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Invoice template generator for Shipping

the topic today is the invoice template generator we call that itg and this is a feature that um we're going to be releasing in the in the next um couple of versions of JBL you will be debuting for x and most probably not in J building 4 but jbd 4.1 so we can expect this in the first quarter of 2015. although we are already using it for some projects that are currently under implementation so let's let's put this in context the the in the um invoicing presentation is one relatively small yet very important step in a much larger context of many steps that operating system needs to deal with if we have a customer and then that customer has orders or subscriptions um and then those are the source descriptions need to generate team voices um or maybe once maybe uh periodically and then those invoices need to get to be paid and those are very uh simplified and basic steps each of these steps are have a lot of complexity potentially and lots of they need a lot of flexibility and there are many other steps for example what happens when someone doesn't pay um do how do we go about doing some kind of darling or aging process and so on but just to play customers to screw something buying some products or plans and paying we need to generate those invoices and that involves calculating the invoices presenting them and delivering them so if we zoom in into that invoice part the invoicing step um we can see that the invoice presentation is in between two very important parts we know that the customer um is in the system we know that the customer has subscribed a number of of products or services and then we need at one point to calculate that invoice at that time we're gonna do many sub steps we're going to calculate taxes because we cannot calculate taxes before we we only can calculate taxes at the time of invoices because those taxes can change there might be a special pricing rules that can only be applied at the time of invoicing and for example percentage pricing typically needs to be calculated at a very at the very end meaning when we know all the the charges that the invoice is going to have then we can calculate percentages and have those invoice lines in place so the calculation in NJ billing is um it is let's say a logical step nothing it's it's business logic that runs in a server and it saves data in the database not nobody sees anything here that's the calculation part but then of course we need to present this in a way that the customer will be able to understand and that's the invoice presentation step that we're focusing on today the invoice presentation step is going to make all the difference if my calculations are perfect but I do not show those numbers in a way that the customer can quickly understand and agree with those charges I'm gonna have difficulties later because the customer is going to call some some hotline or some customer service and it's going to drive up cost the presentation also deals with how is that invoice going to be which format is going to be presented on so it could be PDF or HTML or or just a text file or a text message in an email there could be a presentation formats that allow for a very rich presentation a very rich invoice that is it has Graphics it has um not just information but maybe some some marketing material as well and others that could be super simple sometimes you subscribe to some services and you get a super basic email saying recharge your credit card for the for your subscription is 30 and that's it so but each of them have their place in in uh in for different Industries different businesses and last is in the in the invoicing part is the delivery okay so we have that text we have to send an email or we maybe we want an HTML email or we want to uh it's a PDF file that we're going to then print um in-house so we need a big PDF file or or we're going to send an email with a simple text but a PDF attached so we're just saying here's your invoice open the attachment um or we might be able to to send the big PDF file or some specific file with a with a format that is very very particular to a printing service and then they will print it and deliver it in a in a way that it's a outsourced so these are the the steps and one big strength of J building is that we divide everything of the everything that relates to the billing workflow in many little steps and those little steps we then can focus on configured or or maybe swap a plugin that deals with that specific step so in this case um for example we have delivery of PDFs that delivery of invoices that is email and and it's just a simple text or maybe we swap that plugin with something else and we get a big PDF file and that is um just an example of the flexibility that we have in J building by slicing the the workflow of building in many little steps and then architecting the system to deal with each step pretty much independently now if we now focus in the in the presentation step specifically we'll see that we have two options in J building to present an invoice presenting an invoice as we said is it really feels like a report because we have data in the database and we have to display that data in a way that the the user in the in this case would be an End customer will understand well what is it that we want to present in this case it's an invoice so from J building one the way we dealt with invoice presentation is with just a report the invoice itself is just a report design that runs on Jasper reports and that would allow us for complete flexibility because Jasper reports it's a tool meant for display information in a in whatever way it will make the most sense for the the user the the catch though is that it's a long process well or it could be if you want a medium complexity invoice it could take a couple of weeks if you want a complex invoice it could take months a couple of months it's it's not impossible so it comes with a cost it could be expensive to to produce these type of invoices we have this is jblink one we have a number of templates already in place of course so we will need to start from scratch and it might be a very good option for um companies that are very um specific uh with how they want to present those invoices and they they have the the budget to deal with a significant effort the way it works is that you use I reports I report this a tool of Jasper report it's a graphic tool and that um that allows you to visually manipulate the invoice design it's pretty good but it is agnostic to invoices although we want to always produce invoices just report doesn't know it's a generic reporting tool