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Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

Johan Ghazali

Johan Ghazali4 days ago

  • 1.  Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 13 days ago
    Edited by Kinshuk Kulshreshtha 6 days ago

    Technical Feasibility Check is a very common scenario in a B2B landscape where we are dealing with complex connectivity services (MPLS VPN, ELAN etc. ) across multiple customer sites. Before we can offer the service to a customer, we need to check if a particular service is feasible or not and if it could be delivered over CSPs own network or it would require a partner network as well. We do have TMF645 to address this Technical Service Qualification request, that would check the feasibility of CFSs and/or RFSs on CSPs own network or partner network. 

    Now the Product Order Capture and Validation (POCV) system does not have visibility into how a particular Product Offer is decomposed into CFS/RFS to directly call TMF645 to check the technical feasibility. I would like to understand the best practice and the relevant API that should be used by CRM system to check for Product Offering Feasibility that would eventually translate into TMF645 request on the Service Qualification Management layer. Would POCV make a TMF679 request that will decompose the Product Offers to the CFS/RFSs and then make a TMF645 call do Service Qualification Management system to check the technical feasibility of the components and then translate it back to the Product Qualification? Or there is any other best practice to accomplish this use case



    ------------------------------
    Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
    Oracle Corporation

    My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
    ------------------------------



  • 2.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 12 days ago

    Hi,

     I would like to understand the best practice and the relevant API

    The best practice for SQ is described in IG1228 and in TMF645 user guide.

    POCV ODA component does not have visibility into how a particular Product Offer is decomposed into CFS/RFS

    Actually it does. It's your POCV vendor or your own implementation that defines what visibility the component needs. You could very well implement support for any PSR catalogue API to get the visibility you need.



    ------------------------------
    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Digital Sales Domain Architect
    Lyse Tele AS
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 11 days ago

    Hi Matthieu,

    Thanks for your replay. Do you mean to say that POCV implementation should include the decomposition of Product instances into CFS instances and then it should call TMF645 to check the technical feasibility? Please note that in many cases specification level mapping through Product Catalog is not enough to get the Technical Feasibility. We need to actually create the CFS Payload and map all the relevant Product instance Parameters to the CFS Instance Parameters before someone can call TMF645. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think that according to ODA, this seems to be the job of PODM and not POCV. 

    Regards,

    Kinshuk



    ------------------------------
    Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
    Oracle Corporation

    My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 11 days ago
    Edited by Matthieu Hattab 11 days ago

    Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think that according to ODA, this seems to be the job of PODM and not POCV. 

    Out of curiosity, do you have a reference supporting this?

    Personally, I'm not fully aligned with the TMF's approach for cFS.

    If TMFC009 (the ODA Component underpinning TMF645) is really "self contained", it should be capable of determining which CFS are needed based on the provided product offering or even the PO's related ProdSpec. It's the first ODAC I've encountered that shifts this dependency to the API client.

    Take IG1228, use case #2 - the BFF "magically" constructs the CFS payload for the POST checkSQ request. 

    However, Inspired by UC2, we've developed our own qualification orchestration service, which we call the Composite Qualification Service (CQS).

    It behaves similarly to the BFF in IG1228 UC2. The emphasis is on orchestration,  business rule evaluation remains within the appropriate eligibility services.

    Our current CQS consumers include:

    • Digital sales BFFs (DXP, GraphQL, etc.)

    • Product Configurator

    • Recommendation Engine

    • POCV (before "cart2order" and before "submitOrder")

    Each client must provide context, intent, party, location, product or product offer (ID or list), catalogue category - but not the CFS 😉

    It's our CQS that will create the CFS. Currently, we currently store the CFS in CQS but you could use a Service Catalogue API if you have one).

    PS: another option: model your product catalogue with CFS only. if you need ProductSpec, store then in a CMS.... 2 BSS vendors in that situation recommended me that that 😮



    ------------------------------
    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Digital Sales Domain Architect
    Lyse Tele AS
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 11 days ago
    Edited by Kinshuk Kulshreshtha 11 days ago

    In IG1228 TMFS002, Engagement Management  is directly calling TMF645 Service Qualification API by passing the CFSs that needs to be qualified. But before doing that, someone has to create the CFSs from the Products before TMF645 can be called. This is where the current gap is. Does TMF679 in turn call TMF645? If not, then how Products are converted to CFSs before TMF645 can be called.

