contacts” will appear, as shown below:

To enter a new potential contact person, click the “CREATE new contact” button and enter as much or as

little of the information as you wish. Generally a name and department and some location for directing a

report to them is needed. An unused Contact ID number will be assigned to any new entry. When the

contact information has been entered, click the “UPDATE this contact” button to store this information in

the database. If you do not click UPDATE, the entered contact information will be discarded once

another contact has been selected from the list at the left. Before entering a new name, be sure to check

that the person is not already in the database by scrolling through the list of contacts on the left, which

appear in alphabetical order by last name. It is possible to enter the same name multiple times, and each

will be distinguished with a different contact ID number. This allows the option to enter a person in the


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database with multiple job functions or at multiple locations, but also permits the possibility of accidentally

entering the person twice with different contact ID’s in the database. Information for any contact person

can be edited by first selecting their name from the list, then changing the information in the form on the

right, and finally clicking the UPDATE button.

Any contact except the “unassigned” contact can be deleted from the database by clicking the “DELETE

this contact” button. Once deleted, all BTNs and line numbers that may have been assigned to this

person (next section) are reverted to “unassigned”. “Unassigned” has contact ID zero.

It is possible to import a complete list of employees with assigned contact ID’s into this database. This list

can be provided in a number of formats, including a Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet. However, this

requires a licensed copy of Microsoft FoxPro 8.0 and some knowledge of how to use this development

application to import the employee list into the contact database. For reference, note that all contact

persons with their Contact ID’s and other information are stored in the following FoxPro database files:

contacts.dbf for assignment of individual line numbers btnlineassoc.dbf for assignment of BTNS to managers Please contact us for assistance if you would like to do this. Technical support information including how

to reach us is contained at the end of this User Guide.

12 Assigning Responsibilities for BTNs and Lines

Once a list of possible contact persons or entities has been entered into the database, these contacts

may be assigned responsibility for one or more BTNS or individual lines. This assignment of

responsibility is fundamental to the ability of the Bill Analyzer program to generate reports which show the

charges that each person or entity is responsible for, helping to promote individual and departmental

accountability for telecommunications costs.

On the Ownership menu click “Quick Assign BTN/Lines”. The following window will appear:


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For each BTN on the left list in the window, the associated line numbers appears in the middle list.

Highlight to select a name or equivalent responsible entity from the list on the right, and click “Assign

Contact as BTN Manager” to assign that person direct responsibility for the selected BTN and indirectly

for all the line numbers associated with it.

We refer to this person or entity as the “Manager” since this is generally the level of a person with broad

responsibility over one or more Billing Telephone numbers, each associated with many voice or data lines

that are the individual responsibility of their employees.

A message box will appear reminding you that you are changing this information permanently. Click “OK”

to proceed. Click “Assign Contact as Line User” to assign the selected contact as the person directly

responsible for the selected line number (under a given BTN).

We refer to this person as the “Line User” since this is usually the case for voice lines.

The currently registered line user and manager responsible for any selected line number are shown in the

middle two boxes at the bottom of the window, labeled “Current Manager” and “Current Line User”

respectively. If a line number or BTN has not yet been assigned (or might be in error on the bill) it is listed

by as “Unassigned”. A line user can be assigned responsibility for one or more individual lines. A

manager can be responsible for one or more BTNs as well as one or more individual lines. If multiple

contacts have been created for the same person, they can be distinguished by the contact ID number

which appears in parentheses following the name.

13 Creating a Manager Report

A Manager Report is a document which is intended for review by the person (manager) designated as

directly responsible for one or more BTNs, and indirectly responsible for all line numbers associated with

each BTN (which are individually assigned to employees or services for which the manager is

responsible). Prior to generation of a Manager Report, assignment of responsibilities to the selected

manager must have been done as described in the previous section. If multiple contacts have been

created for the same person, they can be distinguished by the contact ID number which appears in

parentheses following the name. Note that the information on this report pertains to the currently selected

bill only. If a manager has responsibilities over both voice and data lines, appearing on two or more

different Calnet CDs, the reports for their voice and data lines must be generated separately by first

selecting the voice or data bills respectively, then running the Manager Report.