and that's why the process is long or it's more there's more effort involved than than we we feel it should for just changing an invoice design so for gpd4 we came up with a new way which is the invoice template generator itg then it's embedded in J building it's definitely uh part of the interface that is in the UI you don't need to go to another tool and it is flexible you can within an invoice um you can modify a lot of things how it looks how the date is presented how much data but it's not a infinite amount of flexibility you are producing an invoice and we make assumptions of what an invoice will have and what is it that is not going to have so um there might be some Corner cases of invoices that the itg will not be able to do um and for that we'll keep using a native Jasper reports however for the 90 of invoices that you can use the itg it's a very convenient and the productivity is very high when changing something on an invoice the logo the colors the address of the company that that becomes a very simple step that anybody can do while working with Jasper reports and I report in particular you need a technical person to do it probably uh Java developer at times to do to to be able to be effective and then the the results are slower to produce because I reports will not show you how the invoice will look um with all the data as a test it only looks it shows the the design so the the changing deploying and testing cycle it's a pretty lengthy with itg it's uh it's really really fast so let's take a look to then an example of uh just a report so we are all on the same page you can see that with Jasper reports you are able to produce invoices that are very rich this is an example with with a just a report there's no limit to the amount of um data or complexity or um maybe subtotals that come from a variety of places or even calculations on the spot here in this These are nice invoice that one of our customers is using you have you have subtotals and a summary page then you have a more detailed explanation of why those charges are there what taxes were not what's not and the and then usage like uh cdrs or events as well listed with specific um columns that make sense for this particular business and not everybody wants to to show the calling number and the call number um sometimes events are not like that anyways in this case it makes total sense and it could be is done with the first option this is actually was done using J building 2. so um we we've used Jasper reports really for a long time now going back to and I'm gonna set aside the first way and now Focus From now on on on simply itg so um what is itg in particular well the the goal was to be able to generate invoices and make those invoices look uh pretty good without a lot of effort and without having to involve technical people really that those were the requirements you don't need to be a developer um you can start modifying an existing template with little uh training uh now our training people who disagree with that but um but that was the idea we did not want so there's a there's two extremes right one is flexibility but flexibility comes with with certain levels of complexity and on the and the Other Extreme it's um it's a a lot of flexibility but more complexity so we try to strike a good balance between um Simplicity and complexity between not needing a lot of trading or or being able to get up and running with a design really fast and on the other hand being able to change things that otherwise um only the you you will be stuck with uh an invoice that is um that is force on you we we wanted to be as flexible as possible and still um still someone with a without a Java knowledge without just for reports no knowledge could deal with you know someone with that knows how to use standard Office Products could could um use the itg so that's that's what we try to do so um Let's uh skip a few things we we have invoice templates uh which are um the the basic unit for idg and those invoice templates you can have many you don't need to have just one you can have many invoice templates and those invoice templates um you can then copy to that one template to maybe modify it and give it a try to something and if it doesn't work you didn't modify the one that now is in production um or maybe some of your customers want a different or new a different invoice design so we have a very the ability of have of having a variety of templates in for a single company however a template obviously has to show Dynamic content because it has to show data coming from the database the customer information the invoice lines of data specific invoice and a number of other variables um while at the same time there's some static content like the log of the company which also could always the same the address of the company and so on so there's Dynamic and variable Dynamic and static content all mixed in a template and it's all within the UI of J building we're going to see that very soon so you click on configuration and there's going to be the invoice template and configuration option and from there you'll see all the templates and then you can just select which one you want to editor modify let's let's go take a look to this I'm gonna log into jbilling so if I click on configuration and I go on invoice templates I see all my templates I have lots of templates here lots of people playing with this then what I can do as well is assign a template to a specific customer or to a group of customers so if I go to account types this is how in JB link 4 we we have to categorize customers by account type and I don't want to get a lot in what account types are but really they give you a lot of flexibility on how to what kind of data a particular a group of customers going to have a potentially pricing for that group of customers all sorts of things one of those things is the um what kind of a template for invoicing we're going to use so you can see that the invoice simply here shows me the same list that I have in my list from configuration invoice template that's very handy but let's go back to to my template so these are all my templates I don't need to use them all maybe some are for testing who knows um I can modify any uh if I have the right privileges which I do in this case I select one I can clone it so basically that's a technical term of copy but developers like cloning rather than copying um maybe some of them have watched too much Star Wars I can count myself in as one of those and then I can just edit or change a template and then I see my basically my my workspace I have three panes for my my workplace here one shows me all the sections all the the bits and parts that