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Crossbow Exchange Users Guide |
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Friday, 20 April 2007 |
Table of Contents General Information About CrossBow Exchange Engine Data Tech Labs Crossbow Exchange Engine is an Online Traffic Trading System allowing service providers to set up fully functional and real-time VoIP traffic offer posting and bidding system. It allows Traffic Sellers to sell their routes and Traffic Buyers to view and buy routes according to their desired quality and price requirements. It optimizes routing of each call based on the buyer's bidding criteria. Crossbow Exchange comes with pre-populated country and operator breakouts for almost 1,000 destinations, including some weekend and off peak sensitive markets. In a word, if you want to act as a VoIP traffic exchange operator, Crossbow Exchange Engine is the pefect tool to help you by being an intelligent routing and rating platform.
show top Getting Started Please open the provided URL in a browser window and type your username and password carefully. You should see the following in the login page: 
After successful login, you will be directed to the member's page of Crossbow Exchange.
show top Navigation Menu DataTechLabs CrossBow Exchange provides an easy-to-use navigation menu for your smooth exploration. The navigation menu on the left of your screen is shown below: 
The details about each menu item are provided sequencially in this documentation. So read on.
show top Home This is the page you are likely to see after logging in. A sample is shown here for your convenience:  As you can see from the figure above, Crossbow Exchange gives an overview of your trading history regarding VoIP sales and usage in the home page. You can also know the available trading balance from this page. You may also receive notifications regarding the available tranding balance based on the current settings. To change a setting, you may go to the section Settings on the left navigation menu. Buying Members are required to maintain positive balance in order to make traffic purchases. Crossbow Engine allows to refill balance at any time by making payments. Balance increases also when the member has performed some sales of traffic. Balance settlements and payments are done exclusively through the exchange, no peer to peer transactions are supported. show top Sell As a seller, you can post offers on the exchange and configure your equipment to receive traffic from Exchange. You can post your offers at a competitive price to one of predefined markets. In this section of Crossbow Exchange, you can view existing routes and add new routes.
show top List My Routes This is the default subsection in the Sell portion. Here you will see a list of routes belonging to you. A sample list is given here: 
The available columns are: - Market: In this column, you see the name of the selected market for this particular route you are offering for sale. Destinations and Markets are preloaded in Crossbow Exchange and are system-wide. It makes uniform environment for all members participating in the Exchange: i.e. same country codes and descriptions, same billing increments, same start and end times of weekend and off-peak traffic and so on. There are more than 900 destinations pre-loaded in the Crossbow Exchange. The list is being currently updated from publicly available sources. It also supports grouping the destinations. The entries in this column are themselves links to the corresponding pages for the routes. Along with the view of all the details of the particular route, you can also find the option to cancel the offer for the route in each of those pages.
- Code: In this column, you will only see the hyperlink View instead of any number you would expect. However, just click on the corresponding link and a pop-up window will show you the existing country and related operator codes for that market.
- Time of Day: You can see the effective time for trading this particular route here. Normally it is All Day, but some of the destinations may have time-sensitive trading, i.e. Peak, Off-peak and Weekend trading.
- Sell Price: The specified price for selling the route is shown here.
- ASR: Answer Seizure Ratio (ASR) for the route is mentioned here.
- ACD: You can view the Average Call Duration (ACD) for the route here.
- Score: Score is measured by multiplying the Answer Seizure Ratio (ASR) with the Average Call Duration (ACD). Score is used to calculate the quality of the route.
- Activation Time: Whether the route is active or not, you can see the status in this column.
show top Add New Routes In this subsection, you can add new routes to offer for sale. There are two stages to complete the placement of an offer. A glimpse of the first step is shown below: 
Available Markets This list consists of all the markets added so far from publicly available sources. You can add any number of markets for your routes by simply clicking the button Add located below the collection of available markets. Selected Markets This list is initially empty. However, as soon as you add any new market from the list of available markets, it appears in this list. Any added market can be removed also. You have just to press the button Remove for that.
When you are satisfied with the selected markets, please hit the button Continue>> to move to the next step.
