5 Product Master Data Management Integration Option for Design Studio

Overview

The new integration, Oracle Product Master Data Management integration Pack Option for Oracle Communications for Design Studio enables you to query or import new or updated item catalog categories and Transaction Attributes from Oracle Product Hub into Oracle Communications Design Studio through Oracle Application Integration Architecture (Oracle AIA).

This new integration offers the following advantages if you are using Oracle Product Hub as their Product Master:

• You can directly query or import the item catalog categories and Transaction Attributes into Oracle Communications for Design Studio instead of routing them through Siebel CRM.

• Lowers total cost of ownership (TCO) if you want to query or import the item catalog categories and Transaction Attributes directly from Oracle Product Hub into Design Studio.

The mapping between the Oracle Product Hub item catalog category and product specification in Design Studio enables communication service providers (CSPs) to achieve maximum reuse of a fulfillment process for products that share the same classification, for example, Broadband.

Assumptions and Constraints

The assumptions and constraints in Design Studio integration option are:

• The Design Studio queries the item catalog categories from Oracle Product Hub. Any updates that you make to the product specification in Design Studio are not synchronized back to Oracle Product Hub.

• The Design Studio maintains the mapping between the Oracle Product Hub item catalog category and the product specification.

• Only the item catalog category and the associated attributes are imported into the Design Studio.

• The item catalog categories published to Design Studio must be published to Siebel CRM to support the existing Order fulfillment processes.

• The product administrator is responsible for notifying the service-mapping specialist about the addition or modification of item catalog categories.

Oracle Communications Design Studio Setup

The Oracle Communications Design Studio is a graphical tool that provides a ready-to-use integration to Oracle Product Hub and imports Oracle Product Hub item catalog categories for order fulfillment process. CSPs can define order fulfillment processes, tasks, order templates, dependencies and change management policies easily and accurately.

For more information about Design Studio, see the Design Studio documentation.

Oracle Product Hub Web Services

The Oracle AIA composites invoke the following web services:

• item catalog category service

  This web service is used to query item catalog category definitions.

• Value set service

  This web service is used to query value sets.

For more information about invoking these web services, see the discussion of web services for publishing in Oracle Product Hub Implementation Guide.

Integration Services

The integration option uses the following integration services:

• QueryClassificationListPIMCommsProvABCSImpl

• QuerySpecificationValueSetListPIMCommsProvABCSImpl

• QueryProdClassAndAttributesSCEReqCommsABCSImpl

Understanding the Query Item Catalog Categories Business Flow

Product administrators define Item Catalog Categories and Transaction Attributes in Oracle Product Hub. The Oracle Product Hub administrator publishes the item catalog categories that sends a notification to the product-to-service mapping specialist. The product-to-service mapping specialist queries and imports the item catalog category and the associated Transaction Attributes to create or update a cartridge.

A cartridge in Design Studio is a jar (Java Archive) file that includes product specifications, orchestration of a product, item catalog category (or product classes in Siebel CRM) -to-product-specification mapping rules and so on that helps you meet their business needs and support ready-to-use features.

The product-to-service mapping specialist then maps the item catalog category to a product specification in the cartridge. The product-to-service mapping specialist uses the product specification to associate decomposition rules, fulfillment functions, and their dependencies. After all the design time setup is complete, the product-to-service mapping specialist deploys the cartridge to the Oracle Order and Service Management (OSM) environments. The cartridge defines various fulfillment topologies to process order lines during order processing.

The Figure 5-1illustrates the planned business process flow.

Figure 5-1 Business Process Flow

Description of ''Figure 5-1 Business Process Flow''

The product administrator performs the following operations in the Oracle Product Hub application:

1. Creates a new or updates the existing valueset definition and generates a newer version of the valueset. A valueset is required for Order-time attribute that has a static list of values.

2. Creates or updates an item catalog category definition by adding, deleting or updating the transaction attribute definition.

