PortaOne AI Datalink: From billing data to business intelligence
Automatically prepare PortaBilling data for reporting, forecasting, AI tools, and smarter decision-making.
What is it?
PortaOne AI Datalink prepares your PortaBilling data for business intelligence (BI) and AI tools.
It converts over 360 tables from your PortaBilling database into 20–25 optimized BigQuery tables — merging and restructuring records so analytic queries are easier to write and much faster to execute.
Analytics limitations of real-time billing data
PortaBilling is optimized for real-time charging accuracy, so using the same structure for BI and AI requires additional preparation.
Extensive, detailed schema
Over 360 highly specialized tables ensure billing precision, but make cross-service reporting slow and complex.
High-granularity usage records
CDRs and sessions capture every detail required for compliance and rating accuracy, so generating summaries requires heavy post-processing.
Operational data retention
Live systems trim older records to maintain performance, limiting long-term trend analysis and multi-year comparisons.
Production workload protection
Running analytics directly on the operational database adds load and introduces risk to real-time charging performance.
How Datalink solves this
A dedicated analytics pipeline built around PortaBilling, Datalink prepares and delivers analysis-ready billing data for your BI and AI tools without affecting production systems.
Continuous, low-impact extraction
Google Datastream captures changes from PortaBilling without adding load to the live environment.
Processing and aggregation
Granular events such as CDRs are merged into clean business-level summaries suitable for reporting and forecasting.
Optimized BigQuery schema
360+ operational tables become 20–25 clear, analysis-ready tables designed for BI tools and AI agents.
Secure long-term data storage
All processed data is stored in a dedicated, encrypted BigQuery project, enabling multi-year analytics and advanced modeling.
Key Analytics Capabilities
What becomes possible once your data is prepared for analytics:
Long-term insight
Access multi‑year billing trends for revenue analysis, customer growth patterns, and service usage shifts.
Faster decision support
Run complex queries on a dedicated analytics warehouse without touching live billing systems.
Operational visibility
Build reports that combine usage, subscriptions, payments, and customer activity into a clear business view.
Natural‑language reporting
BI and AI tools generate correct SQL from short plain‑language prompts.
- Examples of plain-language prompts
Examples of Analytics Available from the default datasets
Long-term insight
New Customer Growth & Revenue Monitor new customer acquisitions by time period and categorize them by service type, such as SIP trunking, Cloud PBX, or wholesale services. Calculate projected revenue based on subscription models and track growth trends.
Ask questions like "How many new customers joined last month?" or "Show estimated revenue from new customers by subscription tier."
Sales performance & commissions
See which sales representatives signed the most new customers and generated the highest projected revenue. Track growth in both dollar value and percentage.
Use prompts like "Show top 10 reps by new accounts and revenue, last 30 days vs previous 30 days."
Payment analytics
Examine e-commerce payments vs. manually registered payment transactions and track payment trends. Useful when migrating between payment processors: compare collection rates before and after the switch.
Example: "Show distribution of payments in the last 30 days by method (payment gateway vs manual cash transactions) and compare success rates."
Product performance
Monitor product activations and deactivations over time, calculate net changes (delta) in products purchased: main and add-on products sold to new customers. Analyze how the change of products impacts the revenue.
Track metrics like "Show product activation changes for the last 30 days: number of new activations, deactivations, and net change with revenue estimates."
Advanced customer intelligence
View customers by highest or lowest spend, call volume, geographic distribution, representative, and revenue source (voice calls, DID number fees, recurring subscriptions). Identify top customers based on call volume. Track account status changes for payment management (overdue invoices, suspended services, blocked accounts).
Data handling and synchronization logic
How Datalink processes, updates, and protects your billing data
Privacy-first data handling
You control how sensitive customer information is treated. Datalink identifies all Personally Identifiable Information (names, phone numbers, emails), and you choose whether to include these fields in your analytics dataset or leave them blank. This helps meet your security and compliance requirements.
Historical data accuracy
Datalink updates results when new CDRs arrive for past billing periods. If records are imported or added late, the system automatically recalculates totals to keep historical analytics correct.
Resync for retrospective changes
When previously processed data changes (such as a refeed or adjustments to older CDRs), Datalink can reset and rebuild all data starting from any date you specify.
Automated sync for billing corrections
If billing data is corrected — for example, after re-rating calls due to a rate update — Datalink detects the change and re-processes the affected period. Updates within a 42-day window are handled automatically, keeping BigQuery fully aligned with PortaBilling without manual fixes.
How it works
- Datalink uses Google Datastream to capture changes from your PortaBilling database and stream them into a BigQuery data lake.
- From there, Google Dataform processes and aggregates the raw records into curated, business-ready datasets.
- These datasets are stored in a BigQuery data warehouse, where data analysts, BI tools (such as Power BI, Tableau, Looker), and AI agents can query them directly for OLAP analysis.
Who benefits from Datalink
Clear insights for business, operations, and technical teams. From executives to analysts — everyone gets the data in the format they need.
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Telecom Executives & CFOs
Track KPIs, analyze service profitability, and review cash flow trends using natural-language queries. -
Sales & Marketing Teams
Evaluate campaign performance, monitor sales activity, identify top customers, and find upsell opportunities. -
Operations & Finance Teams
Monitor service metrics such as ASR and ACD, identify revenue leakage, reconcile costs, and review revenue by service type. -
Data Analysts
Query optimized BigQuery datasets using SQL or connect Python-based tools for forecasting and modeling.
FAQ
What exactly is Datalink?
Datalink is an automated data pipeline that extracts data from your PortaBilling database, processes it into business-ready datasets, and stores it in a dedicated Google BigQuery data warehouse.
How often does billing data update?
Daily by default, which works for most analytics needs. This frequency is configurable, for example, every two hours. Datalink is designed for business intelligence analytics, not real-time operational monitoring.
How long is data stored?
No defined limit. Google BigQuery handles long-term data retention, letting you analyze trends over many years. This beats PortaBilling’s live database, which typically purges older CDRs and usage records after a few months.
How does the warehouse data structure compare to PortaBilling?
Simpler for analytics. We convert PortaBilling’s 360+ table schema into 20 to 25 main tables with clear, documented fields.
How secure is cloud data storage?
Each client’s data sits in a dedicated BigQuery project, protected by a technology called Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK). It uses separation of the roles – for key management and user access management, tight access control, audit trails. Helps meet strict compliance requirements, and gives you the power to make data unusable by destroying its key.
How is sensitive customer data handled?
Personally Identifiable Information (such as names, phone numbers, and emails has a special treatment). You choose whether to include this data in your analytics dataset or to leave those fields empty. We plan to anonymize customer names and account IDs with only first/last characters visible (e.g., “John****son”) for troubleshooting purposes.
Is Datalink GDPR-compliant?
Yes. We can deploy your data warehouse in the same geographical region as your system. European clients get BigQuery instances in European data centers, keeping data in-region
Can I integrate other data sources besides PortaBilling?
Yes, the data warehouse can integrate other sources. Contact us to discuss your specific consolidation needs.
Can Datalink replicate my existing PortaBilling reports exactly?
Datalink is designed for flexible analytics rather than static report replication. Working with processed and aggregated data, results from natural language queries may differ from specific built-in PortaBilling reports. The goal is deeper insights and complex business questions that traditional reports can’t answer.
