Open APIs

Hi all,

We could see an attribute "quantity" (of type Integer) on ProductOrderItem in TMF 622.

Let's say we have a New Provide order where quantity = 10 is ordered. Upon completion of the product order, we would need to update product inventory with quantity = 10 for the Product. But, we couldn't see any such attribute on Product resource. Where could we capture such information in Product resource?

Moreover, when we try to place a change order where we wish to decrease the quantity by 2, as per TMF semantics, we should have ProductOrderItem with quantity = -2 (Depicting what is changing) or quantity = 8 (the final quantity expected)?

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Varun Pandhi
Infosys
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Hi Varun

The basic question is - what type of products will use this quantity attribute? Typically it will be low-value accessories, consumables, and the like. For such cases it's not clear that there is any point in persisting the products in the inventory after the order is complete. And I'm also not sure what the meaning of a change order is on such products. What exactly do you expect to happen when you send an order with -2? That the customer will somehow return 2 of the products?

In general when you keep a product in the inventory it's because you want to address it specifically, e.g. to make a change on it (network provisioning), to record a standard or extended warranty, to allow recurring charge for a rental equipment, etc. In all these cases the quantity is meaningless because you'll need to deal with a specific instance (we can term this as "serialized").

But if you can come up with a convincing use case for quantity in the inventory, and/or change orders on non-serialized products, we'd need to look again.

Hi all,

We could see an attribute "quantity" (of type Integer) on ProductOrderItem in TMF 622.

Let's say we have a New Provide order where quantity = 10 is ordered. Upon completion of the product order, we would need to update product inventory with quantity = 10 for the Product. But, we couldn't see any such attribute on Product resource. Where could we capture such information in Product resource?

Moreover, when we try to place a change order where we wish to decrease the quantity by 2, as per TMF semantics, we should have ProductOrderItem with quantity = -2 (Depicting what is changing) or quantity = 8 (the final quantity expected)?

------------------------------
Varun Pandhi
Infosys
------------------------------

Hi Jonathan,

a common usecase is the purchase of Licences for as SaaS or similar, or the ordering of a block of Phone Numbers. Or the length of a cable that has to be digged under the earth for a location of a business customer. There are probably many more examples; OK, not in all cases a change order makes sense, but ...

As for the value itself, I think it should be not a pure Integer, I'd suggest to change it to Quantity, so it could be e.g. (for the cable) the length in Meters, or a weight in Kilograms, ... and it should allow for fractional values.

And that could then be used in conjunction with unitOfMeasure in ProductOfferingPrice resp. in ProductPrice to calculate the charged price, like
price = Product.quantity / Product(Offering)Price.unitOfMeasure * Product(Offering)Price.price

Does that make sense?

Hi Varun

The basic question is - what type of products will use this quantity attribute? Typically it will be low-value accessories, consumables, and the like. For such cases it's not clear that there is any point in persisting the products in the inventory after the order is complete. And I'm also not sure what the meaning of a change order is on such products. What exactly do you expect to happen when you send an order with -2? That the customer will somehow return 2 of the products?

In general when you keep a product in the inventory it's because you want to address it specifically, e.g. to make a change on it (network provisioning), to record a standard or extended warranty, to allow recurring charge for a rental equipment, etc. In all these cases the quantity is meaningless because you'll need to deal with a specific instance (we can term this as "serialized").

But if you can come up with a convincing use case for quantity in the inventory, and/or change orders on non-serialized products, we'd need to look again.

Hi all,

We could see an attribute "quantity" (of type Integer) on ProductOrderItem in TMF 622.

Let's say we have a New Provide order where quantity = 10 is ordered. Upon completion of the product order, we would need to update product inventory with quantity = 10 for the Product. But, we couldn't see any such attribute on Product resource. Where could we capture such information in Product resource?

Moreover, when we try to place a change order where we wish to decrease the quantity by 2, as per TMF semantics, we should have ProductOrderItem with quantity = -2 (Depicting what is changing) or quantity = 8 (the final quantity expected)?

------------------------------
Varun Pandhi
Infosys
------------------------------

To support the notion of a license I would rather use a product characteristic & not the quantity on the orderItem.
Using the quantity on the orderItem would mean according to me that it would get expanded into individual product instances.
You could use the quantity on orderItem level for ordering 5 VOIP phones of the same type for instance. Nevertheless as soon as you need to put individual characteristics like a serial number it doesn't work.

Hi Jonathan,

a common usecase is the purchase of Licences for as SaaS or similar, or the ordering of a block of Phone Numbers. Or the length of a cable that has to be digged under the earth for a location of a business customer. There are probably many more examples; OK, not in all cases a change order makes sense, but ...

As for the value itself, I think it should be not a pure Integer, I'd suggest to change it to Quantity, so it could be e.g. (for the cable) the length in Meters, or a weight in Kilograms, ... and it should allow for fractional values.

And that could then be used in conjunction with unitOfMeasure in ProductOfferingPrice resp. in ProductPrice to calculate the charged price, like
price = Product.quantity / Product(Offering)Price.unitOfMeasure * Product(Offering)Price.price

Does that make sense?

Hi Varun

The basic question is - what type of products will use this quantity attribute? Typically it will be low-value accessories, consumables, and the like. For such cases it's not clear that there is any point in persisting the products in the inventory after the order is complete. And I'm also not sure what the meaning of a change order is on such products. What exactly do you expect to happen when you send an order with -2? That the customer will somehow return 2 of the products?

In general when you keep a product in the inventory it's because you want to address it specifically, e.g. to make a change on it (network provisioning), to record a standard or extended warranty, to allow recurring charge for a rental equipment, etc. In all these cases the quantity is meaningless because you'll need to deal with a specific instance (we can term this as "serialized").

But if you can come up with a convincing use case for quantity in the inventory, and/or change orders on non-serialized products, we'd need to look again.

Hi all,

We could see an attribute "quantity" (of type Integer) on ProductOrderItem in TMF 622.

Let's say we have a New Provide order where quantity = 10 is ordered. Upon completion of the product order, we would need to update product inventory with quantity = 10 for the Product. But, we couldn't see any such attribute on Product resource. Where could we capture such information in Product resource?

Moreover, when we try to place a change order where we wish to decrease the quantity by 2, as per TMF semantics, we should have ProductOrderItem with quantity = -2 (Depicting what is changing) or quantity = 8 (the final quantity expected)?

------------------------------
Varun Pandhi
Infosys
------------------------------