3. Releases a newer version of the item catalog category.

4. Updates the attribute definitions (value sets) by adding or removing values from them. The product administrator can update the attribute value set associated with the attribute definition in the Oracle Product Hub application. This action automatically updates all the item catalog category and their subclasses.

5. The product administrator selects an item catalog category that is associated with the updated attribute definition and sends the notification.

   In Design Studio, the product administrator can notify the product-to-service mapping specialist in one of the following ways:

   • E-mail notification.

     The product administrator can send template based e-mail notifications through E-Business Suite workflow, and can keep track of e-mail notification history.

     To receive an e-mail notification from Oracle Product Hub, you must define a subscription for the business event oracle.apps.ego.item.publishItemCatalogCategory. For more information about how to setup e-mail notifications, see knowledge base article, MOS Doc ID 1491286.1, "Design Studio integration with Oracle Product Hub" in My Oracle Support.

     Note:

     Email notification provides better traceability than company's email.

   • Use a company's e-mail application

     The product administrator must manually create e-mails with correct information. This method is not dependent on a template and does not require additional configuration steps.

6. The product-to-service mapping specialist opens the Design Studio and queries the item catalog category and the Transaction Attribute details from Oracle Product Hub into a cartridge. The import process uses the item catalog category name. The Design Studio also offers the flexibility to query all the classes in the hierarchy associated with a item catalog category.

7. After the item catalog categories are successfully imported into a cartridge, all the Transaction Attributes and the associated value sets are stored in the Design Studio data dictionary. The item catalog category is mapped to a product specification in the cartridge.

   A new product specification can be created or an existing product specification is mapped to the item catalog category. After the mapping between the item catalog category and product specification is completed, the product to service mapping specialist will define and associate fulfillment functions and their dependencies to the product specification. After the validation and decomposition rules are defined, the cartridge is deployed into the OSM environments.

8. The Design Studio provides a function that tests the design-time configuration after you submit a sample test order. If there are issues with the product specification in the cartridge, a new product specification is created or the item catalog category is imported again. If a new product specification is created, then the configuration must be performed again. The cartridge must be re-deployed for the changes to become effective. The deployed cartridge is used by the OSM to process order lines that are submitted for fulfillment.

Query Item Catalog Categories: Implementation

This section describes the implementation details of the QueryProdClassAndAttributesSCEReqCommsABCSImpl service.

The Figure 5-2 illustrates the item catalog categories query flow.

Figure 5-2 item catalog category Query Flow

Description of ''Figure 5-2 item catalog category Query Flow''

The process to query item catalog categories (or product classes in Siebel CRM) depends on the AIAConfigurationProperties.xml file settings set by the FMW server administrator. Based on these settings, the product-to-service mapping specialist performs one of the following:

• Query or import new or updated product classes from Siebel CRM (or the equivalent item catalog categories in Oracle Product Hub) into Design Studio.

  For more information about how to query product classes in Siebel CRM, see the discussion of the Query Product Classes business flow in - Implementation Overview in the Oracle AIA Oracle Communications Order to Cash Integration Pack Implementation Guide.

• Query or import the item catalog categories and Transaction Attributes from Oracle Product Hub into Design Studio through Oracle AIA.

Query Item Catalog Categories: Integration Flow

This section describes the sequence of control flows that are required among the various integration services when querying item catalog categories and its attributes from Oracle Product Hub and publishing them into Design Studio.

The Figure 5-3 illustrates the item catalog categories integration flow.

Figure 5-3 item catalog category Integration Flow

Description of ''Figure 5-3 item catalog category Integration Flow''

When this process initiates, the following events occur:

1. The Design Studio user (a product-to-service mapping specialist) triggers the Query item catalog category and attribute definitions integration flow using the Design Studio client, which provides the item catalog category Name and the Oracle Fusion Middleware (FMW) URL. In the case of an update, Design Studio also provides the item catalog category Names for all of the subclasses.

2. The Design Studio invokes the QueryProdClassAndAttributesSCEReqCommsABCSImpl with the QueryClassificationListEBM, which contains the item catalog category Names.

