Reviewing Meter Options - m3ter Documentation

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You can set up Meters to collect usage data on your end customer activity when they consume your products and services. For example:

Number of logins.
Duration of session.
Amount of data downloaded.

Meters offer you wide-ranging flexibility when configuring the types of data you need to collect to support the usage-based pricing models you want to apply to your products and services.

This topic explains the difference between Product and Global Meters and the configuration options available for Meters:

Product Meters vs. Global Meters

You can create Meters that belong to a specific Product or create Global Meters. Usage data Meters collect:

You can use Product-specific Meters to charge for usage data the Meter collects for the Product.
You can use Global Meters when you want to charge for the usage data the Meter collects across multiple different Products.

Aggregations targeting Meters:

Any Aggregations that target a Product-specific Meter also becomes Product-specific and can only be used to Price Plans for that Product.
Any Aggregations that target a Global Meter are also Global, meaning they are not tied to a specific Product and can be used to price Plans belonging to different Products.

Switching Meters between Product-specific and Global:

You can switch a Product-specific Meter to Global, but you cannot switch it back to make it a Product-specific Meter again.
If you have already created any Aggregations that target a Product-specific Meter and you then switch the Product-specific Meter to be Global, then the Aggregations then become Global.
You cannot switch a Product-specific Meter to another Product.
You cannot switch a Global Meter to Product-specific.

Configuring Meter Fields

When you create and set up a Meter, the key configuration is adding fields to collect data:

Data Fields. Baseline fields for collecting raw usage data.
Derived Fields. Fields whose values are the result of a calculation/function performed on Meter Data Fields, Custom Fields, or Timestamp Fields.
Custom Fields. Allow you to attach custom data to the Meter as name/value pairs.

Data Field Options

You can add Data Fields to a Meter to collect:

Usage data on which you want to base your measurements for pricing.
Any associated data required for other business needs, such as for analytics purposes.

Each Meter can have up to a maximum of fifteen Data Fields. For each field, you can define the type of data you want the field to collect using the Category attribute. There are eight options:

Who. String. Use to collect usage data about an individual or organization.
What. String. Use to collect usage data about some object or thing.
Where. String. Use to collect usage data about a location.
Measure. Numeric. Use in a general way to collect quantitative usage data.
Metadata. String. (Max. 256 characters). Use for high-cardinality fields.
Income. Numeric. Use to collect usage data associated with income.
Cost. Numeric. Use to collect usage data associated with costs.
Other. String. Use to collect textual usage not applicable to Who, What, or Where events.

Important: When setting up Measures on Meters, consider how you want to aggregate your usage data! The options for Aggregating usage data collected by a Meter are constrained by the Categories you select for a Meter’s Data Fields.

Derived Fields

Each Meter can have up to a maximum of fifteen Derived Fields. The values of a Derived Field are always the result of a calculation or function performed on Meter Data Fields. Derived Fields add a powerful extra dimension of flexibility for setting up the data on which your usage-based pricing plans will be based.

Tip: Examples? The Derived Fields for Meters - Examples and Supported Syntax topic offers examples of how to set up Derived Fields on your Meters.

Units for Meter Fields - Examples

For numeric Meter Data and Derived Fields - Measure, Income, or Cost - we recommend conforming to the The Unified Code for Units of Measure (UCUM).

Measures of Data Storage

For example, services that want to price on sum of storage used:

Kilobyte: KiBy
Gigabyte: GiBy
Megabyte: MiBy
Terabytes: TiBy

Measures of Rates of Consumption

For example, services that want to price on maximum rates of consumption:

Gigabytes per second: GiBy/s
Megabytes per hour: MiBy/h

Measures of Computing Resource

For example, services that want to price on sum of memory allocation over time:

Gigabyte-seconds: GiBy.s
Megabyte-hours: MiBy.h

Non-Units of Measure - Counts

Counts aren’t strictly units of measure, but within UCUM, curly braces can be used to represent them. For example, a service that wants to price on the basis of number of API calls:

A count of number of API calls: {API_calls}
A count of the number of API calls per second: {API_calls/s}

Tip: Other Resources? You might also like to consult the Wikipedia article on the Unified Code for Units of Measure.

Custom Fields

You can define Custom Fields when creating a Meter or edit the Meter at a later date. Custom Fields you create for an individual Meter override those created at the Organizational level. We recommend reviewing Working with Custom Fields before you create and use Custom Fields.