Control Center release notes

Lumen^® Dynamic Connections: Effective September 9, 2024, we retired the Dynamic Connections pages in Control Center. You should now use NaaS Manager to create and manage connections for Lumen^® IP VPN On‑Demand and Lumen^® Ethernet On‑Demand.

Lumen Defender℠ Powered by Black Lotus Labs^®: You can now monitor Lumen Defender℠ service in Control Center. View active threats, blocked threats, and more. Learn more about Lumen Defender

Lumen^® VoIP Enhanced Local (ELS) and Lumen^® Local Inbound (LI): You can create a local number portability (LNP) status report for orders porting phone number to ELS and LI.

Local service inventory reports: Effective August 9, 2024, we retired these reports from Control Center. To access the information these reports contained, please use Bill Analyst and Usage Analyst (available through Control Center).

Two‑factor authentication: We made some minor updates to the page for setting up two‑factor authentication for your user profile. Control Center now remembers the one‑time code for 12 hours, so if you sign out and sign back in again, you will only have to enter your username and password.

VoIP Enhanced Local (ELS) and Local Inbound (LI): You can request a customer service record (CSR) for phone numbers on SPID 8824.

VoIP Enhanced Local (ELS): You can now set a 911 address that is different from the service address. This helps emergency services respond to the correct address if someone dials 911 from the phone number.

• Creating an install order for VoIP Enhanced Local
• Porting a phone number to VoIP Enhanced Local
• Making changes to a VoIP Enhanced Local phone number
  
  

Protection switching: For Lumen^® Protected Wavelength services, you can now use Control Center to switch between the working and protected path. You can schedule the switch up to seven days in the future.

Global navigation: For users with access to both Control Center and Developer Center, we've added a new tab (APIs) to global navigation. Use this tab to access Developer Center and My Apps directly from Control Center.

Network maps: Effective March 15, 2024, this feature is no longer available in Control Center.

Order status: We updated the order phases and expanded the milestone information for orders. You can now see additional steps and details as we work to complete your order.

• Viewing the status of an order
  

Lumen^® NaaS Manager: Starting February 8, 2024, all users with access to NaaS Manager will need to use two‑factor authentication when signing in to Control Center. Learn how to set up two-factor authentication

VoIP Enhanced Local (ELS) and Local Inbound (LI): You can now create change orders for ELS and LI services:

• Making changes to a VoIP Enhanced Local phone number
• Making changes to a Local Inbound phone number
  
  

NaaS Manager: You can now use NaaS Manager to create and manage connections for Lumen^® Ethernet On‑Demand connections and Lumen^® IP VPN On‑Demand:

• Learn more about NaaS Manager
• Ethernet On‑Demand support
  
• IP VPN On‑Demand support
  

Lumen^® Edge Bare Metal: We redesigned the Edge Service Manager to make it easier for you to manage your bare metal servers and networks.

VoIP Enhanced Local (ELS) and Local Inbound (LI): You can now create disconnect orders for ELS and LI services.

Dynamic Connections IP VPN: You can now create a connection to Oracle Gov.

Dynamic Connections Ethernet: You can now add a second port for redundancy when creating connections from a Lumen UNI to Azure or Azure Gov.

Dynamic Connections IP VPN: You can now create a VRF (virtual routing and forwarding) when creating a new connection.

VoIP Enhanced Local (ELS) and Local Inbound (LI): We redesigned the experience for managing orders, reserving phone numbers, and porting numbers to ELS and LI.

Network Visibility: For Lumen^® Wavelength services, you can now view topology information for the your services in Control Center: bandwidth, service status, A and Z locations, latency, and total distance the circuit covers.

Order details: For Lumen Marketplace orders, you can now view a copy of the order form by viewing details for the order. Also, for applicable products, we added a photo of the demarcation point to the order details.

Registration, login, and profile enhancements: We made several changes to the first-time-login and password-reset processes as well as some minor changes to how you edit your Control Center profile: consolidated emails for new users into a single email (containing username and temporary link to sign in), security questions removed from Control Center profiles, and new profiles must use an email address for the username.

Portal support tickets: We redesigned how you create and manage portal support tickets.

Billing groups: We redesigned how you group accounts (now called billing groups) to make managing your Lumen accounts in Control Center easier.

Homepage: We added a quick link to the Billing widget to give you access to past invoices directly from the Control Center homepage.

Invoices: We changed the view of your invoices to be filtered to active accounts by default. You can remove the filter to see all accounts.

