## Adding Custom Services to a Hosting Plan

Hosting Plans custom attributes in Parallels Business Automation - Standard are additional services that can be provided in the frame of a hosting plan or special attributes used to specify a dedicated server configuration. A custom attribute consists of one option or a group of options that represent services or other parameters offered by a custom attribute.

Thus, a custom attribute can include some support services or allow selecting a particular disk size, RAM, or operating system for a dedicated server.

In addition, you can create Hosting Plans of a special Miscellaneous type designated for selling custom services (defined by custom attributes) only.

You can define one of the two ways a customer selects a custom attribute options:

Selectable. When subscribing to a Hosting Plan a customer can select one or more (or all) options available.

Exclusive. Useful for dedicated server hosting plans. When subscribing to a Hosting Plan a customer can select only one option from set available for a custom attribute. This selection type is convenient for custom attributes that define a dedicated server configuration. For example, you can create several attributes, each defining a particular property of a dedicated server configuration (hardware or software): Hard Disk, RAM, Processor, Operating System, etc.

The order of options as it is shown on the Parallels Business Automation - Standard screen can be used for resources upgrade and downgrade control:

Parallels Business Automation - Standard considers an attribute options listing order as resource-demanding sorting. The first option in list - less valuable, the last one - the most valuable. If subscriber changes an option into a less valuable, this will be considered as resource downgrade Order. You can allow or forbid resources downgrade for a subscriber.

Custom Attributes grouping:

To facilitate custom attributes management, you can group them into categories (for example, such categories as Hardware, Software, Miscellaneous). To create categories for custom attributes, go to the Billing Director - Product Manager - Custom Attributes and select the Custom Attributes Categories tab.

How to attach a custom attribute to a hosting plan:

1. Go to the Billing Director - Product Manager - Custom Attributes. Select a custom attribute, click the Edit button on an attribute screen and make the corresponding group available for the type of hosting which the hosting plan you want to attach an attribute belongs to.
2. Configure the hosting plans listing for the corresponding hosting plan type in the Commerce Director - Store Manager - Configure Store - Plan Listing tab. Make sure that the desired custom attribute is selected to be shown within Hosting Plans description.
3. From the set of Hosting Plan properties, select the Custom Attributes tab and attach the desired custom attribute to a Hosting Plan. In this case, you can also set the fee for this particular Hosting Plan. Since the process is quite similar to the last-but-one step of hosting plan creation wizard, please for more details refer to the beginning of this chapter.

Note: All Hosting Plan custom attributes created by you will be available for all of your Resellers. They can select them and customize. As soon as Reseller had customized an attribute, it becomes an internal attribute used by this Reseller only (as if a Reseller gets the own copy of an attribute), and such customization does not affect configuration of your list of attributes. Summarizing, Resellers can use your custom attributes as a kind of templates, but this does not restrict the ability for a Reseller to create new custom attributes, which initially are at their disposal.

In This Section Creating Hosting Plans Custom Attributes

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