make this template the middle one will show me the specifics of one of the one that I just selected so now I see my logo attributes the right one just shows me an invoice and this is the the part I like the most because I can see immediately how an invoice is going to look like when this invoice presentation template this design of an invoice is applied to the specific data of an invoice so invoice ID 1611 is going to look like this I don't have to wonder or or deploy this or compile anything which are those are all drawbacks of using just the reports I see immediately a quick preview now um You could argue that this is too small for me to get to every detail and that's certainly true but I can just quick quickly download um my invoice and take a look to the to the real thing so when I go here um I can quickly see my invoice as the customer is going to feed no difference whatsoever so I see the logo and I see the all these static part but then build two it's a dynamic part it comes from the database and is exactly what a customer is going to see these are one page very simple invoice anytime I want I can quickly go and edit whatever I want and see the results immediately so if I want to take a look to maybe moving the JB link log a little bit to the right I can say well let's put 20 pixels or spaces or units of of computing space into this uh to the left of my logo because it is aligned to the top left of this section which is the page header so if I apply that I already see immediately my little preview that the logo is a little bit to the right let's make something a little bit more exaggerated to make sure that it's a it's happening so you can see now it's more certainly more to the right because I'm adding space on the left of the logo if I put zero I go back to where I was before and that that really it's um it's a big leap for for designing quickly uh an invoice template it is um really proactive I I think that it's a it gives the any anybody the ability to change templates really really fast then the same applies of course to the rest of the of the invoice say we changed our address from the HBO box we change our PO Box to um 999 and instead of Ottawa in Manitoba it moves to Ontario that would be a good thing so I apply this and that has changed although you probably cannot see it let's give it a quick download just to see my new address and you can see that we changed to this PO box and Ottawa is no longer in Manitoba it's in Ontario so um I have a lot of flexibility but not and also a lot of productivity um you might wonder how much can I change here well um let's take a closer look to some of these sections so this is the name of the template right and I can just change it it's a it just has a very basic of the that applies to the whole template the name of it is is internal of course it doesn't affect the actual how it looks but the page format does and the how the margins of of the actual document does and if it's going to be portrait or landscape so um similar to that I have then grouping elements that take um many many parts of uh of an invoice and the and group them and I might have something to change there or not and some sections of it so the page header there's nothing to change is most it's just a grouping element but it's important because if the picture is going to show in every page and here is where I have the logo and the the addresses and so on um see there's a shadow of a box this is to for the background to to look nice um and then um I have let's see some some sections here that have an expression you see the it has the I want to say invoice but then I cannot just put invoice number one and leave it because that would be static and the invoice number should be dynamic so in my template I want to determine where is going to go but I don't want that to to change I I needed to change with with each invoice so I have here the the invoice um number parameter if I click on available invoice parameters you'll you'll find more parameters and eventually it's just a quick reference for all the parameters so as you can see you can right there put the the company if this is an invoice for companies that they will assign to an account type that is just for corporate invoices well in other cases I might want a template just for b2c which would not make sense to have the company but I have a a y variety of um of data that will would come from the database really easy to use for me until that I also have better fields that I could use you can see here that I could put a meta field directly on the invoice so that means that I could create a new column basically in the database or create a new meta field that applies to some types of customers put something there for example the region Northeast West South I could put a region for my customers and then I can display that region in my invoices that's very powerful because I have flexibility of the data model and also flexibility to show those additional data fields in my invoice without having to use Jasper reports or any complicated thing I just use my Expressions here um now a big difference between these two and a tool that doesn't know about the invoices like just for reports is that I have sections that already know what it is going to what kind of data to show for example the invoice lines so I have the invoice like the element here that is the the the itg already knows okay here's here I just show all the lines of this invoice and it doesn't mean that I don't have flexibility I can change the columns that I want to show maybe I don't want to show the quantity I just want to show the price on the total so I save this and now the quantity is not there anymore uh you can see that it disappeared from The Columns right here in my preview or maybe I want the quantity back um but I want to show some other formats for the the money of the price because this is not Canadian dollars it's many pounds so I I have a lot of flexibility without having to um without having to start writing SQL queries right I I um I don't care how exactly the data is coming from I just want to show my my invoice lines and I want to be able to show them either what I want maybe I want the color to change and instead of being green I want something um on the blue side of things so I change that and I immediately see my changes I can play with that without without having to work a lot between my changes and seeing how it's gonna look and I can change the invoice as well because I have my might have other invoices that are does have more more invoice lines see this one has more invoice lines and that might be important for me to check how things are going to look maybe uh an invoice