5 Understanding the Query Product Classes Business Flow

This chapter explains concepts necessary for understanding the Query Product Classes business flow and defines the assumptions and constraints for the business flow. It describes how Siebel customer relationship management (Siebel CRM) organizes products and how Oracle Communications Order and Service Management (OSM) uses this organization in the business flow.

The Query Product Classes business flow is enabled using the following Pre-Built Integration options for the Oracle Communications Order to Cash Integration Pack for Siebel CRM, OSM, and Oracle Communications Billing and Revenue Management (BRM) (the integration):

• Oracle Communications Order to Cash for Siebel CRM and OSM Pre-Built Integration option

• Oracle Communications Order to Cash for Siebel CRM, OSM, and BRM Pre-Built Integration option

If you are using Oracle Product Hub for Communications to manage your products, the Query Product Classes business flow is enabled using the following pre-built integration options in addition to those listed above:

• Oracle Product Master Data Management Integration Base Pack

• Oracle Product Master Data Management Integration Option for Design Studio

See Oracle Application Integration Architecture Oracle Product Master Data Management Integration Implementation Guide for more information about how the Query Product Classes business flow is implemented using Product Hub.

About Organizing Products

You organize products in meaningful ways, such as by service, size, or bandwidth, using product classes in Siebel CRM. You can create product classes manually in Siebel CRM or you can create them by importing item catalog categories from Product Hub.

When creating product classes, you associate attributes with them in Siebel CRM. Attributes are defined by sets of values. For example, the value set for a bandwidth attribute might include 2 megabits per second (Mbps), 3 Mbps, and 5 Mbps.

The Query Product Classes business flow lets you reuse the organization of your products from Siebel CRM in your order management system.

See Siebel Product Administration Guide for more information about product classes and attributes.

About the Query Product Classes Business Flow

The Query Product Classes business flow lets you reuse the organization of products from Siebel CRM in OSM.You can query product classes and their attributes from Siebel CRM to create and update product specifications in Oracle Communications Design Studio for use in OSM. OSM uses product specifications for order orchestration.

See Oracle Communications Order and Service Management Concepts for more information about product classes and specifications in OSM and Design Studio.

Assumptions and Constraints for the Query Product Classes Business Flow

The assumptions and constraints for the Query Product Classes business flow are as follows:

• Any updates made to product specifications in Design Studio will not automatically be synchronized back to Siebel CRM. Any updates made to product classes in Siebel CRM will not automatically be synchronized to Design Studio. These changes must be resynchronized by a new query.

• Design Studio maintains the mapping between product specifications and product classes.