Lumen^® Voice Complete^®: You can now submit change requests to add or remove encryption from trunk groups on a Voice Complete service. Trunk group utilization reports now indicate whether the trunk group is encrypted.

Payment history: We added the Status column to the default view for your payment history. (Previously, you could add the column by customizing your view, but we now show the column by default.)

Billing: You can now edit payment information for accounts enrolled in AutoPay.

Homepage: We updated the name of the Open Orders widget to the Order Status widget. Use the Order Status widget to track the total number of open install, change, and disconnect orders for your organization (including child orders); click the totals to view summary and status information for each type of order.

Dynamic Connections Ethernet: You can now create connections from a Lumen UNI to Equinix Fabric.

Lumen^® 1+ Switched and Toll Free: You can now manage announcements in Control Center and then add announcements to a route plan to play a recorded message when someone dials a toll-free number.

User profile: We combined the Account Groups and Accounts sections when creating or editing a user into a single Accounts section with accounts nested under their associated account group. We also consolidated the various buttons for managing two-factor authentication, resetting a user's password, etc. into a single menu listing the options.

Homepage: We added a Network Visibility widget to the homepage. You can now access a quick status of your network performance using the widget, then click through to access more details on the Network Visibility dashboard. We also added a Billing Requests widget. If you add this widget to your homepage, you can track the status of billing requests and quickly access the requests in each status.

Cross Connects: We redesigned the form for requesting a cross connect. With the redesign, you can now track the status of your requests in Control Center.

My Services: We retired the My Services page (for network-performance reporting). To access reporting formerly available on My Services, you should now use Network Visibility.

Topology Viewer: You can now create requests to add new paths on Lumen^® Wavelength service up to 400 Gbps. You can also add multiple paths to a single request.

Dynamic Connections IP VPN: You can now create connections from a Lumen VRF to Oracle Private Cloud.

Lumen^® Fiber+ Internet: You can now manage additional router settings within Control Center for Fiber+ Internet: firewall rules, port-forwarding rules, and 1:1 NAT rules.

Services console: We are consolidating all service- and ordering-related navigation items into the new Services console. Use Services console as a single hub to view your services, access service-management tools, and ordering tools. Review the Control Center sitemap to locate service management and ordering tools within the Services console.

View topics related to Services console

Two-factor authentication (2FA): Control Center system administrators can now add 2FA for individual or multiple users on an enterprise ID without granting access to manage Lumen security services. Individual users can also add or re-enroll 2FA for their own user profile. (2FA is still required to access Security services and related features in Control Center.)

Billable field tech tickets: We redesigned the experience for billable field tech tickets (formerly field tech requests) and integrated them into the Ticketing page.

Cloning a user's permissions: When creating a new user or updating an existing user, you can now clone permissions from another user on the same enterprise ID.

Account settings (Billing): We've added additional statuses for two invoice delivery options: invoice PDF and invoice summary. For invoice PDF delivery, you will now see additional statuses of Enrollment Pending and Unenrollment Pending. For invoice summary delivery, you will now see an additional status of Enrollment Pending. These new statuses should help you track accounts with a pending change.

AutoPay: We removed the option to edit AutoPay payment information. To change AutoPay information for an enrolled account, unenroll the account from AutoPay, then reenroll with the updated information.

Homepage: We added a color bar to the Control Center homepage to help you distinguish the homepage from other portal pages and dashboards. We added a new widget to the homepage (What's New at Lumen) to help you learn about new Lumen products. We also made some minor enhancements to improve the mobile experience.

Scheduled payments: We removed the option to edit a scheduled payment. To change payment information or payment date for a scheduled payment, cancel the scheduled payment and schedule a new payment.

Service diagnostics: You can now run service diagnostics (for eligible Lumen services) from your list of services in Control Center.

Network Storage: You can now manage Lumen^® Network Storage in Control Center. To access your services, click Services, then click Network Storage.

Homepage: You can now customize the widgets on the Control Center homepage. You can add or remove widgets and move the widgets around to help you prioritize the information you see when you sign in to Control Center.

Order status: We made minor changes to how you view the status of an order without signing in to align with the order details you see when signed in to Control Center.

Self registration and username/password retrieval: We made minor changes to the process for registering for access to Control Center and to the process for retrieving your Control Center username or password to allow for future enhancements.

Topology Viewer: We made minor changes to the process for adding a new or diverse path for Wavelength services.

