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  • 1.  Which TM Forum API can be used to Billing System

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 11, 2019 09:48
    Edited by Sameer Uppal Oct 14, 2019 06:42
    We have found 2 API in TM Open API TMF666 and TMF636 which are more related to account management and Billing Account Management. We are unable to identify which TMF API can be used to integrate with the Billing system. Can someone guide me ,which API can be used to integrate with Billing system?

    Account Management API - TMF666
    Billing Management API - TMF636



    Case1: New Order: Custome has requested for new order. Order Management (OM) has will invoke the fulfillment process. Once request\order is implemented then OM system will be calling below API for create  

    1) Create Customer and Billing Account - We can use TMF636 API
    2) Need to attached commercial chargeable product into the billing system. Which TMF API can be used to attach commerical products into the billing system?
    3) Need to activate the account and commerical chargeable line item.  Which TMF API can be used to attach commerical products into the billing system?


    Case2: Change Order: Custome has requested for change of plan. Order Management (OM) has will invoke the fulfillment process to revise plan. Once request\order is implemented then OM system will be calling below API for create (Account already existing in billing system, no need to create customer): 

    1) Need to disconnect old commerical and attached new commercial chargeable product into the billing system. Which TMF API can be used to attach commerical products into the billing system?
    2) Need to activate the account and commerical chargeable line item.  Which TMF API can be used to attach commerical products into the billing system?


    PLease let us know incase you need more clarity.

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    Sameer Uppal

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  • 2.  RE: Which TM Forum API can be used to Billing System

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 14, 2019 11:19
    Hi Sameer
    To my knowledge, TMF636 is depreciated and TMF666 should be used instead. However this set is only for managing Accounts with Billing, and you would require TMF678 for Bill Management and maybe TMF622 for Product Sales Management. 
    Experts in this area will be able to give you more information, as my knowledge is limited with the APIs we have been using. 

    Best regards
    Aydan

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    Aydan Ozenir
    i2i Systems
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  • 3.  RE: Which TM Forum API can be used to Billing System

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 22, 2019 09:48
    Hi Sameer and Aydan

    To best of my knowledge there is no specific API to handle creation of product-related information in a billing or charging system. The most obvious approach would be that the billing or charging system partially expose the Product Order API (TMF622, as suggested by Aydan). The Product Order resource model has (or should have) all the information needed to implement the pricing inventory within the billing/charging system.
    The implementation of TMF622 would not be complete or fully compliant, since we would not expect the actual creation of a real product order.
    An alternative might be to create a dedicated task operation with a payload optimized for the billing setup use case.
    Adding @Ludovic Robert for additional thoughts.​

    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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  • 4.  RE: Which TM Forum API can be used to Billing System

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 23, 2019 01:44
    thanks Jonathan for your input. Lets wait for @Ludovic Robert to share his input. I appreciate your support.​

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    Sameer Uppal
    Tech Mahindra Limited
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  • 5.  RE: Which TM Forum API can be used to Billing System

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 23, 2019 02:59
    Hello

    My view is very similar to Jonathan's one. I do not think TMF622 (product Order)  will do the job. TMF622 is here to log that an order has been triggered after customer & operator validation and then to follow delivery progress (look on the lifecycle for example).
    So it means that probably another API will be required to manage 'Billing Item' (name to be defined - just my guess) . Probably a good start should be to trigger an discussion with the SID & ODA teams to define data (API resource model)  & API scope.

    Hope it helps


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    Ludovic Robert
    Orange
    My answer are my own & don't represent necessarily my company or the TMF
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  • 6.  RE: Which TM Forum API can be used to Billing System

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Oct 23, 2019 03:12
    Hi there,
    We have been using APIs developed based on TMF622 for our billing system. 
    A Product Order is at the end sales item(s) that needs to be registered to the billing system so that the charging and billing can be carried out based on the product information. Not all the details of the product specification is required of course, but the service, price and some of the resource (such as IMSI and MSISDN) are a must. 
    Similarly, the lifecycle is also has importance from billing perspective, as it determines if the product should be billed or not. 
    Depending on the product and charging structure on the billing system, one can determine the entities that are useful for billing and use these to build the product order structure. 

    Regards
    Aydan

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    Aydan Ozenir
    i2i Systems
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  • 7.  RE: Which TM Forum API can be used to Billing System

    Posted Oct 23, 2019 05:00

    Hi Ludovic, all,
    I think the first step is to define the business scope of "billing item". 
    TMF620 is managing the lifecyle of product catalogue items - i.e. product offerings, product specifications and product offering prices.
    BR,
    Dirk



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    Dirk Rejahl
    TM Forum
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  • 8.  RE: Which TM Forum API can be used to Billing System

    Posted Oct 28, 2019 07:00
    A product catalog has several domains. 
    1.- Commercial
    2.- Billing/rating

    Both are linked so once you sell the products and services, can be billed. The whole definition billing entities required for billing/rating are defined in the second domain. Then, you related the commercial entities with the billing ones through the "Billing items". These entities are the link between finantial, billing and commercial.
    Normally after defining a PriceSpecification you should have a link to the related billing items. Those are linked to the rating plan, price list, etc. to be able to know if you must invoice the different customer comsuptions, in or outside the allowances, buckets, etc.

    Cheers.

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    SANTIAGO LORENTE JURADO
    Pegasystems, Inc.
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  • 9.  RE: Which TM Forum API can be used to Billing System

    Posted Oct 28, 2019 08:42

    Yes, in line with other responses, to manage complete commercial product offering into billing system it involves several APIs, creation of customer entity is pre-requisite and then we need to pass through the commercial product eligibility, consider the managing life cycle of resource, consider the managing life cycle of service and other aspects, so it will be a complete product management followed by shopping cart and ordering process.

    From TMF Open API table point of view I think we need to use several APIs to solve this requirement. For instance TMF 633 Service Catalog API to manage life cycle of service, TMF634 Resource Catalog Management API to manage life cycle of resource, for product eligibility check TMF679 Product Offering Qualification API, for shopping cart TMF663 Shopping Cart API and for ordering TMF622 Product Ordering API.

    We in Ericsson introduced uniform TMF Open API Exposure Layer for digital front ends facilitates the backend functionality through native interfaces, so to manage product offering, we are in discussion to use the approach of extending TMF620 Product Catalog Management API and add the capabilities of TMF633, TMF634 so in this way we can minimize using of several APIs and on top of that we will use TMF679, TMF663, TMF622 to complete the order process.

     

    Customer creation, our model follows to acquire party, party role first and then create customer, further billing account to be created followed by commercial product offering service order APIs which will create contract agreements and then associate the products in our Digital Monetization Platform (DMP).  So the set of APIs could be, TMF 632 Party Management API, TMF 629  Customer Management API, TMF 666 Account Management API along with product offering APIs mentioned above in addition to these APIs we also need to use TMF670 Payment Methods API to read type of payments available and chose for customer payment method.

     
    Coming to product/customer change requirement, Ericsson TMF Open API Exposure Layer facilitates the backend functionality through native interfaces in order to manage such operations.


    I hope this information will helps you some extent.

    Good Luck!!


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    P V N Purushothama
    Ericsson Inc.
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