3. QueryProdClassAndAttributesSCEReqCommsABCSImpl passes through the QueryClassificationListEBM to the QueryICCListPIMCommsProvABCSImpl.

4. QueryICCListPIMCommsProvABCSImpl transforms the QueryClassificationListEBM into the IccQueryIn definition IO application business message (ABM).

5. The ICC web service returns the complete item catalog category information and associated Attribute IDs for all input item catalog category Names. The QueryICCListPIMCommsProvABCSImpl transforms the Oracle Product Hub IccQueryOut into the QueryClassificationsList EBM.

6. The QueryClassificationList EBM goes all the way back to the QueryProdClassAndAttributesSCEReqCommsABCSImpl.

7. The QueryProdClassAndAttributesSCEReqCommsABCSImpl then invokes the QueryValueSetListPIMCommsProvABCSImpl with the QuerySpecificationValueSetListEBM. The QueryValueSetListPIMCommsProvABCSImpl transforms the QuerySpecificationValueSetListEBM into the Oracle Product Hub attribute definitions IO (ABM).

8. The ICC service returns the complete attribute valueset information for one or more attribute IDs. The QueryValueSetListPIMCommsProvABCSImpl transforms the response into the QuerySpecificationValueSetListRespEBM.

9. The QuerySpecificationValueSetListEBM go all the way back to the QueryProdClassAndAttributesSCEReqCommsABCSImpl. The QueryProdClassAndAttributesSCEReqCommsABCSImpl merges the QuerySpecificationValueSetListEBM and the QueryClassificationList EBM and maps them to the QueryProdClassAndAttributesRespABM.

10. The QueryProdClassAndAttributesSCEReqCommsABCSImpl replies to Design Studio along with the QueryProdClassAndAttributesRespABM, which contains the item catalog category and attribute details for all the item catalog category Names provided by the product to the service mapping specialist.

Support for Effectivity during Design-Time - Methodology

You can use the item catalog categories to represent unique product specifications. Product specifications represent a type of product offering and can only be sold through a product offering. Product specifications represent the unique entities that must be fulfilled. Not all product classes are created for this purpose. For the subset of product classes created to represent product specifications, at design time you must map the product class name and the corresponding fulfillment pattern name in OSM in its Central Order Management role. Consequently, changes to these product classes affects the mapping for both design time and run time order management handling. This section describes an important aspect of this mapping effectivity: how the time of a new mapping or a change to an existing mapping takes effect in coordination across Order Capture (Oracle Product Hub) and Central Order Management (OSM).

References to product classes in this section are limited to those used to represent product specifications. To distinguish these, it is recommended to use a naming convention, such as ending the name with the term ProdSpec. You can create and update product classes directly in Siebel CRM or from a Product Master, such as Oracle Product Hub for Communications. In this section, whenever you see Siebel design time product class changes, it is also applicable to product master when one is used.

Specify the effectivity for the item catalog categories in Oracle Product Hub when:

• You create a new item catalog category.

• You update an existing item catalog category.

• You make an existing item catalog category inactive.

Whenever these scenarios or any combination of these scenarios occur, you must query the item catalog categories in the Design Studio, which is the design time tool for OSM from the Oracle Product Hub application. After the item catalog categories are successfully queried, item catalog categories and the product specification are updated manually, and a following condition occurs:

• The item catalog category is mapped to a new product specification. The new product specification definition involves defining the fulfillment metadata.

• The item catalog category is mapped to an existing product specification.

• The item catalog category mapping is changed to a different product specification.

Item catalog category effectivity must be the same as the product specification effectivity. You update product specification effectivity manually in the Design Studio after the item catalog category is successfully queried and the product specification is mapped to it.

When the mapping between the item catalog category and product specification is updated (when the effectivity of the item catalog category and product specification changes), the cartridge version in SCE Studio must be updated and the cartridge must be redeployed to the environment.

For more information about updating the cartridge version and the various deployment options, see Oracle Communications Order and Service Management Cartridge Guide for Oracle Application Integration Architecture.