Open APIs

Hi!

How to include information about used buckets(Dedicated accounts) to Product Usage Management (TMF767) response? (The question would be the same also regarding TMF635 as i think those 2 are in the context of this question quite similar)
Do I understand correctly, that if we want make the possibility in customer support portal to see a customers service usage history, then Product Usage Management API(TMF767) would be a source for this data? If that is correct, then let's suppose we are using different buckets for mobile data service and customer support needs to see how exactly this data session made yesturday, used those buckets. For example, customer had 100MB in his data packet still left but he used 150MB during session, so 100MB was taken from bucket (Dedicated account) and for 50MB his main account was credited 0,5EUR.
So, is TMF767 suitable for retrieving this information? If yes, then how exaclty will the information about bucket(Dedicated account) and money account mapped onto fields shown in TMF767_Product_Usage_userguide.pdf page 5? It's obvious that 0,5EUR taken from main account will be on taxExcludedRatingAmount (and/or taxIncludedRatingAmount) but how should I reflect the 100MB taken from a dedicated account(bucket)? And I should mention here that we do have a lot of different buckets, for example one for consuming data in home network, other for consuming data in EU countries and third for consuming data in rest of the world countries so I need to have possibility to return several bucket usage amounts.

Best regards,

Meelis

Hi Meelis

I think you should be looking at the TMF677 Usage Consumption API rather than (or in addition to) the TMF767 Product Usage Management API.   The Usage Consumption API is intended to provide a consumption summary for a customer self-service portal.  This includes the usage summary from the various buckets (which may/may not be mapped to bucket counters in the OCS/CCS depending on your implementation).  TMF767 Product Usage API is really intended for a more detailed record of the precise product usage.

Hope this helps, good luck!

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Dan d'Albuquerque
Entronica Company Limited
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Thank you for your answer!
Unfortunately, seems to me that Usage Consumption (Managament) API provides only report on current state of buckets and counters. "The usage consumption API allow to view at a given point the balance and the consumption counters of the various buckets...". Looking at the resource model and example useceses confirms my impression that Usage Consumption API does not hold any information about usage detail records, it only holds current state of balance, buckets and counters.
I think I just have to make an extension to our Product Usage Management API which then will not be compliant with TMF767. 

Best regards,

Meelis

Hi Meelis

Given your particular use case, it does make more sense to extend the TMF767 Product Usage Mgmt API.  SID already supports your requirement, albeit with different entity naming convention to the Open APIs, e.g. UsageVolumeBalanceDebit in SID versus the Bucket (AdjustBalance) concept in the Open APIs.

Note that @Sylvie Demarest is currently updating SID v25 to add a Session Balance Management Open API which will impact the existing TMF767, TMF677 as a consequence.

Feel free to post your extensions here and I will raise a JIRA to propose them as enhancements to TMF767.

Hi 

here is my understanding

• How to include information about used buckets(Dedicated accounts) to Product Usage Management (TMF767) response? -> I don't see why the TMF767 would include information about buckets. There are 2 other API for bucket management (by the way not yet clear to me the fundamental differences between TMF677 and TMF654). Today it's not an objective to have link to bucket in the TMF767 specification. But it's possible to decide to create a Product Usage for each Service Usage, so that all usages can be exposed via Product Usage API (those that are priced on main offer per usage, and those that are priced by the offer that realizes the bucket).
• TMF656 will not be migrated to v5 and is replaced by the 3 API : TMF771 Resource Usage, TMF727 Service Usage and TMF767 Product Usage
• Do I understand correctly, that if we want make the possibility in customer support portal to see a customers service usage history, then Product Usage Management API(TMF767) would be a source for this data?  -> yes this is possible if in you modelling you decide to create a ProductUsage for each ServiceUsage that you want the customer to be aware of. But in addition you can give the information on buckets via the decicated APIs for this.
• let's suppose we are using different buckets for mobile data service and customer support needs to see how exactly this data session made yesturday, used those buckets. For example, customer had 100MB in his data packet still left but he used 150MB during session, so 100MB was taken from bucket (Dedicated account) and for 50MB his main account was credited 0,5EUR. So, is TMF767 suitable for retrieving this information? -> You can use TMF767 to retrieve the ProductUsage of the 50MB (out of bucket) and can use also the TMF767 to have the Product Usage charged by the bucket (in that case I need to check how to know that the Product Usage has been charged to this bucket). Or you go down to ServiceUsage (using TMF727 Service Usage API) that has a link to the ServiceBalance charged (ServiceBalance = bucket). Please have a look at very good Use Case TMFS009 for realistic use case TMFS009 Use Case: Usage and Balance Management v6.0.0 – TM Forum
• If yes, then how exaclty will the information about bucket(Dedicated account) and money account mapped onto fields shown in TMF767_Product_Usage_userguide.pdf page 5?It's obvious that 0,5EUR taken from main account will be on taxExcludedRatingAmount (and/or taxIncludedRatingAmount) but how should I reflect the 100MB taken from a dedicated account(bucket)? -> this should be precised; this API is still in draft, I'll start a proposal to be discussed in following weeks I hope (for TMF Accelerate event). Happy to have your feedback (or your proposal if you want to do one). I'm interested in your catalog modelling with realistic examples.