History: Credits

            ! Credits

Credits are a way for Tiki users to have different stored value types of credits. They can be points, tokens, hours, minutes, numbers of uses of something, etc. This feature comes with an API to add and use credits for each user.

Somehow, it implies having the ability to define and use multiple currencies within a single Tiki site, similarly to what can be achieved with ((Community Currencies)) linked to a ((CCLite)) server, which allows using those multiple currencies with other sites (intertrading), sites which can be powered by  Tiki or other CMS/Softwares, such as Joomla, Drupal, Elgg, etc. 

!! Credit Details
Credits have a few characteristics:
* Credits have expiry dates and validity periods.
* Admins can configure different credit types and you can have different credit types for different sites

!! Admin Credits
* The admin panel for this feature is at __tiki-admin_credits.php__
+ {img fileId="326" rel="box[g]" class=reflect}

* You also need to define which TUC types are allowed in the tiki site, through "__Admin home > Payments > Tiki User Credits__" (tiki-admin.php?page=payment):
+ {img fileId="327" rel="box[g]" class=reflect align=center}

* Credits are used in the order of the earliest expiration date. Credits with no expiration date are used last.

Some definitions (useful for the admin panel):

{REMARKSBOX(type="note",title="Admin panel details",close="n",width="100%")}
;__Static Level Credits__: These are credits such as "storage" where the credit is __not__ permanently used up when they are used. Instead, they can be restored. e.g. the user has used 500/2000 mb of storage.
;__Scaling divisor__: This is used to reduce the length of the bar shown in ((Module credits)) for a certain credit type. For example, some credits may have units in the thousands when others are in tens. The former will end up having a very long bar compared to the other credit unless the divisor is set to a larger number.
;__Expiration date__: If there is no expiration date, the credits last forever until they are used.
;__A Plan__: A block of credits that have an expiration date can be considered a plan, especially if they are created with fixed intervals, e.g. monthly plans.{REMARKSBOX}

!! Credits page for non-Admin users (coming in Tiki 26)
Users can see their own credits in this page: __tiki-user_credits.php__

!! Add credits to users 
You add credits to users through tiki-admin_credits.php?userfilter=username (being username the name of the user; which you can type in the username search bo{img fileId="328" rel="box[g]" class=reflect}

An admin can also set that a user has already consumed some of that set of allocated credits:

{img fileId="329" rel="box[g]" class=reflect}

And a report on the historical usage can be shown also:

{img fileId="330" rel="box[g]" class=reflect}

!! Use Credits
You can pay invoices of Tiki ((Payments)) using ((Tiki User Credits)).

The credits that a user has left can be seen at any time by means of the module ((Module credits)):

{img fileId="331" rel="box[g]" class=reflect}





!! Developer Tips

You could make use of functions in [http://sourceforge.net/p/tikiwiki/code/HEAD/tree/trunk/lib/credits/creditslib.php|lib/credits/creditlib]:

function useCredits to use up credits and function addCredits to add credits for users. Also use getCredits to get a user's credit information, and getScaledCredits which extends getCredits with more human readable information. 


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