    My question is more related to the TMF API being used rather than which ODA component performs it. Does TMF679 Product Qualification API play a role in Technical Feasibility? The TMF679 spec says that it does. This thread also provides some more context around it

    https://engage.tmforum.org/communities/community-home/digestviewer/viewthread?GroupId=31&MessageKey=a19c1a84-00da-4499-98d4-8f32a1139a2b&CommunityKey=d543b8ba-9d3a-4121-85ce-5b68e6c31ce5&tab=digestviewer

     



    ------------------------------
    Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
    Oracle Corporation

    My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 11 days ago

    ok, then I misunderstood you. I thought your questions were about the components as you were asking about POCV, how to generate the CFS in the  post request etc.



    ------------------------------
    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Digital Sales Domain Architect
    Lyse Tele AS
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 8 days ago

    In the Wholesale Broadband project we are discussing this issue also.

    Does TMF679 Product Qualification API play a role in Technical Feasibility? The TMF679 spec says that it does

    Can you point to the text you are referring to? I haven't seen this in the TMF679 spec.



    ------------------------------
    Kristian Svalheim
    Lyse Tele AS
    ------------------------------



  • 8.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 9 days ago
    Edited by Kinshuk Kulshreshtha 8 days ago

    Got this reply from Johan Ghazali (from Telekom Malaysia) in my inbox and I would like to share here so that we can look for opinions from others as well on this approach. This is how I have also been thinking on how the solution would work as well. Requesting the experts in this forum (@Jonathan Goldberg, @Ludovic Robert) to have a look and provide their views as well.

    Product Order Capture and Validation (POCV) System:

    Initiate TMF679 Request: The POCV system should initiate a TMF679 Product Order Management API request to the Product Order Delivery Orchestration and Management (PODOM) system. This API manages the lifecycle of product orders and handles the decomposition of product offers into their respective CFSs (Customer Facing Services) and RFSs (Resource Facing Services).


    Product Order Delivery Orchestration and Management (PODOM):

    Decompose Product Offers: Upon receiving the TMF679 request, the PODOM system decomposes the product offers into CFSs and RFSs.
    Service Qualification Check: The PODOM system then makes a TMF645 Service Qualification API call to the Service Qualification Management system. This API checks the technical feasibility of the CFSs and RFSs on both the CSP's own network and any required partner networks.
    Service Qualification Management System:
    Process Feasibility Check: The Service Qualification Management system processes the TMF645 request and returns the feasibility results to the PODOM system.
    Translate Results: The PODOM system translates these results back into a product qualification response and sends it to the POCV system.


    This approach ensures that the POCV system does not need direct visibility into the decomposition of product offers, as the PODOM system handles this complexity. By using TMF679 and TMF645 APIs, you can achieve a streamlined and efficient process for checking product offering feasibility.



    ------------------------------
    Johan Ghazali
    TM Technology Services Sdn Bhd
    ------------------------------

    Thanks to Johan for his valued inputs.



    ------------------------------
    Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
    Oracle Corporation

    My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
    ------------------------------



  • 9.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 7 days ago

    This is a really interesting point.

    At the moment, within the ODA Components landscape, Service Qualification (SQ) typically occurs within TMFC002: Product Order Capture & Validation.

    However, the challenge we're facing-particularly in the B2B and Wholesale Broadband context-is the need to perform a Technical Feasibility Check. This is a common scenario in B2B environments, especially when dealing with broadband services across multiple customer sites. Before we can offer a service to a customer, we need to verify whether a specific service (linked to a product) is technically feasible at a given location.

    Currently, the only ways to invoke the TMF Service Qualification API (TMF645) are either:

    • via TMFC002: Product Order Capture & Validation, or

    • through a direct call to TMFC009: Service Qualification Management.

    However, this process typically belongs to the pre-order stage, before engaging the seller to order a product. In our scenario, we ask the buyer to perform a Product Offering Qualification (POQ) based on location, using the TMFC027: Product Configurator.

    The issue is that TMFC027 currently lacks any linkage to the TMF Service Qualification API, making it difficult to seamlessly perform a technical feasibility check during the product configuration and qualification stage.

    This highlights a potential gap in the architecture, especially for B2B and Wholesale use cases. It might be worth exploring how we can bridge TMFC027 and TMF645 to better support these real-world scenarios.



    ------------------------------
    Anastasios Sarantis
    CityFibre
    ------------------------------



  • 10.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 7 days ago

    "The POCV system should initiate a TMF679 Product Order Management API request to the Product Order Delivery Orchestration and Management (PODOM) system."

    I believe there is a misunderstanding.

