How to work with external card issuers

It this course we’ll have a look at what needs to be done when you sign a deal with external partner like schools or banks that will issue cards themselves and will only report back data about issued cards. It’s necessary to have in NCDB data about the customer before he receives the card so the cardholder can take advantage of discounts requiring online verification and use the mobile ISIC app. This is also a requirement from ISIC Global Service Office to keep the ISIC ER status. In this business model we expect that you will assign partner license ranges that you have to first order from ISO. The best way is to sell these licences directly to the partner, alternatively you can invoice partner based on the number of licences they issue but this would involve using of Reports Manager and the process for this invoicing is not directly included in the NCDB. When you sign a new partner, you need to follow these steps:

1. Create a new issuer in the NCDB or if it’s already there, mark it as external issuer.

2. Create user account for the issuer

3. Assign licences to the partner and send it to him

4. Implement data reporting

5. Verify quality of data

First of all you need to have an issuer. To create a new issuer, open NCDB, sign in as ER and go to the section Card Issuers.

Open

Open

You will be presented with a screen where you can enter details about the new issuer. Required fields are always marked with a red asterisk (*). You will have to pay attention to the following fields:

• Name – please enter here the official name of the partner.

• Personalization Center – you can select any personalization center. This option is only relevant for issuers who are ordering cards through NCDB orders which is not this case so the selection will not have any effect.

• Price list – select the price list for this issuer. In case you don’t yet have it, you can create a new price list in section Card Issuers -> Issuer List

• External Issuer – you need to enable this checkbox, otherwise it would not be possible to issue cards externally for this issuer. In case the external issuer is going to use the API, you can choose “Report” or “Request” mode (see more information in “API for External Card Issuers” course). In case the external issuer will import issued cards via excel file, choose “Report”.

• Roles – roles not only define the type of partner but also determines which types of cards the issuer can issue. For example elementary school can only issue ISIC SCHOLAR and ITIC cards while the agent can issue any type of card.

• Address – it’s necessary to enter registered, delivery and invoice address of the issuer. In can the delivery or invoice address is the same as registered address, just click on the appropriate checkbox so you don’t have to enter the same details again.

• Card Settings – you can keep here default values for now but in case you have a specific design that you want to assign to the partner, you can select it here. We’ll create the design in one of the following lessons.

After you have everything filled, please click on the “Save card issuer” button.

In the previous lesson we have created a card issuer, now we are going to add a user to it. Each issuer needs to have a dedicated account through which it’s possible to report data, either through the manual import of XLSX file or automatically through the API. To create a new account, go to “Card Issuers -> Issuer List” section and click on the “Users” icon next to the issuer for which you want to add new user.

You will need to create a username and name the account. If you leave the password field blank, random password will be generated automatically. You can also automatically sent to user e-mail with login details upon the account creation. It’s necessary to set the account as “Card import account”. Without this option set it’s not possible for issuer to import data about issued cards neither from the XLS account nor the API. If you set an account as “System account”, other accounts of the same issuer will not be able to edit it which is useful for application accounts using API. Finish the account with the “Save User” button.

First of all you will have to order serial ranges and cards from the ISIC Service Office. This process is out of scope of this lesson and can be found on the ISIC Extranet.

If your parter will have a custom design, you should create it first in the NCDB. To do that, go to “Licence Management -> Card Designs” section and click on button “Create Card Design”.

You will be required to name the design. A good practice is to for example name it for the quick reference based on the issuer and the year the design was created. You will be required to select the card type and enter the part number (card design number) assigned by ISO. In case these cards are extensible, don’t forget to check that the card has revalidation sticker field. In case you would like to receive a notification when the number of available licences for this design is smaller than some number, you can enter such number into “Minimal Available Serial Numbers Count” field. Don’t forget to upload picture of the front and back side of the card and afterwards click on “Save” button.

To create a new serial range, you have to go to“Licence Management -> Serial Ranges” section and click on“New Range” button.

Since we are creating a serial range for an external issuer, it’s necessary to select in the select box range type “External Issuer”. Afterwards select the issuer for which you want to assign card ranges. In case you would not see the issuer in the selectbox, it means that the checkbox “External Issuer” was not ticked on the detail of the issuer. Select the card type and enter the card range provided by ISO. You should also set whether the card has already serial numbers preprinted on it. On the right side of the screen you can see the design which will be assigned to this serial range. Once you have everything filled, click on button “Continue”.

Each external issuer should report data about issued cards to the NCDB. This data should be reported in real-time to make sure the card is valid in NCDB before the customer receives the card, otherwise customer would not be able to use the ISIC mobile app or take advantage of online discounts. NCDB will export data in real-time also to ISO’s CCDB so you don’t have to worry about this part as you are thanks to that already CCDB compliant. There are several option on how to do the reporting of issued cards.

1. The preferred method is the API integration. Thanks to that information system of your partner can automatically export data about issued cards to the NCDB the moment the card is issued. This requires some development on the side of partner but it’s nothing major and our IT team can answer any technical questions your partner might have.

