Growth Plan and Data Ops limits for Free Plan go live September 8

[jgskarda]

Thank you for providing this information and early awareness! I did have a few comments I'd appreciate you considering.

@schaud

• After 3 business days, customers who do not wish to upgrade will have their devices’ communications with the Particle Cloud paused until the beginning of the next monthly billing cycle. These devices can still boot up and run firmware but cannot send and receive messages that consume Data Operations.
• Paused devices are automatically reactivated at the beginning of the next billing cycle. Note: you can see your billing cycle under the “Usage” header on your console billing page.

I understand the need to pause communications to delinquent accounts. You somehow have to enforce it.... that makes sense. However, if someone wasn't paying attention to their email (as many of us get clutter in our email or some emails get auto filtered to spam) and their devices get paused it certainly will grab their attention when all devices seemingly stop communicating (a good thing). So is there a way to "increase" or level up their billing plan to re-activate/un pause all devices while still in the current billing cycle and NOT have to wait for the next billing cycle? It would be very frustrating as a customer to not notice this (do to email spam filters) until it's too late. I read this as once it's paused the only way to un pause is to wait until the next billing cycle. I hope this isn't the case and I'm just mis understanding.

The next major consideration is we will need insights into what is causing each data operation by type, by device, by day. This need has been discussed several times in the past without any clear guidance on how to obtain this data. Seems like the only way to get insights is to submit a support ticket.

Breakdown of data operations

Is it possible to find a breakdown of your data operations used? I can see the total number under my account and I’m using more than I thought I would be. A breakdown per device would be useful to keep an eye on things. Also, is a data operation just one of the Particle functions in the API. If I sent data direct to my IoT logging server over wifi, would that count?

Historical Data Operation Usage

I would like a report on my historical data operation usage, by month. I see how to get the current month-in-progress usage data. I’d want to answer the question, “what was my account’s data operation usage in January, February, March, April, etc”. It seems that data operation billing months do not align with calendar months. I’d be happy to see a report, “This was your data operations usage for each of the last 6 billing periods.”

How to view Data Operations by device?

I have 4 personal Photon devices regularly transmitting and a Product with 5 Boron users. Somehow we have already gone through 152k of our allowed 100k data operations?! This seems excessive… How can i track down the offending devices? [Capture]

I've already tried to do my due diligence in reducing my own data operations. I've made a lot of progress in doing so. However, just like these other posts, I still need additional insight of total data operations by device, by type and even by day. With this additional data, I can adequately control data operations totals as well as forecast how many "blocks" of service I will need for the next billing period.

So second question: How will Particle be providing this additional data operations insights? Can the Fleet health include a summary trend of all data operations by Day? Can we somehow see insights into data operations by device (similar to the SIM Card data usage trend?). How can we trend this for earlier billing cycles? How can we trend this for current billing cycle by day? Seems like if the meter is on Data Operations, then you will need to provide more tools around this to keep customers happy.

Thanks for considering these!