Open APIs

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  • 1.  High Usage alert

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 05, 2025 13:18

    Hi All,

    I was hoping that someone might be able to help me concerning a requirement I have been given which i was attempting to attribute to one of the TMF API's.

    Essentially if a customer is frequently being constrained by their bandwidth (hitting their limit on a broadband service) or indeed the opposite and frequently not getting close to it the business wishes to send a high/low usage notification to the service provider to suggest that they may want to upgrade or downgrade their service.

    I have looked at TMF677 Usage Consumption, TMF635 Usage Management . TMF767 Product Usage, TMF727 Service Usage.

    None of these really fitted the use case because this is where our platform will be generating a notification out to a partner and not asking them to call into an API. Also the use case through these API's are more about the generating of the usage data (or searching for it) and this is more about messaging off the back of processing the usage data.

    If anyone has any knowledge of where an appropriate resource lives to send a notification on in the Open API framework that would be massively helpful..

    thanks in advance

    Dave



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    David Whitfield
    PlatformX Communications (PXC)
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  • 2.  RE: High Usage alert

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 06, 2025 10:06

    HI Dave,

    are you part of the wholesale project? Maybee it is a good idea to place the requirement there: https://www.tmforum.org/wholesale-broadband-project/ 

    For the actual messaging to the service provider, I would  rather use the Product Inventory Management API and exend the Product to contain such information. With that you could easily send a notification to the service provider with a productAttributeValueChangeEvent

    Regards

    Uwe



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    Uwe Sülter
    Deutsche Telekom AG
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  • 3.  RE: High Usage alert

    Posted Feb 06, 2025 10:07


    Hi Dave,

    I believe TMF677 Usage Consumption API could be useful for your case. However, if I understood your requirement correctly, it might be more appropriate to accumulate instances of resource exhaustion or underutilization on a monthly basis within the BSS and then feed this data into a BI system. This would allow you to analyze trends over time and determine the best moment to take action and offer a more suitable product change.

    This approach seems more efficient than querying a service in real time, which could impact your BSS's performance.

    I hope this helps! Let me know if you need further clarification.

    Best regards,
    Matias Ridelnik 







  • 4.  RE: High Usage alert

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 06, 2025 13:19

    Hey @Matias Ridelnik,

    Thanks for your response. As you suggest the querying of a service in real time is definitely not what we want to do. We wish to send this as a notification to our partner. I think i'm just not really clear there is a resource (in the REST sense not the TMF sense) in the API suite appropriate. The idea of this notification is to travel from our IT stack to a wholesale partners IT stack. So if you do have any further thoughts on this then i'd really welcome them

    @Uwe Sülter thanks for your response. Yes I am involved in the wholesale broadband standardisation project, I recognise your name from the calls :-). Whilst i think its a good idea to add this to the backlog i think there are lots of things that the team will prioritise ahead of this for the time being with much more basic use cases. As with everything in life there are things that can wait and others that need to be answered now ahead of such efforts based on business needs.

    Thanks for your input on productattributevaluechanged event. For me this isn't very descriptive, which attribute has changed? is it indicating high usage or low usage? For my API client this needs to be really clear. I also dont believe that the product has 'changed', really this use case is about notifying to a partner that they 'might' want to consider a change. Hence i'm struggling to attribute this to a specific TMF REST resource that i'm saying has already changed as events are essentially past tense.

    The only thing i'd really thought that might fit this use case was the alarm management API because i'd be 'alarming' that a service (product) was being under or over utilised, however this isn't the kind of thing that would maintain state, the business just require a single shot notification. Also i dont think that the Alarm management is intended for this purpose and is more about problems that have occurred in the network.

    If there are any further thoughts then they'd be appreciated



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    David Whitfield
    PlatformX Communications (PXC)
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  • 5.  RE: High Usage alert

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 12, 2025 06:36

    Hi @Uwe Sülter @Matias Ridelnik or anyone else on the boards with any thoughts I was hoping that someone might be able to suggest any ideas on how to use the open apis to answer this use case? 

    For me it just doesn't seem to really fit at the moment with any of the REST Resources i've looked at to issue some kind of recommendation notification.... please see the above post

    thanks :-)



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    David Whitfield
    PlatformX Communications (PXC)
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  • 6.  RE: High Usage alert

    Posted 30 days ago

    Hi David,

    I understand your challenge in finding a suitable TMF Open API resource to issue a high/low usage notification to your wholesale partner. Given that your use case is about sending a one-time notification rather than querying or managing usage data, here are a few potential approaches that might fit your needs:

    1. TMF688 - Event Management API

    This API is designed to handle event-based notifications, which seems well aligned with your requirement.

    You could define a custom event (e.g., HighUsageAlert or LowUsageAlert) and trigger it when a customer exceeds or underutilizes their bandwidth.

    This method ensures a clear, one-time notification without maintaining state.

    2. TMF632 - Party Interaction Management API

    This API facilitates communication between different business parties (e.g., service providers and wholesale partners).

    You could use it to send a "recommendation notification" rather than a direct product change.

    3. Extending TMF637 - Product Inventory Management API

    As suggested by Uwe, a possible workaround is extending productAttributeValueChangeEvent.

    To make the notification clearer, you could introduce specific attributes such as "usageAlertLevel" with values "high" or "low", ensuring that the message is well understood by the recipient.

    4. TMF620 - Product Catalog API with Custom Eventing

    If your platform already manages products and offers through TMF620, you could define a new offering for recommended upgrades/downgrades based on usage patterns.

    Among these options, TMF688 (Event Management API) seems to be the best fit for a notification-based approach, as it allows sending alerts without modifying inventory or triggering a past-tense event.

    If none of these solutions fully meet your needs, it might be worth discussing within the Wholesale Broadband Project to explore potential enhancements to the TMF API framework.

    Hope this helps, and happy

     to discuss further!

    Best regards,

    Matias Ridelnik 



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    Matias Ridelnik
    TO BE VERIFIED
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  • 7.  RE: High Usage alert

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 30 days ago

    Hi @Matias Ridelnik :as you mentioned, I will vouch for this API (1. TMF688 - Event Management API), creating the new event and publish this and the partner system can subscribe the vent with high and low usage. But I have not came across this use case scenario of low usage threshold!! the low usage threshold will be defined per month or daily basis!



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    Poshetty.Kallem
    [TM]
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  • 8.  RE: High Usage alert

    Posted 29 days ago

    The OCS (Online Charging System) is responsible for managing this. Since it handles rating and charging, it also has the capability to notify based on predefined accumulators and associated thresholds.

    The accumulation criteria can be defined on a daily or monthly basis, depending on your business needs. However, it is the OCS that should handle this process, and then the OCS itself should call the interface to send the notification

    .



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    Matias Ridelnik
    TO BE VERIFIED
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  • 9.  RE: High Usage alert

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 29 days ago

    OCS can handle 80 % or 100 % trigger points for the high usage consumption and sending notifications but I have never come across low usage handling scenarios 



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    Poshetty.Kallem
    [TM]
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  • 10.  RE: High Usage alert

    Posted 29 days ago

    For low usage, what you could do is manage the resource expiration event. If, for example, you allocated 1GB of resources and, at the time of expiration, the remaining units are greater than 80%, you could determine that the customer did not consume enough.

    The OCS also typically has the capability to notify when a resource expires due to reaching its expiration date, providing information on the total allocated units and the remaining balance

    .



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    Matias Ridelnik
    TO BE VERIFIED
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