Ericsson Inc.
Original Message:
Sent: Feb 03, 2025 11:13
From: Matthieu Hattab
Subject: How to categorize a "balance transfer" on TMF679 Product Offering Qualification Management API v4?
TMF679 does not only provide Product Offering commercial eligibility, it serves multiple purposes.
One example is dynamic pricing computation, and another is product listing.
On the Topic of Qualification
The TMFC027 component (which exposes TMF679) can qualify three types of products:
- Product Offering (as you pointed out)
- Product (an instance of the Product Offering in the product inventory)
- Promotion
Checking the eligibility of a transfer balance should indeed not be done via TMF679. However, in the absence of a proper API, you could use TMF679 as a workaround.
Why TMF645 is Not a Viable Solution
In my opinion, TMF645 is not a feasible option.
The TMFC009 component (which exposes TMF645) is responsible for verifying and validating service availability based on specified and configured business rules. It must:
- Identify at least one technical solution (RFSspec) available to deliver the service (CFSspec).
- Check the availability of all resource types involved in this technical solution.
It is very unlikely that this component has access to the necessary data to compute transfer balance business rules.
it's important not to confuse the word "service".
In hindsight, we should probably have guided the OP toward using the TMF723, Policy API, which is more generic and better suited for broader business scenarios.
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Kind regards,
Matthieu Hattab
Lyse Tele AS
Original Message:
Sent: Feb 03, 2025 09:17
From: Yurii Yushchak
Subject: How to categorize a "balance transfer" on TMF679 Product Offering Qualification Management API v4?
Hi Matthieu,
You are absolutely right about the term "service". My concern with using the TMF679 is that the TMF679 Product Offering Qualification API goal is to provide Product Offering commercial eligibility. So, the question is, is "Transfer Balance" modeled as a product? If yes - that Okay to use TMF679 for this. If not - and I've assumed this to be the case because in my experience I've never seen that operators model "Transfer Balance" as a separate product, but always as an additional service - In this case, the use of TMF679 is not advisable.
Now let's get back to the TMF vision of "Transfer Balance". First of all, TMF654 defines the TransferBalance resource "The TransferBalance resource is a detailed description of credit transfer operation requested between two buckets (reference to products owned by customers and consuming credit when using a service)". According to TMFS009 Usage and Balance Management "The Service Balance Management component is placed in the Production block as it does the service control towards the network. With this in mind the actions on the UsageVolumeBalance should be performed on Service level (CFS)." So, as I understand, any action on a balance should be done on Service level and these actions can be performed via TMF654 Prepay Balance Management API (Note: JIra ticket raised already to rename the API to remove Prepay). And if it is Service level, then, as for me, better to use TMF645 Service Qualification Management API for the checkServiceQualification "Transfer Balance" if we can transfer balance.
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Yurii Yushchak
System Manager
Ericsson Inc.
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 31, 2025 09:19
From: Matthieu Hattab
Subject: How to categorize a "balance transfer" on TMF679 Product Offering Qualification Management API v4?
Yurri,
the term "service" has multiple meanings. In this case, you cannot consider the "transfer balance" a service in the same sense that TMF645 interprets "service"
in TMF645, the "service" represents the customerFacingServiceSpec that TMF645 uses to validate the technical feasibility of a customerFacingServiceSpec:
for instance: Product has a 2500 Mbps FibercustomerFacingServiceSpec (service) and TMF645 will check if the Customer Premise Equipment and Service Delivery Point and the fiber line and etc are capable of delivering 2500 Mbps.
This will not help with transfer balance.
But if you have a implementation to suggest (maybe using the API's polymorphism), please share.
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Kind regards,
Matthieu Hattab
Lyse Tele AS
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 29, 2025 04:06
From: Yurii Yushchak
Subject: How to categorize a "balance transfer" on TMF679 Product Offering Qualification Management API v4?
Hi Imene,
The TMF654 states that Transfer Balance is a service. Therefore, Transfer Balance should be configured as a service. And then, the TMF645 Service Qualification Management API should be used to check the technical eligibility of the configured service.
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Yurii Yushchak
System Manager
Ericsson Inc.
Original Message:
Sent: Jan 28, 2025 09:05
From: Imene Tekaya
Subject: How to categorize a "balance transfer" on TMF679 Product Offering Qualification Management API v4?
On Product Offering Qualification resource we have to fill on the request a "productOffering, or productSpec, or productCategory "(at least one is mandatory)" . In my case I need to check if I am eligible to transfer money from my balance to one or more numbers, where I can specify the (operation of transfer )on the request ? could be considered as a "productCategory" ?
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Imene Tekaya
Sofrecom Tunisie
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