    • TMF679 = "Product Offering Qualification" not  "Product Order Management"
      • "Product Order Management" = TMF622
    • PODOM does not expose any API so you cannot make any request to PODOM
    • PODOM has zero dependencies on TMF679 or TMF645 (POCV does)

    I just checked my notes from our onsite PSR training done by TMF Education, last December, and it was said that PODOM is only an orchestration engine, it does not expose any business capabilities. it does not expose any API. This is a screenshot of the course my comment at the time (confirmed by the TMF trainer).

    Also,

    CC Anastasios Sarantis

    TMF issued a new version of POCV a month ago and they removed SQ.

    I cannot seem to find the person responsible for this ODA component. Anyone can help?



    ------------------------------
    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Digital Sales Domain Architect
    Lyse Tele AS
    ------------------------------



  • 11.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 7 days ago

    Hello Matthieu 

    which oda component you are looking help for ? 
    ------

    I cannot seem to find the person responsible for this ODA component. Anyone can help?



    ------------------------------
    Anastasios Sarantis
    CityFibre
    ------------------------------



  • 12.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 7 days ago

    Anastasios, 

    the table I shared came from the latest POCV definition

    so the component I was looking help for is called "TMFC002 Product Order Capture & Validation". I just wanted to invite the person into this discussion and share their insights. But maybe the right person should the person in charge of TMFC009 Service Qualification!



    ------------------------------
    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Digital Sales Domain Architect
    Lyse Tele AS
    ------------------------------



  • 13.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 7 days ago

    Hello Matthieu 

    its @Gaetano Biancardi and @Sylvie Demarest  <3 <3 . 




    ------------------------------
    Anastasios Sarantis
    CityFibre
    ------------------------------



  • 14.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 7 days ago

    TMF645 is still listed as a dependent API in TMFC002 though.

    https://projects.tmforum.org/wiki/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=339784132



    ------------------------------
    Kristian Svalheim
    Lyse Tele AS
    ------------------------------



  • 15.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 6 days ago

    HI All,

    Thanks for your inputs, but I think we are digressing a bit from my original question in the post. The question is not about which component does this but more on how the whole flow of checking the feasibility work and which APIs will be used in the flow.

    To be more specific, how does Products coming from Customer Order get converted to CFSs so that we can call TMF645 for Service Feasibility. Implementation of which API does this Product to CFS conversion. In case of Order Processing, it is the implementation of TMF 622 that converts the Products to CFS before calling TMF641 for provisioning of CFSs. In case of Feasibility Check, how do we calculate the CFSs from the Products. 

    Johan Ghazali provided an approach of doing this conversion in the implementation of TMF679 which seems to be the most logical place of doing it. In this thread,  @Jonathan Goldberg seems to be highlighting a similar approach. Please let me know if you have an opinion on how this is done.



    ------------------------------
    Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
    Oracle Corporation

    My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
    ------------------------------



  • 16.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 2 days ago
    Edited by Johan Ghazali 2 days ago

    Hi All ,

    Thank you for your valuable inputs. I appreciate the discussion, and the insights shared.

    Regarding the approach I shared for the product-to-CFS conversion within the implementation of TMF679, I agree that it seems to be the most logical place for this process. However, I must mention that while the approach is theoretically sound, the actual implementation is still a work in progress for me as well.

    We are actively working on refining this method to ensure it meets all necessary requirements and integrates seamlessly with the existing systems. I will keep you updated on our progress and any significant developments.

    Thank you for your understanding and patience.

    Best regards, Johan Ghazali

    -------------------------------------------
    My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.



  • 17.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 4 days ago
    Edited by Johan Ghazali 2 days ago

    In Review



  • 18.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 4 days ago

    Hi,

    Could you please review your post? There seems to be confusion regarding the API, ODA-C names, and references. For example:

    • TMF679 is not the Product Order Management API; it refers to "Product Offering Qualification."

    • The actual Product Order Management API is TMF622.

    • TMF679 is not exposed by PODOM; instead, it's exposed by the Product Configurator.

    • PODOM doesn't expose any APIs.

    It's important for the community to use the correct names for TMF assets to avoid unnecessary confusion.

    thank you



    ------------------------------
    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Digital Sales Domain Architect
    Lyse Tele AS
    ------------------------------



  • 19.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 3 days ago

    Hello,

    I agree with Mathieu on this point - let's avoid using terminology that may not be familiar to the wider community, as it can create unnecessary confusion.