Two-factor authentication: We added a timer to the authentication and enrollment pages for tracking the allowed time for signing in. Control Center gives you five minutes to sign in—from the time you click Continue on the Control Center login page until you complete your two-factor authentication (including enrollment, if applicable).

Lumen 1+ Switched and Toll Free services: We fixed issues surrounding SOMOS activation and port order submissions and deployed changes to improve performance on bulk orders. PIC LD customers can now submit block orders using FTP. We also made cosmetic improvements for ordering toll free complex routes and for using the bulk-upload spreadsheet when creating routes.

Billing: We redesigned Account Settings to create four tabs rather than separate pages and to standardize the experience for all delivery methods.

Notifications: We removed the icon from the header. You can now access your notifications on the Control Center homepage or by clicking your username, then selecting Notifications.

Two-factor authentication: Minor text changes to enrollment page to improve usability.

Documents (formerly account documents): We redesigned document storage in Control Center to integrate the two legacy experiences. You can store documents (up to 15 MB each, 50 GB total storage per enterprise ID) for Lumen and your organization to access. You can store four types of documents: General and Services are retained for six months, Colocation and Security are retained for two years.

Order status: We enhanced the order status details for Lumen Fiber+ Internet to show issues or delays in your order. Control Center also shows a yellow arrow next to the impacted milestone.

Services: We added an option to include related services when you download a list of your services.

Voice reports: Redesigned wholesale voice reporting page and renamed as Voice Reports and CDRs (formerly labeled as ELS, LI, and Related). To view wholesale voice reports, select a customer number, then select the type of report you want to view.

Global navigation: Minor updates to global navigation to add additional links for Edge Orchestrator.

Dynamic Connections (IP VPN): You can now create IP VPN Dynamic Connections to Microsoft Azure and Azure Gov.

Shop: We removed Lumen^® Hyper WAN^® from the Self-service Products page. You can no longer purchase Hyper WAN.

Global navigation: Local Service Inventory reports moved from Other Reports to Voice Reports (under the Monitoring tab). Metered power reports removed from Control Center.

Billing: Minor updates to the Invoices page to change the Pay link to a button and to add an icon in the Actions column for viewing an invoice.

Services: You can now search for a service by SCID (service component ID).

Two-factor authentication: We upgraded the authentication process to use a desktop or mobile app (such as Twilio Authy or Microsoft Authenticator) to authenticate you and provide your one-time security code to sign in.

Voice Complete reports: CCP pool threshold metrics moved from Trunk Group Utilization tab to CCP Pool Utilization tab.

Monitoring: You now now view concurrent call path (CCP) pool utilization reports: by day for a date range and by trunk group for a date range.

Services: You now access Lumen managed services within the list of services (click Services, then click Network, Security, and Communications).

Network Visibility: Wholesale customers can now access Network Visilibity to monitor network performance for their Lumen services.

Self-service products:

• You can now add a custom name for self-service products: Lumen^® DDoS Hyper^®, Lumen^® Hyper WAN^®, and Lumen^® Fiber+ Internet.
  
• You can now view additional order status milestones for Fiber+ Internet install, change, and disconnect orders.
  

Services: You can now save views of Lumen services to make managing your services easier.

Global navigation: We reorganized the tabs and renamed two navigation tabs:

• Service Mgmt is now labeled as Support.
  
• Reports is now labeled as Monitoring.
   

In addition to renaming the two tabs, three items moved to the Monitoring tab (which were previously shown under the Service Mgmt tab): Network Visibility, Topology Viewer, and Network Maps.

Billing: We redesigned how you view payment history in Control Center. The new page now includes scheduled payments.

Portal homepage: We simplified the Control Center homepage to elevate critical functions for ease of use:

• Easy access to view notifications
• Quick view of your tickets
• One-click access to pay your invoices online
• Summary view of open orders
   

Services: We integrated all your Network, Security, and Communications services into a single view. With this change, we are renaming the Inventory tab to the Services tab.

Global navigation: You can now shop for and manage Lumen^® Edge Computing Solutions using the Control Center global navigation. All Control Center users with the Shop permission will see Edge-related items on the Shop tab. Edge customers will also see Edge-related items under the Service Mgmt, Services, Reports tabs.

Authentication technology: We increased the security during the portal login process to help ensure the security of your information and to prepare for future authentication enhancements.

Multilingual options: You can now select your preferred language on the Control Center login page—English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, or Japanese.

