m3ter Console
The m3ter Console is designed to facilitate setting up and configuring your Organization to implement usage-based and unit-based pricing for the products and services you offer to your customers. This topic offers guidance and pointers on the layout and features you'll find in the Console and should help familiarize you with the m3ter Console before you move on to setting up and managing your m3ter Organization.
Important: Console Orientation is for version one! This Console Orientation video covers version one of the m3ter Console, which remains available and which you might still be using. For the new Console, the top-level navigation and layout has changed significantly. However, once you have drilled into a specific area, many of the baseline pages remain the same. An updated Console Orientation video for the new Console will be available soon.
Working in the Dashboard
When you first log in to the m3ter Console, the Dashboard opens:
From the Dashboard, you can:
Use the Recent Accounts panel to track Accounts you've worked with in your recent sessions in the Console - as you start to create and configure Accounts for your Organization, these will be added. The most recently visited Account appears at the top of the list, and you can select the NAME hotlink text to re-open the details page of an Account.
Review Your Alerts for your Organization. Select View All to open the main Alerts page. For more details, see Viewing and Managing Alerts.
Tip: Console version one? If you have been a m3ter user for some time, you can select to switch back to version one of the Console and continue to work with your m3ter Organization there.
Usability Features
Several usability features are available as you navigate the main pages of the Console:
Select your User icon at top-right:
This opens a User Profile menu, where you can switch to use either Light/Dark mode:
Open a Running Tasks panel, which allows you to track the progress of any tasks, such a billing runs:
Check out What's New in the Product:
Navigating the Console
The m3ter Console is broken down into sections designed to support and optimize your configuration and operational workflows when setting up and managing your Organization for metered pricing and billing. You can open sections from the top navigation - for example the Metering section:
Use the Expand icon at bottom-left:
This opens a section's Nav panel for the pages available in the section:
Use the Collapse icon if required to hide the section Nav panel:
Using Sections
Here's a summary of the main tasks and operations available in each of the main sections.
Settings
Manage your m3ter Organization, its Users and their access:
Configure and manage your m3ter Organization.
Create and manage Users and User Groups for the people and teams you want to grant access to your Organization.
Create and manage Service Users for the automated processes that you want grant access to your Organization.
Create and manage Permission Policies to closely control what Users can do when they are given access to your Organization.
Invite Users and grant them time-bound access with appropriate permissions when they accept the invitation.
Grant m3ter Support access if you require Help troubleshooting and resolving any issues that have arose.
Products
Create and configure Products to represent the products and services you offer to your customers.
Metering
Create Meters, Aggregations, and Compound Aggregations to collect usage data and aggregate that usage data into specific usage measurements to use as pricing metrics to apply usage-based pricing to your Product Plans.
Create Counters to use as pricing metrics to apply unit-based pricing to your Product Plans. Use Counters to define unit quantities on end-customer Accounts.
Review Ingest Events to check for validation errors logged for usage data measurement submissions.
Open a Usage Data Explorer to query for ingested usage data and review and check query results.
Pricing
Set up Plan Templates and Plans to control billing operations and to use for pricing your Products.
In the Pricing Editor
Add Aggregations to apply precise usage-based pricing to your Plans.
Add Counters to apply unit-based pricing to your Plans.
Accounts
Create and manage Accounts for end-customers who purchase your Products.
Attach one or more priced Plans to an Account for each of the Products an end customer consumes.
Open a Prepayments Data Explorer to query against and review Prepayments/Commitments data for your Organization.
Integrations
Create and manage integrations for your m3ter Organization with your 3rd-party systems.
Billing
Run, view, and manage the Bills generated for your customer Accounts.
Open a Billing Data Explorer to query against and review billing data for your Organization.
Alerts and Events
Review and manage System Alerts, which are automatically generated for your m3ter Organization, informing you about key events and notifying you of any issues or errors.
Define and deploy Notifications triggered by Events in your m3ter production environment and sent out to webhooks for pushing through to your external 3rd-party systems.
Main Navigation - Help Links
Help links are available from the main navigation:
A drop-down menu opens:
Documentation. Quickly access our comprehensive User and API Reference documentation.
