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  • 1.  TMF637 - product resource

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Dec 16, 2021 04:12
    Folks

    We need to communicate the following two asset properties using the TMF637 Product Inventory API but cannot find any suitable attribute to use on the 'product' resource.

    1. Asset External Service Id - a human readable id acquired from a partner/supplier which acts to uniquely identify the asset. eg. We may resell a subscription provided by a partner/supplier for which they supply us and the the customer with an id. We wish to retain that ID communicating it between our inventory systems using TMF637 API

    2. Asset Service Id - a human readable id generated by us which acts to group together the set of component assets which comprise the 'service' to the customer. eg. The service to the customer may be composed of a piece of equipment, a network connection and a service wrap asset - all three being grouped with a common value (eg. NTW-12345) for this asset property

    NOTE 1 - we observe the existing attribute called productSerialNumber but consider it as not intended for either of the above purposes, according to its documented definition
    NOTE 2 - we observe the existence of 'characteristics' in the resource model but, again, consider these unsuitable to represent either of the above as they are product specific and therefore unsuitable to apply generic searching mechanisms too (among other reasons)

    Can someone please suggest the way ahead - our view is currently that 2 new attributes will be required on the product resource for these.

    Thanks, Darren

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    Darren Wylie
    BT Group plc
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  • 2.  RE: TMF637 - product resource

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Dec 16, 2021 04:44
    Folks - important modification to the post - see revised text for point 1

    Folks

    We need to communicate the following two asset properties using the TMF637 Product Inventory API but cannot find any suitable attribute to use on the 'product' resource.

    1. Asset External Id - a human readable id mastered in and acquired from a partner which acts to uniquely identify the asset. eg. We may resell a subscription provided by a partner for which they supply us and the the customer with this id. We wish to retain this ID communicating it between our inventory systems using TMF637 API

    2. Asset Service Id - a human readable id generated by us which acts to group together the set of component assets which comprise the 'service' to the customer. eg. The service to the customer may be composed of a piece of equipment, a network connection and a service wrap asset - all three being grouped with a common value (eg. NTW-12345) for this asset property

    NOTE 1 - we observe the existing attribute called productSerialNumber but consider it as not intended for either of the above purposes, according to its documented definition
    NOTE 2 - we observe the existence of 'characteristics' in the resource model but, again, consider these unsuitable to represent either of the above as they are product specific and therefore unsuitable to apply generic searching mechanisms too (among other reasons)

    Can someone please suggest the way ahead - our view is currently that 2 new attributes will be required on the product resource for these.

    Thanks, Darren

    ------------------------------
    Darren Wylie
    BT Group plc
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  • 3.  RE: TMF637 - product resource

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Dec 16, 2021 07:30
    Hi Darren
    For 1 -
    "productSerialNumber": {
    "type": "string",
    "description": "Is the serial number for the product. This is typically applicable to tangible products e.g. Broadband Router."
    },
    is possibly what you need. Its name is perhaps unfortunate, and I guess this won't change in the near future. But the semantic contents of this field are indeed a human-readable, unique identifier, with the proviso that the space/context for uniqueness is within the type/class of product, for our purposes this would be the ProductSpecification.

    But an alternative might be to use the external identifier structure, which was defined precisely to express the semantics of external relationships. In v5 of Open APIs, we will hopefully be adding this to many of the managed resources, certainly for Product there is a case for having this. Since it's not there now, you'd have to add it as an extension. We recommend an array of external IDs, to allow the possibility of multiple references to external owners.

    For 2- given that this is going to be common across many or all BT product types, you would use the extension mechanism to add your new attribute.

    And of course your implementation of the API needs to make the fields searchable, no short cuts here.

    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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