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TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

  • 1.  TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 26, 2021 10:02
    Hi Team,

    I have a requirement to expose Open API spec to validate the customer entered input data.

    The input data can be either (Landline number/ Account Number/ Mobile Number). Post validating the data, application will allow the customer make the payment.

    Can somebody recommend if any Open API spec available for this requirement.

    We will get only one input here and output will be validation success or failure kind of API.

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    veera chopperla
    BT Group plc
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  • 2.  RE: TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 27, 2021 13:40
    Hi Veera
    Can you clarify in more detail what your use case is?
    Are you trying to identify a customer by contact telephone number, or a particular bill document, or what?
    There could be many possible APIs relevant, depending on your exact use cases, e.g.
    • TMF629 Customer Management
    • TMF637 Product Inventory
    • TMF666 Account Management


    ------------------------------
    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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  • 3.  RE: TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 29, 2021 00:00
    Hello Jonathan,

    We have anonymous payment usecase, where customer needs to enter either phone number or mobile number or account number to make the payment.

    After success validation, the  payment can be taken from the customer.

    Please suggest which API operation can be suitable for this.

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    veera chopperla
    BT Group plc
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 29, 2021 03:53
    Sorry Veera, but I'm still not clear what exactly you are trying to achieve:
    • What sort of payment is this (postpaid bill, prepaid topup, deposit, payment of one-time charge during order, etc.)
    • What does it mean - anonymous - if the end user is entering some details they are surely no longer anonymous
    Please clarify the exact business use case and your suggested user interaction flow. This will help discover which APIs might be relevant.

    ------------------------------
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 29, 2021 04:15
    Hello Jonathan,

    Apologies for the confusion caused here.

    Anonymous in my view, Customer can come and make the payment for his own account for his friend's relatives account.  So here, the customer can enter his account or friends information to proceed with the due payment.

    The due amount can be his monthly/quarterly bill comprises of mobile bill/broadband bill/TV or any other services associated with the account.

    The use case here is customer needs to enter either account number/landline number/ mobile number associated with his billing account. After validating the input, the customer can pay how much amount he want w.r.t that account. Here validation means just validate whether the given input (landline/mobile number) is associated with any account or not, if so we will return the client with the corresponding account number.

    Since we have no idea of who actually paying on this account, that's why I called this call as anonymous.

    I have verified the TMF 666 Account Management (/billingAccount/{id}) which could retrieves the billing account Entity. I feel this can be best suited, though I just need to return the billing account id to confirm the validation.  Here {id} can be either mobile number/phone number/billing account id.  Hope I am going in right direction.






    ------------------------------
    veera chopperla
    BT Group plc
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  • 6.  RE: TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 29, 2021 07:39
    Thanks Veera for the clarification, so let's distill this down to the essentials:
    • The party making the payment is not (necessarily) known to the telco (BT for example). So we shouldn't be calling them a customer, they could be anyone; let's call them a payer.
    • The payer enters some piece of information that identifies the customer, this could be a telephone number or some visible ID
    So:
    • For ID - you need to decide what ID you are use. Typically there is a number that is printed on communications, in the Open API models for Customer and Billing Account there is not such an attribute at the moment (unless you are prepared to use your primary database key, the id field, as a visible key).
    • For telephone number - you need to decide what this number means: Is it the MSISDN of a customer's mobile product, the TN of a fixed-line/VoIP product, the contact telephone number of the customer (or customer's engaged party), or contact telephone number of the billing account.
    • In short, if you want to use TMF Open APIs, you need to see how the Open API model in the various APIs maps into your business.
    Note: In TMF vocabulary, account is strictly a financial term, referring to a billing account (most commonly), financial account (has balances but doesn't accept payments), settlement account (for partners/suppliers). In your example, the payer is making a payment on behalf of a real customer who has a billing account. I know that colloquially (and in telcom-ese) the word account is used as a synonym for customer, but we should try to avoid this use in formal TMF discussions.

    ------------------------------
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Dec 02, 2021 05:06
    Thanks Jonathan for the details provided.

    Yes, we need to validate the input data entered by payer. Here the payer can choose to enter the MSISDN /TN of a fixed-line/Billing Account of the actual customer.

    So to validate the entered input, can we go ahead with GET /customer/{id}?fields=...&{filtering}?? Here id can be passed as one of the above mentioned value, the API will validate and return the basic customer information associated with that input.


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    veera chopperla
    BT Group plc
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  • 8.  RE: TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Dec 02, 2021 07:27
    Hi Veera
    Your proposal will work only if your implementation of the GET Customer "knows" how to interpret the input and find it across all the various related entities (perhaps billing account, perhaps product). As I explained in my previous reply, you need to understand how your input parameters (MSISDN, TN, Account number) map into your API signature and into persisted data.

    ------------------------------
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 9.  RE: TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Dec 02, 2021 08:15
    Hello Jonathan,

    Yes I am trying to find solution for the same. Can you please suggest any better approach here?

    I am looking for any guidelines suggested by TMF to extend the API signature. But didn't found anything yet.

    Regards,
    Veera

    ------------------------------
    veera chopperla
    BT Group plc
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  • 10.  RE: TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Dec 05, 2021 09:27
    TMF630 (design guidelines) has examples of how to extend Open API signatures, using the @ fields (type, baseType, schemaLocation).
    Hope it helps​

    ------------------------------
    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.
    ------------------------------



  • 11.  RE: TMF Open API For Customer Input Validation

    Posted Dec 14, 2021 07:45
    Edited by vikrampaul vikrampaul Dec 15, 2021 02:16
    Thanks Jonathan for the details provided.

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    vikrampaul vikrampaul
    TO BE VERIFIED
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