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  • 1.  TMF620 Product Offering Price Relationship - Fees/NRCs/etc.

    Posted Jun 16, 2022 17:18
    We're currently in process of moving from a custom product catalog solution to one using TMForum as a standard. I'm trying to decide if I'm thinking too much what we've done in the past vs. what TMF standards are designed for. Right now, I feel like I'm 'guessing' too much.

    Product offering prices feel too simplified. It's easy enough to determine the main price and the associated taxes. HOWEVER, what if a product as an MRC AND an NRC? What if there are fees associated to the product? What if there's compound pricing that needs to be shown to the user?

    This is particularly applicable to phone where we have multiple regulatory fees that are required on top of our charges for the service. Placing the fees in the 'taxItem' values seems like an abuse of the spec.

    Would it be appropriate to use the popRelationship to define a fee as 'requiredBy' another POP? Is there a valid list of relationship types that we should be looking at?

    Maybe this is a fundamental misunderstanding I have about providing an offering vs. providing details during the buy-flow, but it feels like this information would be required up front for the end user.

    I've found a lot of great information and resources in this forum, so thank you in advance!

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    Jason Funk
    MetroNet
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  • 2.  RE: TMF620 Product Offering Price Relationship - Fees/NRCs/etc.

    Posted Jun 17, 2022 01:21
    Hi,

    I agree with you on "Product offering prices feel too simplified" .  

    Obviously the popRelationship  seems to be the way to go to tie different prices/discounts together.

    As described in the specs:
    A list of product offering price relationships (ProductOfferingPriceRelationship
    [*]). Product Offering Prices related to this Product Offering Price, for example a
    price alteration such as allowance or discount.



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    Hanumantha Marikanti
    Saralam Technologies
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  • 3.  RE: TMF620 Product Offering Price Relationship - Fees/NRCs/etc.

    Posted Jun 17, 2022 09:56
    Thank you, Hanumantha.

    My fear is that by generating our own relationship types, someone else (reseller?) who supports TMF standards would have additional rework to support our tweaks. Maybe I should accept that that will occur, in general.

    Thanks!

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    Jason Funk
    MetroNet
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  • 4.  RE: TMF620 Product Offering Price Relationship - Fees/NRCs/etc.

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 19, 2022 03:47
    Hi Jason and Hanumantha
    You can attach any number of Product Offering Prices (POP) to a Product Offering (PO), and you can also create relationships between the POPs as Hanumantha has pointed out. These can be one-time (OC/NRC) or recurring, in which case the actual price amount is part of the model. They can also be usage, in which case the pricing logic for rating is not explicitly represented.
    What is more challenging in the current model is to represent price variations due to factors such as characteristic values, customer credit, and more.
    This may be alleviated by the future addition of a generic Policy reference to the Product Catalog APIs (and other APIs), so watch this space.

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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.
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  • 5.  RE: TMF620 Product Offering Price Relationship - Fees/NRCs/etc.

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 20, 2022 02:38
    Hi,
    I would recommend to read GB922 Product, which will give a much greater understanding of PO and POPs.
    In a nutshel, POP are far from being simplified.

    In the API, you have 2 mecanisms for POP relationships
    • popRelationship (which can also be used for price alterations)
    • BundledProductOfferingPriceRelationship (for price bundling, "composite POP")

    you can also read other posts in the communities on POP which which can be very helpful.
    my 2 cents.

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    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Lyse Platform
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