New Features in Business Operations Center

6 New Features in Business Operations Center

The Oracle Communications Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set releases include several new features.

Topics in this document:

New Features in Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 8

Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 8 includes the following enhancements:

Previously, Business Operations Center only displayed a View Failure Report link for ready-to-use jobs, like billing and invoicing.

Now, Business Operations Center has been enhanced to display a View Failure Report link for all custom jobs that are based on the multithreaded application (MTA) framework.

For custom jobs that are not based on the MTA framework, it is the customer’s responsibility to populate the audit table. If there is data present in the audit table, the system will display the View Failure Report link. For more information, see "Viewing Details of Failed Jobs" in Business Operations Center Online Help.
The Business Operations Center deployment in a cloud native environment now supports a zero-downtime upgrade without the use of an alternate namespace. This simplified approach to upgrading in place, and the reduced dependence on other components of the solution like load balancer (to reroute traffic), will enable faster upgrades.
See "Configuring the Billing Care, Billing Care REST API, and Business Operations Center Services" and "Upgrading Your Business Operations Center Cloud Native Services" in BRM Cloud Native Deployment Guide for more information.
Business Operations Center is now certified to integrate with Oracle Identity Cloud Service using SAML. See "Configuring SAML for SSO" in Business Operations Center Installation Guide.

New Features in Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 4

Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 4 includes the following enhancements:

The General Ledger job now includes options for generating preview or export reports that comply with deliverable-based revenue recognition. Previously, you could generate reports for only event-based revenue recognition. See "Generating General Ledger Reports" in Business Operations Center Online Help.
Business Operations Center now runs business operations jobs by calling the PCM_OP_JOB_EXECUTE and PCM_OP_JOB_PROCESS_TEMPLATE opcodes. In previous releases, it ran business operations jobs by running the pin_job_executor utility. See "How Business Operations Center Runs Jobs" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.
Business Operations Center now supports multischema systems. You can choose to run a business operations job on the primary schema, on one of the secondary schemas, or on all of the schemas. By default, business operations jobs are run on all schemas. See "Running Business Operations Jobs" in Business Operations Center Online Help.
You can now customize Business Operations Center to run your custom applications against a BRM multischema system. See "Setting Up Business Operations Center to Run Custom Applications on Multischema Systems" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.
In the Business Dashboard page of Business Operations Center, the Subscriptions graphs have been removed and replaced with new Product Popularity graphs. The Product Popularity graphs consist of the following two bar charts:
- Most Popular Products: This shows the number of subscriptions for each of your top ten most popular products.
- Least Popular Products: This shows the number of subscriptions for each of your bottom ten least popular products.
See "Viewing Business Trends" in Business Operations Center Online Help.
You can now monitor Business Operations Center by using external applications, such as Prometheus and Grafana. For more information, see "Monitoring Business Operations Center" in BRM System Administrator's Guide.

New Features in Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 3

Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 3 includes the following enhancements:

Business Operations Center Installation Enhancements

The Business Operations Center installer now allows you to:

Deploy Business Operations Center on a WebLogic Cluster.
Deploy Business Operations Center on a managed server that is currently offline.
Deploy Business Operations Center on a managed server that is also part of a cluster.

The Business Operations Center GUI installer now displays the state (Running or Shut Down) of target servers on which to deploy Business Operations Center.

For more information, see Business Operations Center Installation Overview.

Business Operations Center Supports Custom Jobs

You can now set up custom jobs in Business Operations Center that run your custom MTA and non-MTA applications.

See "Setting Up Custom Jobs" and "Running Custom Jobs" in Business Operations Center Online Help.

Business Operations Center Upgrades Now Supported

You can now upgrade from these versions of Business Operations Center to Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 3:

Business Operations Center 7.5
Business Operations Center 7.5 Patch Set 1 and later patch sets
Business Operations Center 12.0
Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 1 and Patch Set 2

For information about how to upgrade, see "Upgrading Business Operations Center" in BRM Upgrade Guide.

Support for Enabling SSO using SAML

You can now use SAML to enable single-sign on (SSO) in Business Operations Center. SSO allows you to log in to applications using a single user name and password combination.

For more information, see "Configuring SAML for SSO" in Business Operations Center Installation Guide.

New Features in Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 2

Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 2 includes the following enhancements:

Workflow Job to Automate Billing Process

Workflow Job to Automate Billing Process

In previous releases, you had to create separate business operation center jobs for billing and invoicing and manage the dependency between the jobs using scheduled time.

In this case, if the jobs were not run in the correct order, the bills could reflect incorrect charges.

With this enhancement, you can run a workflow job, which can include billing, payment collections, invoices, and refunds. Workflow jobs enable you to automate an end-to-end billing process.

Note:

Only BOC Super Admin can run workflow jobs.

For more information on the Admin role, see the discussion about roles in the Business Operations Center Help.

You can include one or more of these jobs in a workflow job, in this order:

Billing
Invoicing
Payment collections, including the option to settle any previously authorized one-time payments.
Refunds

Note:

You can't change the order. A workflow job stops if any individual job fails.

And, you can specify these attributes to determine which accounts are included:

The status of the accounts to bill: active, inactive, or closed.
The payment method.
- Payment card (credit card or debit card)
- Invoice
The account's billing day of month. You can run billing for accounts whose billing day of month is:
- On or before the job is run. The job creates bills for accounts whose billing date is any day before midnight of the day that you run the job. If you run billing every day, the accounts billed are from the previous day. If you run billing every two weeks, all accounts with a billing date in the previous two weeks are billed.
- A specified number of days before the job is run.
- On a specific day of the month. You can enter multiple days.

If invoice jobs are included, specify the level of information to include in the invoices: summary or detailed.

You can view the workflow job status and metrics from the Job History page by clicking the link displayed under Processed in each row. However, you cannot rerun the failed workflow jobs from this page.

New Features in Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 1

Business Operations Center 12.0 Patch Set 1 includes the following enhancements:

Business Operations Center is Now Certified with Jersey Bundle 2.27 (Patch Set 1)

Currently, Business Operations Center 12.0 is certified with Jersey Bundle 2.25.1. With this patch, Business Operations Center 12.0 is certified with Jersey Bundle 2.27.