Support. Open the login page for our web ticketing Support portal.
Service Status. Open a page to check the operational status of the m3ter platform's Config and Ingest API services. See below: Checking Service Status for more details.
Help Center and AI Assistant
A Help Center is built into the Console and incorporates an AI Assistant for seeking direct help while working in Console.
Help Center and Tooltips
At top-left in the Console, you can open the Help Center:
When you open the Help Center it offers a brief explanation for the page you are working in and offers links out to relevant topics in the main user documentation - for example, if you have the Meters page open:
Also available as you work in the Console are Tooltips which open panels giving immediate guidance on particular features and configuration fields:
AI Assistant
The Help Center panel incorporates a powerful AI Assistant, which you can use to:
Seek general help and advice on the m3ter product.
Ask specific questions about configuration or operational tasks you are trying to perform in the Console.
Carry out a streamlined keyword search to quickly find the information you need.
Whatever your question, the AI Assistant will try to provide a helpful answer and include the sources of its answer as hotlink texts you can click for further relevant information.
For example:
General Help. You might be wondering what benefits a switch to usage-based pricing will bring for you and your end-customers:
Specific Questions. You've begun to work in the Console and might be setting up a Meter to collect usage data and you find that there are two types of collection field you can add to a Meter but remain unclear about what the difference is between these two field types:
Keyword Search. As you proceed, you might begin the workflow to create an Aggregation and encounter Compound Aggregations and wonder what these are used for - enter a capitalized keyword search term followed by a question mark:
Be sure to make our AI Assistant your knowledgeable guide as you explore and work with the m3ter platform to implement and deploy usage-based and unit-based pricing for your products and services.
Feedback Please! We'd very much appreciate your feedback on the answers you receive from the AI Assistant using the thumbs up/thumbs down buttons and so help us to continually improve your m3ter learning experience
Tracking User Activity in your Organization
As you and your colleagues start to work with your m3ter Organization, you'll find that many of the details pages for the main configuration entities created for your Organization - such as the Meter details pages - carry audit information on which User:
Initially created the entity.
Most recently modified the entity.
This audit data also allows you to click a hotlink text to open the details page for the logged User:
Tip: User Activity is also shown on Account Specific Details Pages! Which User created and which User last modified is also tracked in the Console on the details pages for some Account specific entities - Account Plans, Prepayments, Balances, and Contracts on an Account.
Switching Organization
Many m3ter Users have access to more than one Organization. You can quickly switch to another Organization to which you have access using the Organization box at top-right. This shows the current Organization you are working in - select the arrow to show a list of all Organizations you have access to and then select the one you want to switch to:
If you have access to multiple Organizations, you can use the Search field to filter the list.
If you select View all organizations, you are taken back to the Select Organization page that opens when you first log into the Console. The LAST ACCESSED Organization is shown and you can search for and select to open any of the other Organizations you have access to.
Checking Service Status
To check the operational status of the m3ter platform's Config and Ingest API services, select the Help> Service Status link:
A m3ter Service Status page opens in a separate tab:
On this page you can read-off the current operational status of the platform's Config API and Ingest API services, together with a percentage measure of status over the last 90 days. To review a breakdown of service performance status over the 90 days, expand a service:
Use the tabs to:
Check an Incident History tab for any service incidents logged in the last 7, 15, or 30 days.
Check an Upcoming Maintenance tab for any planned service maintenance.
If you're still experiencing problems after a recovery has been posted on the status page, then contact m3ter Support:
Select the Support drop-down at the top of the page and select Support Home:
This takes you to the m3ter Support login page.
If you want to receive e-mail notifications when an incident with the service is created, updated, or resolved, select Subscribe:
Enter your Email address and select Subscribe.
Editing User Profile and Logging Out
You can access your User profile at any time at the top-right of the Console:
You can then:
Select Edit Profile to change your User name. See Editing User Profile for details.
Select Log Out to end your session for the Organization and log out of the Console.
Next: Configuration Workflow
Additional Support
Login to the Support portal for additional help and to send questions to our Support team.