Thanks for the additional remarks.
We DO consider Reservation as a commercial arrangement, with a contractual obligation on both sides to pay for and fulfill the delivery of the Product once the 'Reservation request' has been accepted - this is essential to our Customers. The use of the ProductOrder.itemTerm, and its corresponding SID ProductOfferingTerm, allows us to set a ProductOfferingPrice for the Reservation and link it to a ServiceLevelAgreement with the Customer. We also require the same commitment where we ourselves are buying/reserving Products from a 3rd party supplier to fulfill that reservation.
From my perspective, it seems unnecessarily 'clunky' to have to expose the complete set of Services and Resources required to fulfill a ProductOrder to my Customers and force them to Reserve them individually, rather than via a single Product Offering in a Product Catalog. Clearly, we will break down the Product internally into its constituent Services and Resources and then reserve them through the TMF640/702 'Activation' APIs - but we don't consider these as appropriate Customer interfaces.
With regards cancellation, TMF622 was seen as the correct API as it DOES allow cancellation of a ProductOrder (through CancelProductOrder) and the subsequent release of Services and Resources.
Original Message:
Sent: Nov 09, 2023 02:11
From: Jonathan Goldberg
Subject: Customer triggering the Reservation of all resources supporting a Product
A couple of additional points on top of Jag's comprehensive reply:
- The ProductOrder.itemTerm is intended for commercial use, to represent commitment terms. I would not recommend that you use it for provisioning-related activities
- There should be a resource reservation API, but its design has been on hold for a long while already. It could in principle have been relevant for some of your use cases.
- If you are "touching" the network by reserving actual services and resources, you need to consider how to model their state, and how to deal with subsequent changes in the order or even total cancelation, that would cause you to free ("unreserve") the services and resources.
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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.
Original Message:
Sent: Nov 03, 2023 08:52
From: Sri-Jagadish (Jag) Baddukonda
Subject: Customer triggering the Reservation of all resources supporting a Product
Hi Gary,
Since you are doing it before the order is submitted for fulfillment, the best way (not the perfect solution) is to model this resource against the PS and use the API the application managing this resource exposes.
If it uses 638/639, there is no other option but to make the CFSS,RFSS or RS available during the pre order submit process.
If it is exposing based on 622, then there is no problem and you can model this resource as attribute against the PS. The way this resource is modelled is the key.
Regards,
Jag
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Sri-Jagadish (Jag) Baddukonda
Bell Canada
Original Message:
Sent: Nov 03, 2023 08:39
From: Gary Wilson
Subject: Customer triggering the Reservation of all resources supporting a Product
Thanks for getting back to me, Jag
In response to your questions ...
1) We are triggering the reservation as the first stage in the order process. The Customer has already checked what solutions we can offer them from our Providers and are available. The Customer has selected their preferred solution for reservation. The only reason it is Reserved and not ordered is that the Customer will provide detailed information on their equipment at a later date (before the Product becomes active)
2) As an internal development, we are trying not to restrict the flexibility of the TM Forum structures, so the Resource could be supporting an externally available Product, Service or Resource. To commit to the reservation from our customer, we would be securing a reservation from our Providers for all supporting Products, Services or Resources - irrespective of how the operators of the development have chosen to specify their Product Offerings (based on what is available from their Providers)
With regards reservation of the externally provided Services and Resources, we were looking to use TMF640 and TMF702 to manage the transition of an ordered product to 'reserved'. We are limited to TMF622 for any externally provided Products as there is no equivalent Activation API for Products
Hope that clarifies
Kind Regards
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Original Message:
Sent: 11/3/2023 8:20:00 AM
From: Sri-Jagadish (Jag) Baddukonda
Subject: RE: Customer triggering the Reservation of all resources supporting a Product
HI Gary,
It depends on the "Resource" being reserved. More precisely, in your product model, is this resource being modelled as a Resource under the PS or it is a CFSS or even an RFSS attached ot the CFSS?
Based on that the relevant API should be used i.e. 622,641 ,638 etc.
There is also another factor. If you are doing this reservation as a soft reservation only i.e. before the order is submitted, then the larger question of your CPQ / CRM whihc is creating the order having access to these lower entities in the product model comes inot play. hence in that case, it is easier to model to model these attributes against the PS and trigger 622 and then copy the data inot the lower entities like RS or CFSS as the case may be after the order is submitted.
So, long answer short, the 2 key criterion are
- When are your triggering this reservation
- How is this resource being modelled
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Jag
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Sri-Jagadish (Jag) Baddukonda
Bell Canada
Original Message:
Sent: Nov 02, 2023 08:43
From: Gary Wilson
Subject: Customer triggering the Reservation of all resources supporting a Product
Hi
We need a mechanism to allow a Customer to define a subset of the Product Offering characteristics to identify and reserve the Service and Resources needed to support a product for fulfillment in the future (e.g. a SatCom service provided for a defined time window in the future - possibly months ahead), but without identifying characteristics specific to the equipment that will be connected (as this information is not always known until nearer the SatCom service start time)
We have identified Activation APIs for both the supporting Services (TMF640) and Resources (TMF702), but not one for Products
However, we have identified an itemTerm attribute as part of the TMF622 ProductOrderItem that we think could be used to trigger the reservation of supporting Service and Resources (e.g. 'name' is a known keyword "RESERVE", with a duration defining how long to reserve the resources for). This could allow the reservation process to be triggered without the complete set of characteristics being completed for the Product Order to be fully provisioned.
We just wanted to confirm that this is the way it should be done or whether there is an alternative approach that could/should be used
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Thanks in advance for your help
Gary Wilson
Airbus
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