Understand the SQS solution

The Shared Quota Service, or SQS, facilitates sharing data, credit, or time between subscribers in what is called quota sharing. Donors are subscribers who share their quota by making a donation to another subscriber (the recipient). The SQS allows subscribers to share their quota. Typically, this is data volume, but it can also be time or credit. Sharing occurs in the following ways:

  1. You share your quota with another subscriber directly. This can be recurring or a once-off donation.

  2. You share your quota with a group.

    1. You can share a once-off donation with the group.

    2. You can automatically share quota with group on plan renewal.

    3. You can also cancel automatic sharing on renewal if you need to.

You can share quota with different groups and are not limited to sharing with one group.
For a more in-depth look at the SQS, see the SQS technical overview.


SQS sharing important points

Whether you decide to share with a group or a subscriber, there are some important points to consider:

General sharing

  1. If you have set a donation to recur, you can still change the % of quota being shared. However, this will only change when the plan renews.

  2. You can donate a once-off quota share at any time whether you have recurring enabled or not.

  3. You can continue to share quota from your shareable plan so long as you have quota to share.

    For example, if you have 6GB and you share 500MB with your friend and 1GB with your sister, you can continue sharing the remaining 4.5GB as you please within the plan period.
Group management

  1. You can add or delete subscribers from the group as you please.

  2. You can delete a group any time you like in which case all shared quota remains with the subscribers to which it was shared, so it is important to consider the group before sharing quota.

    If there is a recurring donation setup, deleting the group will cancel the recurring donation.

  3. You must have a unique name as the owner of the group for each of your groups. This may be auto-assigned upon creation, depending on your provider’s implementation of the SQS solution.

  4. You can still give a once-off donation as you wish even within a group.

Subscribers and plans

  1. Subscribers can be a part of multiple groups and receive donations from multiple donors.

    Typically, subscribers have a limit on the number of plans which they can have. Each time a subscriber receives a donation (whether recurring or once-off), a new plan is created. Therefore, it is possible that a donation to a subscriber could fail if the maximum plan threshold has been reached.

  2. The plan being shared with another subscriber inherits the original plan’s attributes except the shareable attribute. Because of this, plans that are shared cannot be shared again by the recipient of the donation.

  3. You cannot share your core subscriber plan.

SQS FAQs

What plans can I share?

You can only share plans that have shareQuota enabled in the plan definition.


What is the maximum number of members that a group can have?

In the SQS configuration, there is a property called sqs.group.max.members which determines the maximum group members. The default for this property is 10000. Operators can configure this to a different value if desired.


If I delete a group member, does the donor get notified?

No.


What attributes, such as plan priority, expiry date, etc., are assigned to the shared plan for a recipient?

The shared plan inherits all attributes except the shareable attribute from the donor plan.