How Entities Work Together

Types of Entities

You can use the following table to understand the definition of different entities then read about how these entities work together later in this topic. This guide contains a chapter on each of these entities.

Entity	Definition
Initiative	An initiative or project encapsulates catalog definitions so that you can publish these entities to the spoke systems. For more information, see Initiatives Overview.
Service Specification	Service specifications reflect the characteristics associated to a service, for example, data service or voice service. For more information, see Service Specification Overview.
Product Specification	Product specification, also known as product type, consists of detailed description of tangible or intangible characteristics that are made externally available through the product offer. These are the attributes associated with a product offer and define the technical aspects of the product offer. For more information, see Product Specification Overview
Product Offers	Product offer is an item that can be sold or ordered from the provider of the catalog or can also be tracked as an asset. A product offer can be a simple offer or bundle offer. A simple product offer has attributes, features, and characteristics that doesn't contain other product offers. A bundle product offer is an assembly of two or more product offers. For more information, see Product Offer Guided Flow
Product Offer Pricing	Product offer pricing refers to different pricing structures that you associate with the product offer. For example a one-time, recurring, usage fees, attribute-based pricing, and so on. For more information, see Pricing Overview.
Promotions	Promotions or promotional events refer to additional discounts, reduction, or awards on offers for customers who meet predefined criteria. For more information, see Promotions Overview.
Catalogs and Categories	Category is used to group product offers into logical containers. A product category can contain other categories. Each product offering in a product catalog combines pricing and availability information with product specifications that describe the relationships between products, the services used to realize the products, and the resources they require. For more information, see Create Catalogs and Categories
Rules	Rules are different types of conditions that you can set for product offers and product specifications. Using rules you can set conditions that validate the eligibility or compatibility of offers or specifications, verify the downgrade or upgrade from the defined terms, or check recommendations. For more information, see Rules Overview.
Product Lines	Product lines group similar product offers. For more information, see Product Lines Overview.

Understanding Entity Relationships

Here's how the entities are related to each other.

A product is usually a service or a resource instantiated by a product offer which is always defined by product specifications. Product specifications are detailed descriptions of tangible or intangible objects available in the form of a product offer to users.

Product offers are created as simple or bundle offers. A simple offer is an atomic offer, whereas a bundle offer is a grouping of simple offers or nested bundle offers. An example of a bundle offer is a home-based internet service that combines three simple offers, such as, internet connection, e-mail service, and home security.

After you decide the offer type, based on product specifications, you can associate prices to the offer. You can use a simple or advanced pricing model. A simple pricing model comprises one-time fee, recurring fee, or a usage fee. An advanced pricing model comprises allowances, tiered pricing, attribute-based pricing or overages. Additionally, existing price plans avoid proliferation of offers and help manage pricing structures. Along with pricing, alterations are also made to charges incurred for a product offer and can take many different forms, such as adjustments and discounts. Price alterations like discount and markup can be specified on specific price types for service bundles, packages, or commercial bundles.

You can also add promotions to an offer to provide additional benefits such as discounts, reduction, or awards over a short duration to a customer who has met pre-defined criteria.

Further, you can add rules to help determine how a product offer is made available in the market. Eligibility rules decide the parameters, compatibility rules specify the inclusion or exclusion of a combination of products, recommendation rules provide cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and upgrade and downgrade rules define the permissible offers to migrate to or migrate from with defined terms.

The product offers are also grouped into catalogs and categories, which represent the collection of product offers. The product offers can also be grouped based on product lines. When a product offer is created taking into consideration the various aspects described earlier, it's published to the market whereby it's treated as a product for customer service providers.

Initiatives tie all the entities together to help manage the lifecycle statuses of all the entities and publish them into a production run-time environment. When you create or edit entities, the in-design entities available for selection within the fields on the page are in context of the initiative you specify on that page. For example, when you create offers, the product specifications drop-down list will contain only those in-design specifications that are associated to the initiative specified on the page.

Read the chapters in this guide for more information about creating and managing these entities in the Launch application.

Entity Validations

Validations are enforced into top-level entities to ensure that the referenced or included resources must be valid during the effective period of the top-level resource. For example, a product specification valid from Oct 1, 2018 to Dec 31, 2018 cannot be used to create an offer having valid from Nov 1, 2018 to Mar 30, 2019.Only if the validity of the product specification had a wider validity covering the offer validity, it would be possible to create the product offering.

Search and Filter Entities

You can use the search option available on the landing page of each top-level entity in the Launch application to narrow down your search within the listed entities.

The search filters include the following options and the search results may vary depending on how the search is set up or what data is available.

Auto complete
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Lifecycle status