June 2007 Newsletter - Important Security Changes, New 5.1.7, and more

Dear ModernBill Client,

In an ongoing effort to promote security best practices and better protect the integrity of your confidential data, we invite you to read about some recently implemented security and access changes we have made to the members area and support helpdesk.

Inside This Issue:

01 Members Access Updated - Important
02 Helpdesk Best Practices
03 Attention Resellers
04 Version 5.1.7 Released - Required Upgrade - Important
05 New Modules and Features

Members Access Updated **** Important ****

Over this weekend, we have implemented some changes to the login credentials to our members area. We have been made aware of a situation whereby members area credentials were made available to another person. Please be careful with whom you share your credentials. This situation has opened our eyes to the need for additional security with regard to members area access. To that end, we have updated the credentials of every member to the support area. We may do this from time to time to keep the system as safe as possible. To receive your updated credentials, please go to:

http://www.modernbill.com/support/index.php

...and click on the link that says:

“Need to resend your member's area login information? Click here.”

We use your email address as the primary identifier for your license. IMPORTANT: Occasionally, more than one license ends up being associated with an email. This generally will involve licenses created by resellers and those who have very old licenses. If you get an error from the resending system, please submit a ticket to the general support department at:

http://www.modernsupport.com/helpdes...kets&_m=submit

Helpdesk Best Practices

To further improve the security of your account, we have implemented a new set of "Helpdesk Best Practices" rules. As always, we would like to remind you that handing out credentials to your server is something that must be treated with extreme caution. Starting immediately, we will be more forcefully implementing security measures to prevent unwanted access to systems.

The first step we have taken toward this end is to archive the old copy of the ticketing system and make an internal copy for reference. It has been replaced by a fresh copy of the helpdesk. Beginning today, we will begin creating new tickets in the new system to address existing open tickets. If you would like, while it is not necessary, you can also resubmit new tickets to ensure your issues are addressed. Be sure to include the old ticket number (xxx-#####) from the subject of the tickets if you do this.

IMPORTANT: Please do not provide confidential information with your ticket. All new tickets which arrive with confidential information attached will be stripped of this content immediately as we will only permit confidential information to be transacted by secure mechanisms such as phone contact, secure IM, and PGP email. We will continue to ask for logins to your ModernBill, when necessary, by way of the ticketing system, but we will ask that you create a new administrative login for us when a ticket is created and that the admin is removed from your system when your issue is resolved.

REMINDER: As a friendly reminder, each support ticket is responded to in the order it is received based on its last activity. This means every time you reply to a ticket, it gets moved to the bottom of the queue. In order to facilitate the quickest response, you are encouraged to allow our support technicians to respond before replying to an open ticket. In some cases a ticket will be escalated to a specialist within our team who can offer the most precise knowledge on a particular topic, so please allow extra time for particularly unique issues.

Attention Resellers

The final piece of this change is the slight effect on resellers. If you have the mod_modernbill module enabled in your ModernBill to resell ModernBill licenses, be sure to update the module with your new credentials.

We apologize for the sudden nature of this change, but the exigent circumstances led us to believe that this is the best route. We hope you will understand.

Version 5.1.7 Released - Required Upgrade **** Important ****

While we're on the topic of credentials, you are encouraged to get them immediately as we have released a stability build that is a required upgrade for Version 5 customers. This update is especially critical to those customers with Version 5.1.6 builds 5 and 6 as we have identified an issue with regard to refund technology and billing contact management. Failure to update from these versions may corrupt data that would need to be repaired manually. All Version 5 customers should immediately upgrade as this stability build has many improvements to existing functionality for all customers.

New Modules and Features

As you all know, we have been super busy working towards making Version 5 every bit the most stable and best billing system on the planet. This is why the last several builds have had so few new features. This time around, we were able to come up with some new modules and features that our customers have been requesting.

Mod_ModernBill - Version 5 now has a Mod_ModernBill module for reselling ModernBill licenses through our resellers system. Reselling licenses through V5 is even more satisfying thanks to the way that V5 is structured. Because the V5 order process is based on a cart model, you can sell ModernBill by itself or have customers add it to their hosting order using the the continue shopping button. Or, because we now support multiple API queue items per product, you can bundle ModernBill in a hosting/reseller bundle of goods. If you have not considered reselling ModernBill before, now may be the time.

Enom Module Updated - We have updated the Enom module with a very popular feature that many of you have been requesting: ID Protect. This feature allows your domain customers to designate ID Protect as their proxy for contact regarding their domain name. This feature also allows you to get additional revenue out of the domain in a completely automated fashion.

ResellOne/OpenHRS - For those of you who are customers of The Planet, we have added support for their ResellOne domain program. This is great news for any provider on the OpenHRS system. It means that we can support any other OpenHRS platform providers.

Vendor Submitted Modules

As we have been stating since the release of Version 5, the strength of the MBAPI allows third party integration to happen extremely quickly. The following modules exist now due to vendor participation in submitting modules for inclusion with the code base. If your favorite vendor does not yet have a module, introduce them to the MBAPI and the SDK to create a module for you.

Intermedia - Intermedia.net - Specializes in Hosted Exchange reseller plans
CubePanel - CubePanel.com - A shared virtual hosting platform
CentovaCast - Centova.com - Streaming Radio Broadcasts

Some other recent features:

Kayako Integration - Kayako.com - This great helpdesk has completed Version 5 integration and is deploying its latest version with the ModernBill fileset included.

System Requirements Checker - A new feature to assist in server compatibility trouble-shooting, this feature checks the current state of your server for issues. It is the same checker used in the install process in an easy to access format in your system.

Multi-tier Tax Support - This new feature will assist those of you operating under complex tax laws. You can now designate whether taxes are taxable themselves. This is especially useful when calculating regulatory taxes of multi-tier taxes.

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This periodic email newsletter is delivered to all current ModernBill customers, and contains information about new software versions and moderngigabyte.com web site features and content. If you have any questions or comments about this mailing, please contact sales@modernbill.com.

Copyright © 2007, ModernGigabyte, LLC

Thank you,
The ModernBill Team