Hi,
A service order doesn't need to know before if it is going to be fully automated or semi automated. Any assumption that an external system makes about this can be wrong. A semi-automated flow can be fully automated at a later time. Automation typically goes in phases with the goal to improve the degree of automation. A fully automated can still get stuck on exceptional conditions (not enough bandwidth to fulfill request, no more IP addresses, VLANs or phone numbers matching the criteria).
The service order however has a way to indicate to the outside world that manual tasks are required. The lifecycleStatus "pending" actually indicates that the order is waiting for a manual intervention. By patching the lifecycleStatus to "inProgress", the task handling system can signal that the service order should retry to continue the process.
To understand which step needs to be tried to continue should be determined from the lifecycle of the service instead of the service order. "designed" will indicate that a CFS is succesfully decomposed in in RFS, but not all of the requiredResources have been allocated. "reserved" will indicate that all resources are allocated but not all of the supportingResources are operating.
Manual tasks in a server order usually evolve around resource allocation and getting resources operating.
I hope this clarifies how lifecycleStatus management is essential for fully or semi automated workflows.
Regards
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Koen Peeters
Ciminko Luxembourg
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Original Message:
Sent: Aug 03, 2021 05:28
From: Aneesh Damodaran
Subject: TMF641 Fully Automated vs Semi Automated Service Order
Here is a scenario where upstream OSS system can send two types of service order:
1) fully automated - meaning, the request in itself has the complete information for fulfilling that service.
2) semi automated - upstream system request doesn't have all the information for completing the fulfillment of the order. Operational Users will login into order system, manually fill in additional details on to the order form and then re-submit. Which then takes the same route as that of fully automated.
Is there any placeholder in TMF 641 service order API to capture this differentiation?
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Aneesh Damodaran
BT Group plc
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