Open APIs

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  • 1.  Request-to-Change scenario

    Posted Jul 17, 2018 10:29

    Hi all,

    For the following B2B scenario, I am trying to identify the applicable Open APIs.  Any input from the community is more than welcome!

    Business scenario:   Existing enterprise customer changing his services on a self-serve way by filling and submitting a form (e.g. raising bandwidth, adding new phone lines, deleting services).  I think the following APIs are involved:

    • Product offering qualification API:  to verify customer eligibility
    • Service qualification API:  to verify service availability
    • Product ordering API: to issue an order at the CRM level
    • Service ordering API:  to issue service orders at the service fulfillment level
    • Activation and configuration API: to configure and activate the services (and the resources used)

    In addition, the Change Management API will handle the customer request (i.e. collect & validate the request data) and orchestrates the 5 APIs above.

    Questions:
        1)Is it correct to say that the Change management will handle the request and then orchestrates the other APIs? Maybe this role can be played with the                         product    ordering API?
         2) Is the selection of APIs correct? Product ordering and service ordering can potentially be merged in this scenario?

    Many thanks,



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    Mehdi Akalay
    Business Architect
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  • 2.  RE: Request-to-Change scenario

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jul 18, 2018 02:15
    Hi Mehdi

    At a high-level your analysis appears correct, with one qualification:
    • To my best understanding (and subject to correction :)) the Change Management API is not intended for day-to-day mass (retail residential) telcom operations. Rather it is intended for handling changes in the telco itself (new network rollout perhaps) or major rollout projects for enterprise customers. So I suggest you remove that from your consideration.
    I recommend that the next stage in your analysis would be to identify the logical systems involved in this flow (in your specific IT landscape) and sketch out the process in a sequence diagram. This will enable you to pin down which operations within each API are invoked, which system invokes, which system provide, etc. You may discover that you will need additional APIs (perhaps) such as Customer Management (to get details of customer if needed for qualification), Account Management (to get possible pay means for added products), etc.

    Hope this helps

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
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  • 3.  RE: Request-to-Change scenario

    Posted Jul 18, 2018 10:42
    Hi Jonathan,

    Many thanks for your input.

    The intent for this business scenario is really large enterprises (customers with hundreds of sites) submitting their changes on a self-serve manner  through their own WEB portal (connected to our APIS).

    My challenge is what API to expose to the customer to get the request and orchestrate the processing?  I cannot expose the 5 identified APIs and let the customer perform the orchestration?  So far, the change management API seems the best fit for that mission ... unless there is another one I am missing....
    or maybe this is a gap in the current Open  APIs list ?


    Thanks!

    Mehdi


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    mehdi akalay
    Business Architect
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  • 4.  RE: Request-to-Change scenario

    Posted Jul 18, 2018 03:51
    Hi Medhi,

    Interesting approach in how you intend on using the Managed Change API.... from my read through this API... its intention is to manage any potential outages to the service and relay this between the External Party (i.e. Field Management Company in this case) and the customer.

    "Normally" a broadband speed change and addition of Voice service does not require any external party (field force) management... unless the service outage is very sensitive (e.g. where the customer is a utility provider or bank that cannot tolerate any form of outage) or requires additional work to make the service work (e.g. new diverse routes or new physical equipment needs to be installed at customer site or network), in which case the Management API would be ideal in agreeing the service outage times (Planned Outage) with the end customer.

    This type of scenario is very common with corporate/government customers who have tight SLAs on service outage and need any Planned Outages to be agreed to avoid compromising commercial SLA (and penalties).

    hope this helps

    Pete

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    Pete Bains
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  • 5.  RE: Request-to-Change scenario

    Posted Jul 18, 2018 10:50
    Hi Peter,

    Thanks for the feedback.

    In your opinion what will be the best API who can receive the corporate customer change request, validate it and orchestrate the order handling with the other identified APIS?

    Best regards,

    Mehdi

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    mehdi akalay
    Business Architect
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