    To keep things consistent and aligned with the ODA model, please refer to the components as follows:

    • Product Order Capture and Validation (POCV) SystemTMFC002: Product Order Capture and Validation

    • Product Order Delivery Orchestration and Management (PODOM)TMFC003: Product Order Delivery Orchestration and Management

    • Service Qualification ManagementTMFC009: Service Qualification Management

    Clarity in naming helps everyone stay aligned and improves communication across teams and programs.

    Thanks!



    ------------------------------
    Anastasios Sarantis
    CityFibre
    ------------------------------



  • 20.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 3 days ago

    Hello 

    To help address the question of how to perform technical feasibility checks for product offerings, the following flow outlines a potential approach using existing ODA components:

    TMF679: Product Offering Qualification→ TMFC027: Product Configurator→ TMF645: Service Qualification→ TMFC002: Product Order Capture and Validation→ TMF645: Service Qualification→ TMFC009: Service Qualification Managementresponse to TMFC002 response to TMFC027


    That said, if this approach proves to be too complex or fragmented, I've raised the question of whether we should consider introducing a dedicated ODA component specifically designed to manage technical feasibility checks for product offerings. This could help to simplify the architecture and provide a more streamlined solution for B2B and wholesale use cases

    @Sylvie Demarest @Gaetano Biancardi @Patrik Farkas @Patrik Farkas @Kristian Svalheim



    ------------------------------
    Anastasios Sarantis
    CityFibre
    ------------------------------



  • 21.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 3 days ago
    Edited by Akin Pillot 2 days ago

    Hi @Anastasios Sarantis,

    Thanks for providing your thoughts on the API flows. If I understand correctly, in your flow, the implementation of TMF679 is invoking Product Configurator which converts the Products to Services before calling TMF645. Is that understanding correct? Who calls TMF679 in this case?



    ------------------------------
    Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
    Oracle Corporation

    My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
    ------------------------------



  • 22.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 2 days ago

    A very interesting discussion so far. In my working environment, we have already invested some effort in using the process described by Matthieu.

    I'm a little surprised that people are now asking for a dedicated component for technical availability. I am not aware of any suitable entity for this in the context of the TMF. We could certainly talk about a resource qualification.

    I have always understood the TMF645 API to be exactly that, a functional, technical statement about availability. The production domains of a CSP provides this interface to inform the commercial domain whether a service is available, with what properties.

    If the TMF645 responds with a "qualified" state, it means for us in any case: Technically, the service can be provided and from that point on the commercial domain can use the statement to determine commercial product availability. It is then a commercial decision as to whether we also want to make a statement to the customer.

    Even in a wholesale context, I think I would never offer the other CSP the TMF645 directly, but the TMF679 instead. After all, the CSPs is also a customer and I have to make a commercial statement to them.

    Regards,
    Jan



    ------------------------------
    Jan Lemmermann
    OSS Lead Architect
    EWE TEL GmbH
    ------------------------------



  • 23.  RE: Technical Feasibility Check for Product Offerings

    TM Forum Member
    Posted 19 hours ago

    Thank @Jan Lemmermann! I think there is no doubt that TMF645 will provide the technical feasibility and I am 100% aligned with what you mentioned above. You have beautifully summarized the  core gap that we seems to have that I have raised in my question

    If the TMF645 responds with a "qualified" state, it means for us in any case: Technically, the service can be provided and from that point on the commercial domain can use the statement to determine commercial product availability. It is then a commercial decision as to whether we also want to make a statement to the customer.

    While we do have TMFC009 Service Qualification Management in Production to decompose CFS into RFS to find the Technical feasibility and availability, we don't have a corresponding Service Qualification Management component in Core Commerce to take the Product Qualification Request and decompose Products into CFS to call the TMF645 for technical feasibility. In absence of that, people are trying to use PODOM for that purpose, but as @Matthieu Hattab highlighted, PODOM does not expose any API. So, its not the right place. I see someone using Product Configurator to do this conversion as well. 

    Essentially what we are missing is a bonafide Product Qualification Management Component in ODA that will expose TMF679 Product Qualification API and will decompose Products into CFSs to call TMF645 for Technical Feasibility of the component services in a Product Bundle. This component will also be responsible for doing commercial feasibility by doing credit check etc. and then aggregate everything to determine the overall feasibility of a Product Offering or Bundled Product Offering for a given customer. 

    Please let me know what everyone think on this proposal and if you agree, we can propose this component to be added to ODA component directory.



    ------------------------------
    Kinshuk Kulshreshtha
    Oracle Corporation

    My views posted on this forum are personal, and do not reflect the position of my employer or TM Forum.
    ------------------------------