Supported Business Processes

This section provides information about the integration points and processing details, including:

• Integration Points by Business Process

Overview

In this integration, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing manages customers (persons), accounts/service agreements (SAs), service points (SPs), service agreement (SA) relationships, meters, meter configurations, SP/meter history, contract options and contract option events while Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management manages usage information.

Meters, meter configurations and SP/meter history are managed in either Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing or Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management, depending on the implementation.

Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing requests bill determinants from Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management in order to generate bills for customers. Replacement read notifications are sent by Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management whenever corrections are made to read details that were previously included in a usage calculation. This could result in a cancel-rebill scenario in Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing that would result in new request(s) for bill determinants as part of the rebill.

During the billing cycle, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing requests usage data from Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management as separate usage requests for each service agreement that is part of the billing run and that require bill determinants.

When requesting bill determinants, there is an option to pass interval data from Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management back to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing.

The integration includes navigation links from the Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing person, SA, SP, usage request and meter into the Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management contact, US, SP, usage transaction and device. A link also exists from Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing service agreement to Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management's 360 View. In addition, a link from Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management SP to the Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing Control Central - Account Information is included.

To reduce administration setup, Bill Cycle Sync processes are available for the integration between Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing and Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management. This functionality synchronizes bill cycle schedule from Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing to Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management and it also sends updates to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing for any changes in the bill cycle relationship in Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management.

Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing notifies Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management when:

• One or more usage transactions are linked to a completed bill

• A bill segment that is linked to a usage request is frozen or canceled

Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing can also request bill determinants from Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management in order to perform rate comparison and analysis for service agreements that require bill determinants.

This integration is also used to support the business use cases described below for the web self service solution for Oracle Utilities.

The following business use cases apply to this integration:

Business Process	Description
Compare Rate Plan and Analysis	Provide a tool where the customer can compare the difference to their bill if they choose to transfer to a different rate plan.
Current Bill-To and Estimate Graph	A customer will often use a Self Service application to pay their bill. While paying their bill, it would be opportune to present them any unbilled charges to-date.

Note: For Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing and Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management outbound synchronization processing, real-time synchronous outbound messages are not recommended. The monitor process on the “Pending” state of the sync request business objects must be used so that message processing occurs asynchronously to prevent race conditions and timing issues. If near real-time processing of sync requests are needed, schedule the deferred sync request monitor jobs frequently.

Integration Points by Business Process

The following business processes apply to this integration:

Master Data Synchronization

• Person Information Synchronization

• Service Point Information Synchronization

• Service Agreement Information Synchronization

• Service Agreement Relationship Information Synchronization

• Dynamic Option Synchronization

• Dynamic Option Event Synchronization

• Meter Information Synchronization*

• Meter Configuration Information Synchronization*

• Service Point – Meter History Information Synchronization*

• Scalar Meter Read Synchronization*

Note: The processes suffixed with * are optional. These flows do not need to be synced when meter related information is managed by Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management.

Billing Related Processes

• Batch Billing Determinants Request and Response

• Online Billing Determinants Request and Response

• Replacement Reads Notification

• Get Register Read High-Low Boundaries

• Get Usage Request

• Usage Transaction Info Update

Note: The Get Usage Request process is also used by Oracle Utilities Customer Self Service for the Compare Rate Plan and Analysis and Current Bill-To and Estimate Graph functionality.

Customer Self Service Related Processes

This process only applies if Oracle Utilities Customer Self Service is installed.

• Usage Adjustment Request

Except for replacement reads notification, all other processes are initiated from Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing does not send a response for replacement reads coming from Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management.

Get Register Read High-Low Boundaries and Get Usage Request and Usage Adjustment Request are synchronous processes.

The following diagram provides a visual representation of these processes: CCB-MDM Integration Points

Bill Cycle Sync Processes

• Bill Cycle Information Synchronization

• SA Activation Bill Cycle Request

• Bill Cycle Change Notification

The following diagram provides a visual representation of the new processes added to support Bill Cycle Maintenance Related Processes:

Processing Details

The following processing details apply:

1. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing sends person, service point (SP), service agreement (SA), service agreement relationships, contract option and contract option events to Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management.

Meter, meter configuration, SP-Meter history data could also be sent, depending where this information is maintained.

The meter, meter configuration, and SP-meter history data sync functionality is not intended for service points with field work integration to Oracle Utilities Service Order Management.

2. When service points are managed by Service Order Management (SOM), Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing synchronize Bill Cycle Schedule information to Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management to establish the Bill Cycle and Measurement Cycle relationship to determine the Bill Cycle of a Service Point. During SA Activation, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing calls Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management to obtain the Bill Cycle linked to the service point related to the service agreement. Also, notifications are sent to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing whenever there is a change in the bill cycle relationship in Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management.

3. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing sends Scalar Meter Reads to Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management.

4. Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management processes the usage measurements coming in from meter devices.

5. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing then sends online or batch billing determinants requests to Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management at the time of billing.

6. Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management responds by sending back the billing determinants as requested from the billing system. Interval data can also be sent back as part of the response.

7. If there is any change to the billing determinants in Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management for a meter for which billing determinants have already been sent to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing, then Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management sends a replacement read notification to Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing then creates an off cycle bill generation to inform the user.

8. For retrieving the Estimated and High-Low Boundaries for a Register, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing sends a request to Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management.

9. When doing rate check on SA that requires bill determinants from the Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing Rate Check Page, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing sends a synchronous call to Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management to get the usage information back.

When Oracle Utilities Customer Self Service is also installed, customers who are logged in can view their unbilled charges-to-date and can also compare the difference to their bill if they should choose to transfer to a different rate plan.

10. When a usage transaction is used in billing, Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing sends an outbound message to Oracle Utilities Meter Data Management if any of the following actions occur:

• A bill is completed. (Usage request is sent with an indicator that it is used on bill.)

• A bill segment is frozen. (Usage request is sent with an indicator that it is used on bill.)

• A bill segment is canceled. (Usage request is sent with an indicator that it is not used on bill.)