The page for the second step is shown here: 
As you can see, you can specify an amount for the selling price in this page. The price must be between the range shown in the previous column. The gateway for a particular market may also be changed from the drop-down menu under the column heading Gateway. The menu contains all the available gateways along with the default option -ALL-.
After specifying the price and gateway, you should press the button Add offers to add the selected markets to the list of your routes.
show top Buy Buyers configure their equipment to send traffic to the exchange. They buy traffic by placing bids. Bids depend on price and quality. In this section of Crossbow Exchange, you will be able to not only view your bids so far but place new bids as well.
In order to simplify participation in trading for users willing to buy many destinations, Bid-less routing feature is implemented in Crossbow Exchange. It allows to route any call received on Crossbow Exchange to route to the cheapest destination in case when there is no bid placed. This saves a lot of manual work to enter a massive amount of bids.
show top List My Bids In this default subsection of the section Buy, all the bids belonging to you are shown with all the details. Here is a sample: 
The columns are: - Market: In this column, you see the name of the selected market for this particular route you have placed the bid. Destinations and Markets are preloaded in Crossbow Exchange and are system-wide. It makes uniform environment for all members participating in the Exchange. There are more than 900 destinations pre-loaded in the Crossbow Exchange. The list is being currently updated from publicly available sources. It also supports grouping the destinations. The entries in this column are themselves links to the corresponding pages for the routes. Along with the view of all the details of the particular route, you can also find the option to cancel the bid for the route in each of those pages.
- Code: In this column, you will only see the hyperlink View instead of any number you would expect. However, just click on the corresponding link and a pop-up window will show you the existing country and related operator codes for that market.
- Time of Day: You can see the effective time for trading this particular route here. Normally it is All Day, but some of the destinations may have time-sensitive trading, i.e. Peak, Off-peak and Weekend trading.
- Maximum Price: This is the maximum amount a buyer is willing to pay for this particular route. Calls are routed to the least expensive seller with an available route to the bid amount.
- Minimum Score: This is the minimum quality a buyer is willing to accept for this particular route. Quality is measured by multiplying the Answer Seizure Ratio (ASR) by the Average Call Duration (ACD) to calculate the Score. Calls are routed to the seller with the highest Score at or below the bid amount.
- Route Priority: Quality or price -- which will be the topmost concern while choosing a seller for this route -- is shown here.
show top Add New Bids If you want to place a bid for purchasing a route, you have come to the right place. Following only a couple of steps, you will be able to specify all the details of your desired route. Here is a figure showing the first step: 
Available Markets This list consists of all the markets added so far from publicly available sources. You can add any number of markets for your desired routes by simply clicking the button Add located below the collection of available markets. Selected Markets This list is initially empty. However, as soon as you add any new market from the list of available markets, it appears in this list. Any added market can be removed also. You have just to press the button Remove for that.
When you are satisfied with the selected markets, please hit the button Continue>> to move to the next step.
The page for the second step is shown here: 
As you can see, you can specify an amount indicating the maximum buying price you are willing to pay. The price must be between the range shown in the previous column. The minimum quality (ASR x ACD) you can tolerate for the route may also be provided in this page. And finally please select the criteria that will get priority while choosing a route for you. Is it only the price that you care about or is it the quality that attracts you -- the choice is totally up to you.
After specifying all the details, you should press the button Add bids to add the selected markets to the list of your bids. Routing decisions are made in real time and new offers/bids are included into routing immediately as they are activated. At each call attempt, Crossbow Exchange tries to route call to all matched offers for a particular bid, starting from the most appropriate. If a match is found, the call is connected. Otherwise the call will fail. show top Settings This is the place to modify some settings for Crossbow Exchange. You will find two subsections here: Notifications and Banking Information.
show top Notifications You can make use of the automated notification system of Crossbow Exchange, which informs about low balance (user-selectable level) and absence of funds in account. First have a look at the contents of the page: 
From the above figure, it is obvious that you can choose to be notified when the available balance reaches below a certain limit and/or it reaches down to zero. Just tick on any one or both options and press the button Modify Settings to save your modifications. To have an idea of your available trading balance, please go to the Home page for Crossbow Exchange.
show top Banking Information In this subsection, you have the opportunity to provide the details of your bank. The fields are: 
Simply type your bank name and location, swift ID, ABA ID, and account number in the text boxes and hit the button Update to store the information on Crossbow Exchange server.
show top Markets To help you know about the condition of various markets, Crossbow Exchange Engine provides you this section in the left navigation menu. The page looks like the following for a market titled 'Bangladesh Mobile - Grameen - All Day'. 