To generate a Manager Report, click on “Manager Report” on the Analysis menu. Upon selection The

following window will appear:


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Select the name of the manager (or other responsible entity) from the list on the left for whom you wish to

generate a report. Click “Manager BTN List Report” to generate a report that includes all BTNs assigned

to that manager. This report includes costs for each line number or service associated with that BTN,

including taxes and surcharges. A total cost is calculated for all BTNs for which the manager is

responsible, which may be considered the total telecom cost for this Calnet bill for a department or other

managerial unit. During the display of the report, a Print Preview dockable menu bar appears containing

various editing, paging, zoom and printing options. The generation of this report may take several

minutes when multiple BTNs and diverse services and taxes are involved.

If a manager is interested in a summary report for only one of the line numbers under a particular BTN,

the “Individual Line Report” button provides this capability.

The Manager Report window shows all associations between persons, BTNs and Line Numbers for the

currently loaded bill only. If the manager is responsible for BTNs that appear exclusively on another bill,

that bill must be loaded in order for these affiliations to appear in the Manager Report window.

The generation of a Manager Report can take from several seconds to several minutes depending on the

number of BTN responsibilities and the size of the database. During the generation of the report, a status

window will indicate the progress of the report generation, showing the progress of the many steps

required. If, during the generation of the report, you choose to not wait for the report to complete, you

may press Control-Q on the keyboard. The report generation process will then be aborted at the


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completion of the current step in the process. A warning message is shown to make sure that this was

your intention. Click “yes” to verify that you want to quit the generation of the report. Quitting a report

prematurely does not harm the database. A simple example of a Manager Report is shown below:


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14 Creating a Line User Report

A Line User Report provides an itemized list of all charges for an individual line number. For voice lines,

the line is usually associated with an individual user, such as a desk-top phone and it’s associated

services such as voice mail or call forwarding. For digital circuits (data lines) the line user is usually the

person designated as responsible for the use of the circuit or service. Every charge to this line number is

itemized, so a Line User Report can potentially be very large (especially for toll-free/WATS lines). Note

again that since Calnet assigns taxes and surcharges at the BTN level rather than the individual line

number or service level, it is not possible to itemize the taxes and surcharges on the individual line user

report. A Line User Report may be distributed to the person responsible for an individual line as a

surrogate “phone bill”, which includes all charges associated with that line number except taxes and

surcharges.

From the Analyze menu, click “Line User Report”. The following window appears:

Selection of a name from the list on the left brings up all lines for which that person is responsible in the

box on the right. If multiple contacts have been created for the same person, they can be distinguished

by the contact ID number which appears in parentheses following the name.


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The BTN associated with each line is shown in parentheses following each line number. Select one of

the line numbers and click “Individual Line Report” to generate a detailed report of all charges for the line

number. Note that some line numbers are not actual phone lines but are pseudo-line numbers used by

Calnet to assign charges not specific to a particular line or BTN.

The Line User Report window shows all line users and their responsibilities for the currently-loaded bill

only. If the line user is responsible for lines that appear exclusively on another bill, that bill must be

loaded in order for these affiliations to appear in the Line User Report window.

The report may be displayed and printed using the same tools described for the Manager Report. A

sample Line User Report is shown below.


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15 Charges By Service Type

Selection of “By Service Type” on the Analyze menu generates a comprehensive report on all charges on

the bill, totaled and itemized by service type, including taxes and surcharges. Typically, this report is

three pages long, concluding with taxes and surcharges. A sample first page of this report is shown

below:


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16 Investigating a Charge in Greater Detail

The “Investigate” tab on the Analyze menu provides capabilities to further investigate charges to a

particular line or BTN. A typical view of the Investigate window is shown below, following a “Line Detail”

query. (Actual data shown is a detailed list of all calls to the 1-800-COMMUTE WATS Line during

October 2003, which is non-confidential information.)

The “BTN Summary”, “Line Summary”, “BTN Details”, “Line Details”, and “Monthly Charges” buttons

create scrollable reports in the box. The BTN and/or line number are entered directly into the boxes on

the left, and the reports are actually direct access displays of programmed queries on the underlying

FoxPro database, including column displays of appropriate variables. The right side and bottom scroll

bars permit the display of information outside the present view window. The column widths and other


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graphical features of the displayed data base can be adjusted using the mouse. The total number of

records displayed and the total of all charges for the report appear at the bottom.