2. The second option is for partner to login to the NCDB from web browser and upload the list of issued cards from Excel file. This option doesn’t require any intervence from the side of ISIC ER but puts the responsibility on the partner. In this option the partner needs to make sure that the data is uploaded to the NCDB before the customer receives the card!!!

3. The third option is for partner to provide XLSX file with data about issued cards to ISIC ER, this could be done for example through mail, FTP server etc. ISIC ER staff is than required to manually upload the Excel file into the NCDB. This option requires the most manual work and should be avoided if possible. Similar to the previous option it’s necessary that the data is uploaded to the NCDB before the customer receives the card!!!

We’ll have a look at each of these options in more detail in following lessons.  

The best way to get information about issued cards is to have issuer integrate his information system with our NCDB through the API. The acronym API stands for Application Programming Interface and it’s a way how servers can communicate between themselves. Please see the bellow video that explains in human terms what’s an API. In our case the NCDB has an API based on the standard REST protocol that allow issuers to send data about issued cards. For detailed information about the API integration, together with the officiel documentation, please have a look at separate course “API for external card issuers“.

What is an API?

In case the issuer is not willing to implement automatic sending of data through API, it’s possible to upload it through the NCDB’s web interface. To do that, it’s necessary to have the card issuer account with card import permissions that we implemented in lesson 1.3 Creation of account. Issuer will need to sign in to the NCDB and go to section “Cards”. In this section he will see all cards he has issued so far and can click on the “Bulk Import of Issued Cards” button.

The structure of the required file can bee seen by clicking on the question mark in the top right corner. You can also find a help for photo import here. We recommend to always use the sample file which is also available there.

Mandatory fields are highlighted by star (*)

• Card Type * – name of card type, mandatory field, permissible values are ISIC, ISIC_SCHOLAR, ITIC, IYTC and ALIVE.

• Serial Number * – serial number of the card that should be created including initial letter and also the terminal control letter. Mandatory field.

• Plastic Card Issued – If the card was issued as virtual, enter ‘FALSE’ or ‘0’. If the card was issued as plastic, enter ‘TRUE’ or ‘1’. If the attribute is not filled, the card is considered as a plastic. Field is not mandatory.

• Chip Number – chip number of the card that should be created. Field is not mandatory.

• Holder’s First Name * – first name of the card holder. Mandatory field.

• Holder’s Last Name * – surname of the card holder. Mandatory field.

• Academic Institution Name – represents the organisation for which the card has been issued.

• Address Line 1 – address line 1 of card holder’s residence

• Address Line 2 – address line 2 of card holder’s residence

• City – card holder’s city of residence

• State/Province/County – card holder’s State/Province/County of residence

• Postal Code – postal code of card holder’s residence

• Date of Birth – holder’s birth date, field is not mandatory. When the field is not filled in, the default value 1st of January 1900 is used.

• Valid From * – beginning of the card validity. Mandatory field.

• Valid To * – ending of the card validity. Mandatory field.

• Email – holder’s e-mail address. Field is not mandatory. If filled, there mustn’t be any duplicities in emails within the imported file.

• Phone – holder’s phone number. Field is not mandatory. If filled, there mustn’t be any duplicities in phone numbers within the imported file.

• Card State – Card state (‘ACTIVE’, ‘VOIDED’). Field is not mandatory.

• Personal ID – this can be for example any personal number, given to the student. Field is not mandtory.

• Class Name – name of the class or study course. Field is not mandatory.

• Photo File – it is also possible to import cardholders’s photos together with the excel file. If the Photo File column is filled, the system looks into the uploaded .zip file if a photo with specified name exists. Names of photos must exactly match the name of attached .jpg files. Field is not mandatory.

The same “Cards Import” button is also available for the ISIC ER in case the issuer would provide you data for example through mail or FTP server. The only difference is that you have to first select the issuer for which you want to import data.   Import of photo files Together with the .xlsx file, it is also possible to import a .zip file with photos of cardholders. The photos need to be in .jpg format, in 450 x 540 px, portrait format. When the Photo File column within the imported .xlsx file is filled, the system searches for the photo with corresponding name in the .zip file. Now try to make an import on the test installation.

When cards are issued out of the ALIVE Platform and are just reported back, you should make sure the the quality is good. We have therefore developed Issue Statistics section where you can see the most common issues that could be happening like having some invalid characters in the name field, having wrong validity and it can even inform if someone would be trying to recycle licences. You can find this page in the “Card Issuers -> Issues Statistics” section.

You can see the total number of valid cards for each external and how many cards have specific issues. If you click on the number, you will get a list of issues which could be also exported to PDF. In case you confirm it’s no longer an issue, you can mark it as resolved by clicking on the green button on the right side

There is one more tool you should be aware of. You can receive a notification when the issuer has for example not sent you any cards during the specific period. This can be activated in the “Card Issuers -> Issuer List” section. Select the issuer for which you want to activate it and click on Edit button.

You will need to find a box Other details and in it two fields:

• Number of days for evaluating low activity

• Number of updates for evaluating low activity

If you for example want to receive a notification when a partner doesn’t set at least 5 cards during the period of 14 days, you would send these fields like this: