Sending invoice-related events to Odoo CRM

PortaBilling is integrated with the Odoo customer relationship management (CRM) system. Odoo CRM helps automate sales actions, communicate with customers and streamline operations, etc.

With this integration, PortaBilling automatically notifies Odoo CRM about invoice-related events and changes in customer status. CSPs can use this information for customer interactions via Odoo – in particular, to send invoice notifications and payment reminders in SMS messages or emails.

Usually, CSPs who use PortaBilling require PortaSIP to send SMS notifications. This integration allows CSPs to use the Odoo CRM to do this.

PortaBilling notifies Odoo about the following events:

• Invoice is generated;
• Unpaid/partially paid invoice becomes overdue;
• Customer service becomes:
  • Suspended / Suspension is removed,
  • Limited / Limitation is removed;
• Commitment is terminated.

PortaBilling sends corresponding data to Odoo via the API. The communication between Odoo and PortaBilling is minimized as it only happens when such an event takes place in PortaBilling. This approach allows to minimize the load on both systems.

For example, customer John Doe is charged $30 per month for the Internet service. When his monthly invoice is generated, PortaBilling notifies Odoo by provisioning the invoice number and the amount due. After that, Odoo sends an SMS notification to the customer. John Doe can rely on that notification to remind him to pay for the Internet on time and thereby have no need to check it on the self-care web interface. If the invoice is overdue, John Doe also receives a notification.

If John Doe stops paying for the Internet service, PortaBilling suspends the customer for non-payment and blocks the service. At the same time, PortaBilling sends a notification to Odoo about the suspended customer. Odoo then sends an SMS message to alert John that the service has been blocked because of the overdue invoice.

Later, when John pays off his overdue invoice, PortaBilling immediately removes the suspension to resume Internet service and notifies Odoo CRM that the customer’s service is now active again. Odoo CRM then updates John’s record and sends an SMS informing him that service has resumed.

PortaBilling can also notify Odoo CRM of the termination reason for commitment, such as the commitment was terminated due to overdue invoices, account closure, or manual operation by admin. It helps service providers to configure Odoo CRM to send more informative notifications to customers depending on the commitment termination reason. If the commitment is automatically terminated due to non-payment, Odoo sends the customer an SMS message or email about commitment termination with a corresponding notification, “Disconnected due to debt”.

• CSPs can send payment reminders to customers via Odoo and thus, improve the payment collections process.
• CSPs can notify customers of commitment termination with the proper reason.

To enable data provisioning to the Odoo CRM, do the following:

1. Request from Odoo:
   • API_Access_Key – the Odoo administrator’s authorization key for the Odoo CRM API.
   • API_URL – the Odoo CRM API endpoint.
2. On the Configuration server, create an ESPF instance (if it is already configured, proceed to step 3). Check the ESPF configuration handbook for more details.
3. On the PortaBilling interface:
   • Create Odoo CRM handler. For this, navigate to Infrastructure > Event handlers, click Add, and fill in the details:
     1. Name – type the event handler name, e.g., “Odoo CRM”.
     2. Type – select Odoo::CRM.
     3. Leave the Enabled toggle enabled.
     4. Click Save&Edit details.
   • Configure the Odoo CRM handler:
     1. Open the Configuration panel and fill in the details:
        • Concurrency – leave the default number of the concurrent task processing.
        • OdooCRM.API_Access_Key – specify the authorization key to access the OdooCRM API.
        • OdooCRM.API_URL – specify the IP address or hostname of the Odoo CRM API endpoint to which requests will be sent.
     2. Open the Event subscriptions panel and subscribe the event handler to the required events. Check the ESPF configuration handbook for more details.