It is possible to specify a Line Number without a Billing Telephone Number (BTN), and generate either a

summary report (summarized as totals of interstate, intrastate and intralata) charges for the specified

number, or a complete listing of every individual charge associated with the line number. “BTN Detail”

and “Line Detail” generate comprehensive lists of every item associated with the specified BTN or Line

Number respectively. It is not necessary to know the BTN for a specified line number, or the line numbers

associated with a specified BTN. The program finds these automatically. Two buttons provide

summaries for either a specified BTN, or a specified Line Number with or without a BTN entered. Note

that entry of a Line Number without a BTN and clicking either Line Summary or Line Detail will reveal the

BTN(s) associated with that Line Number. Also, entry of a BTN without a line number and clicking either

BTN Detail or Line Detail will reveal all individual lines associated with that BTN.

In addition, the ability to use “wildcard” characters to specify either BTNs or Line Numbers has been

added. The percent “%” character inserted anywhere in the number matches any number of digits from

the number with every possible combination of digits for which there corresponds valid numbers in the

presently loaded bill. The underscore “_” character matches exactly one digit in the number with every

possible digit for which there corresponds valid numbers in the bill. The use of wildcard characters allows

the user to investigate, for example, all numbers having a given prefix or extension, and also to help find

Line Numbers or BTNs for which only a subset of the digits are known.

Note again that Calnet assigns taxes and surcharges on a BTN basis only, and does not break these

charges out by line number. Therefore, the BTN reports include all taxes and surcharges, while the Line

Number reports do not include these charges.

The “Export to Excel” button provides a means to immediately export the report data displayed in the

window to a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for further analysis. Upon clicking this button, a window such as

the one shown below will be displayed. Either navigate to or manually enter the file name and location for

the Excel (.xls) file you wish to create from this exported data. The resulting spreadsheet will ve

populated with cell data in the same format and using the same column headers as the displayed report.

Note however, that Excel is limited to 65,535 records. Therefore, reports such as the one shown above

cannot be handled by Excel. The .xls file will be created without any problem, but Excel can only load the

first 65,535 records of the file.

The Investigate function is also intended as the access point for future expansion features such as

automated red-flag identification and historical trend and exception analysis. New or experimental

features in future versions will first be implemented in this window.


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17 Known Issues and Possible Remedies

As bugs or implementation issues are reported to us, we will correct these or provide an explanation and

work-around for the observed behavior. Known issues at the time of release are listed in the table below:

Date

7/12/04

7/14/04

Issue

If you find it necessary to run the SETUP file

again to completely reinstall or repair the

program executable files, or upgrade to a

future version, the setup wizard will require

you to uninstall the old version. However,

your previously entered contact and

responsibility information will not be lost when

you uninstall the old program. Just select the

correct location of the previous Bill Data

directory prior to importing new CDs or

assigning new responsible persons (to make

sure that all of your data is in the same

directory).

It is possible to run multiple instances of Bill

Analyzer at the same time, to permit the

concurrent analysis of different bills, or

different types of analysis of the same bill.

However, if you write to the database by

creating or modifying a contact, or creating or

changing a manager or line user

responsibility, the last-closed instance of the

program will overwrite any changes made to

the database by the instances that were

previously closed. This is inevitable whenever

multiple access to a database is permitted.

We chose to permit multiple instances of the

program to run concurrently, and simply

remind the user of this fundamental limitation.

Possible Remedies

Advisory only – no remedy required.

Advisory only – no remedy required.


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18 Technical Support and Contact Information

We will continue to support Bill Analyzer and fix any bugs as they are found for the useful life of the

present version of the program, which we anticipate to be one year. Software updates incorporating

these corrections will be distributed to Caltans clients as appropriate. In addition, we have gained a

better understanding of the audit and analysis needs from working with our Caltrans colleagues and the

SIBS/Calnet statements, and have recognized the possible value of a number of additional features. We

hope to implement these and any other features requested by Caltrans in future work.

If you would like to be added to our email distribution list to be alerted of updates and any identified

problems, or need technical assistance with the program, please email us at

[email protected]. We also appreciate any feedback you may wish to provide.

Our designated Caltans liaison is Fred Dial [email protected] .

Contact information:

Art MacCarley, Principal Engineer, Loragen Corporation, and

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cal Poly SLO

or

Chris Ackles, Senior Engineer, Loragen Corporation

Loragen Corporation

3576 Empleo St. Ste 1, San Luis Obispo CA 93401

www.loragen.com

Phone: 805 781 8461

FAX: 805 781 0768

Documents

User GuideUser Guide - Cal Polyamaccarl/CalPolyPublications... · This program is an executable Microsoft FoxPro 8.0 application. ... Except with regard to technical or programming