Dynamic Connections (Ethernet): We redesigned the experience for creating and managing Dynamic Connections (Ethernet) to more closely align with Dynamic Connections (IP VPN).

Global navigation: We changed the menu labels for accessing self-service products in Control Center. To access these products, click Shop, then click Self-service Products.

Quoting: We added two additional classes of service (Basic and Enhanced) when quoting Lumen^® Ethernet Virtual Private Line and Lumen^® Ethernet Private Line services.

Billing: We redesigned the experience for viewing current invoices and making one-time payments to integrate the two. We created a new page to improve access to past invoices and requested invoice PDFs. We also added search and filter tools to help you organize and track current and prior invoices. With these changes, we also reorganized the Billing tab to consolidate the invoice-delivery options, AutoPay, and account groups into a new category: Account Settings.

Global navigation: We changed the menu labels for accessing use and billing reports. They are now labeled Usage Analyst and Bill Analyst. There are no changes to the reporting options available to you.

New product added to Control Center: Control Center now supports Lumen^® Enterprise Wireless Access Service. If you purchased this service from Lumen, you can track the status of your order, view your service in inventory, and create and manage repair tickets for your service as you do for other Lumen services.

Self registration: Control Center now sets the self registration toggle to Active for new enterprise IDs allowing you to self-register for access to the new enterprise ID. Want to turn off self registration? Control Center system administrators can turn self registration on or off for an enterprise ID.

Alerts & Notifications: We updated the Alerts & Notifications page—accessed from the icon in the upper-right corner of Control Center. You can view billing alerts you've created (or created for you by a system administrator) as well as Lumen notifications (such as release announcements). We also added a new Alerts & Notifications KPI on the homepage for easy access to your alerts and notifications.

Self registration: You can now register for Control Center using an order number and service ID.

Self-service ordering: On the Shop page, we removed the Saved Quotes tab and consolidated the information onto the Saved Orders tab.

Order status: We integrated the two legacy pages for order status, so you can view all Lumen orders on a single page. You can also create custom views of orders to help you track those orders important to you.

Security certificate management: Manage digital certificates for the Lumen security services platform for Adaptive Network Security—Mobility and Adaptive Network Security with Deep Packet Inspection with Basic and Premium Beta service.

Billing requests: We integrated the two legacy pages for billing requests, so you can create an dmanage all requests for your organization from a single page. To submit a request, you now select the billing account number, select the type of request, then fill in the fields Control Center provides.

Change requests: We updated forms for Voice Complete and Toll Free change requests.

Self-service products: You can now view details for pending inventory and manage your order for Fiber+ Internet, DDoS Hyper, and Dynamic Connections IP VPN.

Ticketing: You can now download a filtered view of the Ticket Summary page. Control Center includes any columns you customized in the Excel spreadsheet you download.

Fiber+ Internet: You can purchase Fiber+ Internet using the Shop page in Control Center. If your business needs change, you can also disconnect the service directly from Control Center too.

Network Visibility (beta): You can now access our new network-performance dashboard and reporting, Network Visibility.

Notifications: We redesigned the subscriptions page and the notifications you can subscribe to—now called notifications. As a Control Center user, you can create and manage your personal notifications for billing, repair tickets, and scheduled maintenance. As a Control Center system administrator, you can create and manage notifications for Control Center users in your organization and even create email notifications for people who don't have access to Control Center.

Quoting: You can now quote IP VPN services in Control Center: IP VPN Port and Access. Quotes are available for 1-, 2-, and 3-year terms.

Scheduled Maintenance: When you view scheduled maintenance for your organization in List view, the In Progress Maintenance section now defaults to be open. We added an option to select the time zone when viewing scheduled maintenance. We also added the service ID to the scheduled maintenance list when you export the data.

Ticketing: We added the ZIP code to the A and Z locations shown in ticket details.

Dynamic Connections (Ethernet): You can now open a support ticket for a connection from the list of connections.

Reports: We decommissioned Bill Analyst and Usage Analyst. You should now use Hosted Bill Analyst and Hosted Usage Analyst to view, create, and schedule billing and voice use reports.

Admin: As a system administrator, you can now manage security tokens for users in your organization. Security tokens allow users to sign in with two-factor authentication so they can view and manage Security services.

Change requests: We updated the selections for requesting changes to your Managed Network Services (MNS).

Dynamic Connections: You can now create five additional types of connections between two cloud service providers for Dynamic Connections (Ethernet) service.