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  • 1.  API for Resources Creation Workflow and Automation of Manual steps

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 02, 2020 03:38
    Hi All,

    Hope you are doing well.

    I want your advice on which API should we use to implement below use case:

    Before creating a product offering in the catalog manager, we need to define a CS offer ID in the charging system so that it will be available to be included as a resource in the product. So the scenario in our legacy system is something like below:

    1. MKT team share the information about offer which they want to create with CS team.
    2. CS team go and create a related CS offer ID in the charging system and share with MKT team
    3. MKT team share the offer information and CS offer ID with catalog manager MSO to create the product
    4. catalog manager MSO guys create the offer

    We want to automate above process. So that MKT guys raise their request in the system and setup the steps which is required for launching the offer.

    Please note currently our charging system doesn't support any integration with other system so that we can create the CS offer ID and other attributes automatically, so this tasks will remain as a manual activity. Actually we want to enable MKT team to define a workflow for the manual activities which is required for launching an offer.

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    Arash Zolfaghari
    Tecnotree
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  • 2.  RE: API for Resources Creation Workflow and Automation of Manual steps

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 02, 2020 03:43
    Hi Arash
    Apart from the specific APIs relevant for your content world (e.g. TMF620 Product Catalog), take a look at the Process Management API TMF701 (available on the Open API table here).
    This API is supposed to allow abstraction of running a process over a BPM engine.
    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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  • 3.  RE: API for Resources Creation Workflow and Automation of Manual steps

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 02, 2020 03:56
    Thank you dear @Jonathan Goldberg ​, i was considered TMF701 using a BPMN tool as well. So nothing prevent us from using this API for the pre-ordering purpose. Am i right?

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    Arash Zolfaghari
    Tecnotree
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  • 4.  RE: API for Resources Creation Workflow and Automation of Manual steps

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 02, 2020 04:04
    The Process Management API is content-neutral - completely orthogonal to the business problem that you are trying to solve.

    The main question is - does it make sense to run your process via a process engine. You might find that some UI-bound flows are easier to create and run in UI frameworks, full BPM capabilities could be considered as overkill, and may even constrain your ability to create a flexible flow. A good compromise might be to create UI mini-flows where each flow is a single BPM step, thus having coarse-grained orchestration in the BPM and fine-grade flow control in the UI.

    You might also want to discuss with @Ludovic Robert, who introduced this API.​

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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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  • 5.  RE: API for Resources Creation Workflow and Automation of Manual steps

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 02, 2020 04:37
    Exactly the thing is we don't want to make it complicated. Specially we don't want to deal with complexity of the BPMN tools. So i do agree that it's better to include a single step BPM step as mini-flows in the TMF701 to relate them as workflow steps.

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    Arash Zolfaghari
    Tecnotree
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  • 6.  RE: API for Resources Creation Workflow and Automation of Manual steps

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 02, 2020 05:31
    Dear @Ludovic Robert ​, May we kindly have your advise?

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    Arash Zolfaghari
    Tecnotree
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  • 7.  RE: API for Resources Creation Workflow and Automation of Manual steps

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 02, 2020 09:35
    Hello Arash,
    From TMF701 nothing prevent you to keep it very simple and not use a BPMN engine to motorize it (but instead hard-code task(s)) . Right now in my company we're implementing a catalog management function with this pattern (using 701 without bpmn tool) to manage ProductSpecification creation (but we defined a list of tasks and the process flow instance can be saved at any stage before product specification completion)

    Regarding your question it is about task granularity (you need a lest one task). If you define a single step process it means only one task ? if this task is complety processed via an UI mini-flow what about if you want to stop it before the end ?  You want to start over again next time or be able to save the mini-flow to recover it later?

    Best regards
    Ludovic

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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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  • 8.  RE: API for Resources Creation Workflow and Automation of Manual steps

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Nov 04, 2020 01:51
    Dear @Ludovic Robert,

    Exactly we are looking for the same functionality, i mean as you said, implementing a catalog management function to manage ProductSpecification creation. But we want to keep it simple, so just managing the manual tasks to complete the productSpecification is enough. Let me answer your questions inline:

    - If you define a single step process it means only one task ? Yes only one manual task, then by using TMF701 we are able relate this task to the next step. am i right?
    - if this task is complety processed via an UI mini-flow what about if you want to stop it before the end ? To keep it simple, each task can be successfully completed or failed. I mean one would go and do the task, then come and update the result of the task as success of failed, then based on the result, by using TMF701 the next step should be triggered.
    You want to start over again next time or be able to save the mini-flow to recover it later? No need to start over again next time.

    Actually at the beginning i was thinking to use TMF701 as process management, and Appointment API (TMF646) to define each task as manual activity instead of using hard coded tasks. Because even now i'm somehow confused by what is the hard coded tasks.



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    Arash Zolfaghari
    Tecnotree
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