that has a a big quantity are those quantities going to look fine here or maybe I need more space or or I need to change the font the font size is too big lots of flexibility within the invoice presentation domain that's that's the key for the invoice template generator feature now um you might be wondering how far we can go with an invoice so especially considering that invoices in the Telco space could be significant it could be complicated could be could have a lot of information could be quite complex some of you might remember when the the first iPhone was launched it was all only atnt that was used was allowed to sell the iPhone one and the first month that the invoices were set many invoices were hundreds of pages long because they all cranky up dogs will insisted that atmt uses needed a lot of work for Evil's presentation so much so that they didn't complete that so the the it was showing every byte that you were using it was added to the to the usage section of the invoice which did make sense you just want to know potentially every day how much data you use or if you use more than 100 gigabytes in a session then okay I want to align for that but all that invoice presentation that's an invoice presentation problem and not the calculation was correct but the presentation was not so we need flexibility but we need productivity we did both let's take a look to to some um other templates that are more complex so I have this one here and the this template it's a little bit more complex without being super complicated but we have let's download this invoice okay so we can take a closer look literally so we have an important message box here um also we have um another box here as well and then we have more than one page because we we have the calls and SMS messages well I picked the invoice that doesn't have any we'll we'll find another one but it's a better example but all in all um it it is similar to the previous one but it's a little it has more elements to it and you can see that here that it has these mediation events part that's important because it represents how much work you need to do to show um to show cdrs so um I have a text box here with with just a just a message that's what I see page two you see like the C page 2 immediately of course and it has just this little header there now when I click on event lines this is a similar section to the invoice line it's a section where I just tell the idg just bring all those events directly on my invoice and then you can start configuring how do you want that to show is what kind of font what kind of size of the text what the color of the sections and of course the columns um do you want the date and the duration of the charge sure that sounds good so I can save that here and you can see that now I see a header writer although this invoice doesn't have any a data for the um to display I really love this part of just being able to put an invoice here change it and immediately say oh I see my I see my events I I can immediately test this type like different data different customer immediately very flexible very powerful um I can download this if I want to take a closer look I I'll do it again because I want to show you um some additional functionality that comes with uh this section so um I have my first page and I have my second page with uh with these charges now let's say that I want to show my product and also divide this between products because I could have a product that is international calls another product these SMS messages and I want to say well look this is a call and I want to group them I want to first show the recalls and then the SMS message or vice versa I don't want that big stop so um when I click on setup columns I have this sorting criteria grouping criteria and I can also show the product name so I can say well let's Group by a product and also show the product um or maybe I don't need to show the product because if I group them by Pro that would be enough I save and then you can see that now I have subsections of my main section of events um again let's take a closer look typically you don't need to download that often to see uh you you you do a lot of work just using the preview especially if you have a big screen my notebook doesn't allow for that um and then you download to take a closer look once you've done many things uh or like a final test let's say so you can see that now how International minutes all these four events are international I mean local minutes are all these and I have SMS messages that I have all these events for that so now I go to three pages and you see different sections doing what they have to do the header of the of the invoice and the the footer of the invoice working fine um the this feature is not not um in a version of J building yet it is still under testing it's uh what I'm using right now is in a better version in a lab server of J building and there's going to be usability improvements and um and of course by fixing as well and also I myself can learn a lot more about how to use the the feature and then that's pretty much it the I have some other slides that would um make be sure of covering everything although I try to cover everything directly in the in the presentation so we have the sections and the patreon and the page filter this is how the invoice is going to look like so we can wrap up the the presentation with just um a brief overview of what we saw you you saw already the header and you saw the footer and you saw the section that also has a header and a footer and then a Content so we analyze how an invoice looks like and the typical elements of an invoice and we went about creating sections that we know invoice will will have but of course if you want the footer in some of your pages but not other pages that would be a very odd and strange requirement but having been in bidding for 10 years I know that those things eventually happen if you wanted some invoices with with um pages that have a photo and other pages that don't have a footage then you need to use just for report directly the itg won't do however for the most part the invoices do respect a basic layout and that's where the idg really excels because you can change all those elements you can change and add things and change how they look even change what data is going to show up add variables uh the static text and data from the database like cdrs like lines of invoices and still use the itg benefit from from its productivity and benefit from being able to look quickly how any invoice would look like and not a near extensive training to use this foreign with that I will complete this webinar thank you everybody for joining