Open APIs

 View Only
Expand all | Collapse all

have a group of characteristics?

  • 1.  have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 09, 2023 16:16

    Hello fellow TMF members!
    I wonder if it is possible to combine characteristics of the object (like product) in groups. Like have group name of "DisplayName" and have multiple characteristics inside the group:

    "internalName"/value
    "externalName"/value
    "some other name"/value
    etc....
    ?
    Thank you in advance.



    ------------------------------
    Igor Dubrovin
    Bell Canada
    ------------------------------


  • 2.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 10, 2023 04:05

    Hi Igor,

    Recently a new entity called feature has been introduced in the standard, which is used precisely to group characteristics. You can find it in most of the information models and APIs where the characteristic pattern is used. For instance, you can take a look at the service order resource of the TMF641 Service Order Management API.

    Regards,



    ------------------------------
    Abel Ruiz Huerta
    alvatross by SATEC
    ------------------------------



  • 3.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 10, 2023 06:46

    Igor,

    To achieve grouping/combining of related characteristics, you can use product specifications.

    You group characteristics together and then bundle product specifications together and link that bundle to a product offering. For instance:
    networkproductSpec ---> 4 characteristics
    shippingSpec ----> 6 characteristics
    productInfoSpec -----> 10 characteristics
    xxxxxSpec -----> xxx characteristics

    finally, I bundle any of the above ProdSpec.



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

    Matthieu Hattab
    Lyse Platform
    ------------------------------



  • 4.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 10, 2023 06:47

    Abel,
    do you have a link from the TMF WIKI that explain the purpose of features? and will it be added in TMF620 V5?



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

    Matthieu Hattab
    Lyse Platform
    ------------------------------



  • 5.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 10, 2023 11:03

    Hi Matthieu,

    I don't see references to this entity other than those that appear in the APIs. The description there is not very clear either: Configuration feature. Anyway, seeing the data model it's quite clear that may be used to logically group characteristics.

    About your second question, as they appear in most of the other APIs, I guess that it's a matter of time before they also appear in this one. Perhaps @Jonathan Goldberghas more information.

    Regards,



    ------------------------------
    Abel Ruiz Huerta
    alvatross by SATEC
    ------------------------------



  • 6.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 10, 2023 11:48

    Hello Abel/Matthieu,
    Thank you for the prompt feedback.

    Abel, are you referencing to this diagram?



    ------------------------------
    Igor Dubrovin
    Bell Canada
    ------------------------------



  • 7.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 10, 2023 11:52

    Hi,

    Yes, exactly.

    Regards,



    ------------------------------
    Abel Ruiz Huerta
    alvatross by SATEC
    ------------------------------



  • 8.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 11, 2023 04:24

    Hi all

    Feature is not a group of characteristics, at least not to my understanding. It's meant to represent a coherent (well) feature in a network service that you can activate or deactivate, without going into the details of how the feature is implemented. It was introduced a while back in Resource, and more recently added to Service. I have no plans at present to add at Product layer, to do this we would need some concrete use cases.

    Regarding grouping of characteristics, I don't think that it is healthy to do it using product specifications - by going that way you are creating products in the inventory which may have no real semantic meaning as separate products.

    Can I suggest that people who want to have a logical group of characteristics, please give a business justification with real and realistic examples, so that the API team can consider whether to design such a solution. Also please state if it is needed only at spec level ("catalog") or also at instance level ("inventory").



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



  • 9.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 11, 2023 05:21

    Hi Jonathan,

    I agree with you. altough I can't see a tangible business justification for adding a new entity. SID and API are already dense enough.
    The same outcome can be achieved with ProdSpecs (also documented in GB922 - Product)

    I remembered Vance writing about it. I couldn't find his post, but I found this other informative discussion:
    characteristics vs features [...]



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

    Matthieu Hattab
    Lyse Platform
    ------------------------------



  • 10.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 11, 2023 14:56

    Here the example. It is CFS, but it doesn't matter for our discussion, it can be applied to any object:
    Object: ManagedService has two groups
    - ServiceConfiguraiton
    - Remarks

    ServiceConfiguraiton group has characteristics:
    - ServiceCode
    - ServiceDescription
    .... etc...
    Remarks group has characteristics:
    - Type
    - Details

    In addition - "groups" have cardinalities. For example, we may have zero or many remarks.
    Thanks,
    I can't really give you business inside on all of these fields, I was not part of the service design.



    ------------------------------
    Igor Dubrovin
    Bell Canada
    ------------------------------



  • 11.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 11, 2023 15:06

    Not sure I understand why you need the group, what is the practical effect for consumers or providers of this information.



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



  • 12.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 11, 2023 15:17

    It doesn't have business meaning. It is just convenient way to present it to a user in UI.



    ------------------------------
    Igor Dubrovin
    Bell Canada
    ------------------------------



  • 13.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 12, 2023 07:03
    Edited by Matthieu Hattab May 12, 2023 07:07

    Hi Igor,

    This is an interesting case. TM Forum Open Digital Architecture has good recommendation for your need.

    Product Catalogue and API620 belong to the "core commerce Management" block.  Core commerce block is not meant to manage UI needs. There is a separation of concerns between commerce capabilties and how parties engage (interact and experience) with these capabilities. you can check the ODA Component map to see the recommended functional carchitecture.

    What you need belongs to the "Engagement Management" block, which cover multiple capabilities (content, navigation, channel, UI, experience...)

    For instance, a CMS can manage how users see product characteristics (some vendors now put their the entire product catalogue in a CMS/PIM to manage the product user experience depending on language, geographic area, device, channel... Some vendors even provide connectors between the product catalogue and the CMS/PIM/PXM.

    other ref:

    Customer Experience Management Project


    PS: characteristics alrady support cardinality in the 620API.

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

    Matthieu Hattab
    Lyse Platform
    ------------------------------



  • 14.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 12, 2023 11:32

    Thank you Matthieu,
    I agree, it is good architecture to decouple persistent layer from presentation layer (I think that what you mean in your post).
    It looks like TMF 620 (and probably most of TMF open APIs) is an API to persistent layer (in very simplistic view).
    Cheers,



    ------------------------------
    Igor Dubrovin
    Bell Canada
    ------------------------------



  • 15.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 13, 2023 11:49

    Let me try to bring one more example. Let's assume we have asymmetrical P2P connectivity (EVC) between two sites A and Z. In such case we have two groups of the same characteristics related to each site/direction. E.g.
    - VLAN
    - speed
    - QoS
    - Terminating Port

    I think in this case group does have business meaning, as it has to be configured/provisioned differently on each site.
    Cheers,



    ------------------------------
    Igor Dubrovin
    Bell Canada
    ------------------------------



  • 16.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 14, 2023 06:08

    In this case, Igor, one could argue that these groups could be represented as distinct instance of a product, and possibly each product would have a different relatedPlace.
    It still seems to me that characteristicgroup is a suggested solution waiting for a problem.



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



  • 17.  RE: have a group of characteristics?

    TM Forum Member
    Posted May 16, 2023 23:04

    In IG1228 (ODA use cases), there are two approaches to managing the process of engagement.  Approach A, which Matthieu describes, where the SoE steers the process using the BFF concept.  Approach B is where the SoR steers the process and the front end deals with presentation and GUI kinematics.  This makes use of the TMF701 process flow API.   IG1228 indicates that most DSP/CSPs currently use approach A but should target using approach B in order to provide a more consistent customer experience over different channels, devices, etc, etc.



    ------------------------------
    ROCHANA MACHAROEN
    ADVANCED INFO SERVICE PLC. (AIS)
    ------------------------------