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Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

  • 1.  Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 13, 2021 22:26
    Hi 
    I am working for a tele company and we have bunch of services to perform charges to customer's billing, such as roaming data, connection fee, etc.  Based on SID, it close to Customer domain and in API, we think it should close to billing, but we cannot find corresponding operations in TMF678CustomerBillManagement.  Another thinking is it might close to TMF676PaymentManagement, however 'payment' doesn't equal to 'charge', one is for pay immediately while another is like set arrangement to billing. 
    Could anyone help?  Thanks advance~

    yilin

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    Yilin Chen
    TELUS
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  • 2.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 14, 2021 00:27
    Not sure whether it helps but have a look at TMF635 Usage Management. It includes the capability to store the charge associated with usage. You can also reference the product used to rate it

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    Stuart Batten
    Telstra Corporation
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  • 3.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 14, 2021 02:22
    Hi Yilin, Stuart

    I think that Yilin is looking for operations that allow charges (applied customer billing rate - ACBR) to be manipulated. This is an area where functionality is missing in the Open API.
    The assumption in the Open API is that charges (ACBRs) are generated onto a bill automatically as a result of some background charging and billing process, and these ACBRs are then accessible, read-only, using the operations in TMF678.
    But the whole additional area of manual or automatic processing (adding charges, giving credits, etc.) is not exposed at the moment.

    Hope it helps

    Jonathan

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
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  • 4.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 14, 2021 09:48
    Hi Jonathan, great thanks, that (ACBR) looks like exactly what we are looing for.  Do you know if any member have start this part? If possible we would like to get any updates (such as use cases, data model, etc).  Thank you very much!

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    Yilin Chen
    TELUS
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  • 5.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 18, 2021 14:37
    Could we add POST ACBR to TMF678?

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    Yilin Chen
    TELUS
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  • 6.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 14, 2021 09:43
    Thank you firstly. The Message Jonatha left below is really close what we are looking for. Most likely, Product and Usage could be as  reference model of such "Charge".

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    Yilin Chen
    TELUS
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  • 7.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 14, 2021 16:36
    Hi Chen,

    Have a look at TMF678 Customer Bill Management

    Regards

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    Koen Peeters
    Ciminko Luxembourg
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  • 8.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 18, 2021 14:33
    Thank you!

    After go through TMF678, my understanding is "Applied Customer Billing Rate resource" is what we can use to create POST operations to apply charge. 
    However, "customer billing rate" seems as atomy of each billing, which could indicator what item(s) has been calculated into specific bill, then I go back check but cannot find it on  "Customer Bill resource" diagram. 
    should ACBR part of Bill?


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    Yilin Chen
    TELUS
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  • 9.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 19, 2021 03:40
    Hi Yilin
    It's not clear to me what you were looking for. But I'll try to explain my understanding, apologies if this appears too elementary.
    In the product catalog (via TMF620), we define the implementation of the pricing, i.e. ProductOfferingPrice.
    As part of the ordering process (via TMF622), the pricing is instantiated for the ordered product, as OrderPrice, and sent to some billing and charging system.
    The pricing is also instantiated in the product inventory as ProductPrice.
    The billing and charging uses its internal representation of the OrderPrice/ProductPrice to do the following:
    • Rate any onetime and recurring fees that result from orders or ongoing product ownership (onetime could be OrderPrice, recurring will likely be ProductPrice)
    • Rate accumulative usage according to any relevant usage-type ProductPrice
    All these rates are AppliedCustomerBillingRates.
    Is it clearer?

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
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  • 10.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 19, 2021 10:26
    Thank you Jonathan, it is more clear on ACBR. 
    What we are looking for is which API(operation) we can perform billing charge. As you mentioned before, it is missing right now, but TMF678 has related GET operation. 

    Now we have 2 questions:
    1) Is it proper to place POST charging  in 678? OR it will be better to create another Billing Charging API?
    2) As ACBR is part of bill, why it doesn't appear on CustomerBill model? for example, customer purchased a roaming pack, the billing system charged it for coming bill cycle, when he review his invoice (bill document), should the roaming pack showed on his bill?

    Thanks you again Jonathan spent time to discuss this topic. 


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    Yilin Chen
    TELUS
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  • 11.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 19, 2021 11:35
    Hi Yilin
    1. Interesting question, I don't have a good answer. Seemingly we want to keep entity ownership within a single API, and currently Customer Bill TMF678 is the "owner" of the Charge (ACBR) entity. On the other hand, there are many operations that we might want to carry out on ACBRs, and also ACBRs can be in a non-billed state so not appear on any bill. So there is a case for separating ACBR away from the Bill API and making a separate API. I just don't know how much traction this move would have in the Open API team, there could be other priorities at the moment.
    2. In your example, the charge will certainly appear on the bill, including in the generated bill document that is an attachment to the CustomerBill entity. The relationship in the API model is from ACBR to Bill. I don't know why this was done originally, but I can certainly justify it. A charge can appear on 0 or 1 bills, but a bill may have 10s, 100s, or even 1000s of charges. If a consumer wants to get all the charges relating to a bill, it can do a GET search on charge with bill id as a filter parameter.
    Hope it helps.

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
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  • 12.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    Posted Jan 19, 2021 13:00
    Dear Yilin,

    may I ask what would be smallest value of an ACBR that you want to charge for ?

    And do you also want to charge for prepaid customers?

    Lothar










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    Lothar Reith
    Detecon International
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  • 13.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 19, 2021 15:19
    Hi Yilin,

    Although the TMF678 does not document the use of POST operation on the ACBR we have implemented this operation in our environment.
    That is a fairly straightforward extension of the API.

    We use it for adding charges and credits where our automation is currently lacking:

    1) SLA credits for SLA breaches
    2) courtesy credits
    3) debets for customer that don't have support contract

    Regards

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    Koen Peeters
    Ciminko Luxembourg
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  • 14.  RE: Which API could be 'Charge' fit in?

    Posted Feb 14, 2021 00:46
    Edited by Prakash Ranjan Feb 14, 2021 00:53

    Hi , 

     I was looking for below where I see this discussion thread relevant ( and so not starting new thread with these questions).
    Would like to get clarity if these would be upcoming in next version of TMF678?

    Use case Open API needed Remarks
    a) Create Adhoc charge in Billing
    b) Post credit against exisiting charge
    POST and PATCH Operation on ACBR - Missing operation
    c) Inform Finance for Accural (unbilled charges)  PUBLISH ACBR  Missing Operation
    d) Digital presentment of Invoice,
    e)Communicating Finance, DWH..
    PUBLISH CustomerBill CUSTOMER BILL STATE CHANGE NOTIFICATION available in pdf but  seems Missing JSON Specification

    Another small remark : the resource 'Applied Customer Billing Rate' - is it really 'rate'(price def per unit) or we are referring calculated 'charge' here (do understand the applied part changes the meaning though, but resource should clearly say what it is)?. Rate seems to bit misleading here but then its minor cosmetic point and just my opinion.



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    Prakash Ranjan
    Infosys Architect
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