Automating Subscription Succession

In many business processes, subscriptions of certain products may only by applicable to a particular member for a defined period of time. For example, a student membership is only applicable while a member is a student; once that member graduates, he or she should become eligible for a standard membership. Aptify's Subscription Succession feature handles this type of membership roll-over automatically so that following graduation, a student member can be renewed as a regular member. For more information on Subscription Succession, see About Subscription Succession.

Follow these steps to automate Subscription Succession:

1. Identify a subscription product that has a fixed duration, such as a Student Membership. For example, after four years as a student member or after a student graduates, the member should become eligible for an Individual Membership.
2. Create or open a Products record for the Subscription and configure the product and subscription fields as necessary.
   
   
3. To configure the succession behavior, click the Subscription > Succession tab.
   
   
4. Select the Subscription Succession Trigger Type and configure the related trigger settings as necessary.
   
   • By default, the Subscription Succession Trigger Type is set to None. With this setting, the subscription succession logic is not invoked by Aptify for this product. No additional configuration is necessary for this option.
   • If you want to define a finite term for this subscription, select the Fixed Term option from the Subscription Succession Trigger Type drop-down list. Then, enter the maximum duration for the subscription in the Subscription Max Duration field.
     • Note that the Subscription Max Duration field is expressed in the number of Issues of a subscription. So, a student membership that is configured as a monthly subscription has 12 Issues a year. To limit a student subscription to four years, a user enters 48 as the maximum duration.
       
       
   • If a product requires more advanced logic than Fixed Term to determine when to trigger a succession, select the Rule option from the Subscription Succession Trigger Type drop-down list. Also, enter the appropriate rule to apply in the Subscription Succession Trigger Rule field.
     • The Subscription Succession Trigger Rule field links to a record in the Subscription Succession Trigger Rules service. Each record in this service specifies a Database Objects record that contains the logic that determines the conditions under which a succession can occur.

   

   • An administrator or developer writes a stored procedure that defines this logic. This stored procedure is then added as a Database Objects record in Aptify and is linked to a Subscription Succession Trigger Rules record. A sample stored procedure is available upon request from Aptify for organizations who would like an example of a trigger rule.
5. Select the Subscription Succession Mode and configure the related settings as necessary. Note that you do not configure the Subscription Succession Mode if the Subscription Succession Trigger Type is set to None.
   
   • If you want to specify a particular product that should be used as the successor in all cases, set Subscription Succession Mode to Fixed Product and specify the appropriate product in the Subscription Succession Product field.

   

   • If the logic to select a successor product is more advanced than Fixed Product, select the Rule option from the Subscription Succession Mode drop-down list. Also, enter the appropriate rule to apply in the Subscription Succession Product Rule field.
     • The Subscription Succession Product Rule field links to a record in the Subscription Succession Product Rules service. Each record in this service specifies a Database Objects record that contains the conditional logic that selects a particular succession product based on the subscriber's characteristics.

   

   • • An administrator or developer writes a stored procedure that defines this logic. This stored procedure is then added as a Database Objects record in Aptify and is linked to a Subscription Succession Product Rules record.
   • If an organization wants to terminate the subscription and does not want to specify a successor product, set the Subscription Succession Mode to Termination. Once a customer/member's characteristics have evoked the Subscription Succession trigger mechanism, the subscriber is no longer able to renew his or her subscription.

   

6. Saves the changes to the Products record.
7. When the organization renews a subscription for this product using the Subscription Renewal wizard or a subscription auto-renewal, Aptify determines if the subscription meets the trigger criteria. If so, Aptify automatically applies the defined Subscription Succession behavior to terminate the subscription (prevent further renewal) or substitute the original subscription with the new successor product on the renewal order (either by using a specified fixed product or by identifying the appropriate product based on a specified rule).