Platypus Blog

There’s gotta be a joke in there somewhere…

We will once again be attending Animal Farm in Salt Lake City, January 31st – February 2nd, 2012. This is always a great show with a lot of community between Canopy users. The show has expanded over the last few years to offer additional topics and is a great networking opportunity. More information is included below.

Animal Farm is an open group where you’ll find technical training and activities designed for and by Motorola Canopy Users like you. Canopy users from varied backgrounds meet and discuss topics of common interest. These events are typically USER DRIVEN, NOT VENDOR DRIVEN. We focus on what you need, not what someone wants to sell. Learn more at: http://afmug.com/

The wait is over. The new web interface is here!

We have redesigned the Platypus 7 Web Interface to make it easier to use, more intuitive for your customers and easier to customize.

Customers now see a dashboard view upon login which shows their recent invoices and payments at a glance as well as usage information when used with RADIUS. Rates, services and billing information management has been streamlined as well as overall navigation.

Staff members will notice a revamped help desk interface that allows them to quickly respond to tickets, just as within the client. We have also improved the performance for customers with a large number of rates, making the drill down on rates easier to understand and navigate.

Backend improvements such as partial stylesheet replacements and easy color changes are now in place as well as a standard customization layer, ensuring that your changes aren’t lost between point releases. JQuery is now utilized to give the interface a more modern feel.

Overall, the new release gives us a much improved base on which to build our web interface and should allow for easier changes and customizations.

We hope you enjoy the new look! Navigate to the support section to download it today.

Below is the Holiday Schedule for Platypus Support and Printing in Central Standard Time:

November 24th – Closed
November 25th – Printing Open 9 to 12
December 26th – Closed
December 27th – Support and Printing Open 9 to 5
December 28th – Support and Printing Open 9 to 5
December 29th – Support and Printing Open 9 to 5
December 30th – Printing Open 9 to 12
January 2nd – Closed
January 3rd – Support and Printing Open 8 to 7

Platypus Support, Sales and Printing will be closed on Monday, September 5th, 2011 for Labor Day. The Platypus Team wishes everyone a safe and enjoyable holiday.

Platypus is attending the annual WISPA Member Meeting in Las Vegas, October 10-12, 2011. This show attracts many of the top WISPs, ISPs, CLECs, speakers and vendors in the ISP space including Motorola, Ubiquiti, Mikrotik and more.

In addition to the WISPA show, FISPA, Mikrotik, Motorola and Ubiquiti will be conducting training sessions in the days following the WISPA show.

Stop by the Platypus Booth (#206) to talk about how Platypus can better help you manage your business.

For more information please visit: http://www.wispa.org

IPPay has updated their gateway to prevent false declines of a small percentage of Mastercards which failed to process with the “recurring” flag. These cards would return an Error / Decline Code of 012 or 013 and had to be processed manually using the Virtual Terminal supplied by IPPay.

As of August 1st, these customers can be processed as part of the normal Platypus credit card batch and should no longer have to be processed via the Virtual Terminal. In Platypus, verify that the customer’s statement method is set to “Credit Card” and these charges will process as part of your normal credit card batch.

If you continue to receive an Error / Decline Code of 012 or 013, please contact your customer for an updated payment information as it would be a legitimate decline and not a false error.

Platypus 7 – Build 2221 has been posted to the support site. This release addresses a number of issues and adds the features found below. For a complete change list, please see the revision history.

New Features:

As many of you know, Motorola has moved to RADIUS authentication for their Canopy and PMP320 product lines. One of the primary goals of Platypus 7 was to enhance our RADIUS support and provide guidance on how to integrate different systems with Platypus using RADIUS.

Two integration guides are now available on our support site that have step by step instructions on how to install FreeRADIUS, configure both Motorola PMP320 and Canopy, and configure Platypus to provide authentication and bandwidth control for these platforms.

As of now, Motorola doesn’t support RADIUS accounting, which means that another piece of hardware would be required in order to collect the usage for each subscriber. Please encourage Motorola to add RADIUS accounting to their PMP320 and Canopy product lines.

Yesterday, I started seeing tweets and emails from WISPA and concerned WISPs over a House Commerce Committee draft bill entitled “Spectrum Innovation Act of 2011.” This bill proposes auctioning off spectrum including some that is currently unlicensed. As many of our customers rely on this unlicensed spectrum to deliver wireless access to their customers, I thought it would be worth linking to the WISPA article. If you are a member of WISPA, you should receive an email from them with information on how you can help. If you aren’t currently a member and provide wireless Internet access, please consider contacting them to have your voice heard.

Below is a link to the WISPA article regarding this bill.

http://www.wispa.org/?p=4947

Thanks,

Grant Spradling
Product Manager, Platypus ISP Billing

Platypus Support, Sales and Printing will be closed on Monday, July 4th, 2011 for Independence Day.