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  • 1.  TMF620 v5 - BundledGroupProductOffering

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 10, 2023 11:09

    Hello,

    in the past we missed a configuration feature to configure selection groups. The new sub-resource BundledGroupProductOffering should now provide the feature.
    But the proposed design creates a separation between "usual" bundled product offerings and "grouped" bundled product offerings. At the product level both are just bundled products. The group aspect is an additional option for the bundle relationship. This is just an additional rule for the bundling. 
    We extended the API v4 in this way, that we add group information to the product offering and marked all bundled product offerings by an group name if its part of a selection group. This makes it simpler for those, the are just looking for all bundled relationships.
    From my point of view you should avoid unnecessary brakes between the versions.
    Best regards
    Niels

    shows our extensions to add grouping information


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    Niels Prusas
    Deutsche Telekom AG
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  • 2.  RE: TMF620 v5 - BundledGroupProductOffering

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 12, 2023 07:14

    Thanks Niels for your feedback

    There are indeed many ways to address design challenges, and I'm very happy that you found a way that works for you. However, I don't think that it is semantically accurate to say that a Product Offering Group is a Bundled Product Offering, as implied by your diagram. A Group is a parallel and more mechanism to organize selections of product offerings within a parent. Hence the clear separation in the model.



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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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  • 3.  RE: TMF620 v5 - BundledGroupProductOffering

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 13, 2023 10:15

    Hello,

    Selection group have been discussed in this community a few times. There is a JIRA task FX-870 to add it to the SID.

    unfortunately, this JIRA was mistakenly resolved (due to a misunderstanding on where the cardinality should be what a "Selection Group" actually is). We didn't succeed in re-opening it. At this point, This much-needed feature is still not in the SID nor in the API. I shall try to get in touch with Cécile to see what is the status.

    I know Jonathan wanted to include in a future version of 620 API, maybe he can share the latest update.

    PS: ODA use case 0003 illustrates "selection group" (in the screenflow).



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    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Lyse Platform
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  • 4.  RE: TMF620 v5 - BundledGroupProductOffering

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 15, 2023 14:43

    I tried to understand the BundledGroupProductOffering(Option) as currently described in the V5 User Guide (in Git, both branches v5.0.0-dev and TMF620_Product_Catalog. Examples do not seem to model what they are intended to do, e.g.

    The name (maybe that should better be a description) talks of a default of 4, but this is nowhere in the model, one might need e.g. a numberRefOfferDefault=4, which does not exist in the data structure.

    Also, the only thing that the "Group" adds is that one can put several POs in one group and state how many instances (Products) one can get in total from these POs. It is for example not possible to state more detailed restrictions of choices.

    The following much simpler structure can be used to express much richer selection conditions, and at the same time reuses the wel known objects:

    The ProductOffering can have several such groups, with lower/upper limits defining how many instances of the contained BundledProductOfferings can be chosen in total; via the BundledProductOfferingOption of each of those BundledProductOfferings one can further specify how many instances of the particular BundledProductOffering can be chosen, and also a default number can be given. The recursive relationship of BundledGroupProductOfferingOption proovides even more flexibility, as one can then build structures like:

    The fruit basket can contain Stonefruits (Prunes and Cherries) and PipFruits (Apples and Pears), within the specified number ranges and with the given defaults. If needed, this nesting can be extended to any level needed; also, the BundledGroupProductOfferingOptions having an id to not depend on its parent ProductOffering (or group in case of nesting), but can be reused in different contexts.

    Maybe the BundledGroupProductOfferingOption could be renamed to BundledProductOfferingGroup to simplify matters.

    The association between ProductOffering and BundeldProductOffering is kept for backwards compatibility and for the simpler cases.

    Does this make sense?



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    Lutz Bettge
    Deutsche Telekom AG
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  • 5.  RE: TMF620 v5 - BundledGroupProductOffering

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 16, 2023 07:34

    Looks like V5 is implementing Selection Group with BundledGroupProductOffering.

    entity names look indeed challenging!



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    Kind regards,

    Matthieu Hattab
    Lyse Platform
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  • 6.  RE: TMF620 v5 - BundledGroupProductOffering

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Feb 20, 2023 10:23

    Indeed, Matthieu - names are a problem. And good catch about ODA UC003 - this was indeed the trigger for the enhancement to the Open API model in TMF620 to support selection groups. We preferred to keep a more generic name (at the cost of length), since selection group is a specific business use case, and the model enhancement might enable other use cases.

    It looks like I made a mistake in the example, as Lutz has pointed out - there is no relevance to a default quantity for a selection group, and indeed it is not in the model. I'll need to fix it.



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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.
    ------------------------------