From the drop-down menu Choose market, you can select any preloaded market, and the information about all the buying and selling offers related to this particular market is displayed instantly. From the Buyers section of the information table, you will be able to know the maximum bid offered by some buyer as well as the minimum score that may be tolerated for this market. And as far as the Sellers section is concerned, all the information you need to know is here -- sell rate(s), sell order ASR (Answer Seizure Ratio), sell order ACD (Average Call Duration), score and capacity of the corresponding route.
show top Reports In this section of Crossbow Exchange Engine, you will find various ways to produce reports based on different criteria. Five subsections together make the Reports section, namely - Summary, Destination, Detail, Payments and CDR History.
show top Summary This page will help you generate a summary report for originating or terminating traffic within a specific period of a month. Here it is: 
Available fields - Period from: This is the time period for which you want to generate report. With the help of 3 drop-down menus, you will be able to select the time length easily. The last menu contains the list of some previous and future months along with the ongoing one for you to choose any. The first two menus will provide you the chance to specify the starting and ending date of the particular month.
- Traffic direction: You can select a traffic direction from this menu to generate a report containing only the information about that particular direction. The options are -- Originating and Terminating.
- Generate: This is the button to press when you are satisfied with the time period and direction of traffic. Just a click does it all - you see the summary report instantly.
The columns are -- Date to show a particular date within the time length, Calls to indicate the number of originating or termination calls, Duration to illustrate the time taken by the calls (in minutes and seconds), Amount to show the amount spent for the calls (in dollars), Fees to indicate any related fees to the calls, and Total to display the cumulative amount of the previous two fields.
show top Destination With the help of this subsection, you will be able to generate a report based on the destinations. The page looks like this: 
Available Fields Please refer to the Available Fields of the subsection Summary for details.
The columns are -- Destination to show the name of the destination, Type to indicate the type of destination, Calls to show you the number of calls, Duration to illustrate the length of the calls (in minutes and seconds), Amount to show the amount spent for the calls (in dollars), Fees to indicate any related fees to the calls, and Total to display the cumulative amount of the previous two fields.
show top Detail This is the portion to help you generate the detailed report. You can also save the generated report in a Comma Separated Values (CSV) formatted file. Here is the page: 
Available Fields Please refer to the Available Fields of the subsection Summary for details.
The columns are -- Call Time to show you the time of the corresponding call, Duration to indicate the length of the call, Called Number to illustrate the number to which the call was made, Market Name for showing the name of the preloaded market related to the call, Market Type to indicate the type of the market, Amount to show the amount spent for the call (in dollars), and Fee to indicate any related fee to the call.
show top Payments If you want to generate a report containing your payment details, you have to do nothing but click the submenu item Payments of the main menu item Reports. Have a quick look at the page first: 
Available Fields - Month: This drop-down menu allows you to select a month for which you want to view the payment details.
- Generate: Simply press this button to generate the report after selecting the month in the previous field. You will see the list of total credit, debit and balance in the report.
The columns are -- Date to show a particular date at which a payment was made, Amount to indicate the amount of payment, and Method to illustrate the method of payment.
show top CDR History This subsection allows you to view the history of Call Detail Record (CDR) for both originating and terminating calls. Here is a sample: 
As you can see from the figure, there are two rows showing the length of the calls for every month. Each row shows the information for half of the month. The reason for showing information in such a way is that billing cycle is set as bi-monthly. Therefore cycles start on 1st and 16th of each month. However, Crossbow Exchange also allows to change the billing cycle according to your requirements.
show top Log out As the name suggests, you can exit from the Crossbow system by simply clicking on this item in the left navigation menu.
show top
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