How Do Service Order Field Activities Work?

Create a Service Order Field Activity Request

A service order field activity request can be as a result of a customer requesting a change to their service; such as, enabling or disabling service when moving into or out of a residence. They can also be the result of other business processes; such as, a request to cut service due to non-payment. Within Oracle Utilities Customer To Meter actions (such as start service, stop service, and cut for non-payment) result in a field activity request being created for each affected service point. These requests are sent to Service Order Management to be performed. In addition to requests that are created with Oracle Utilities Customer To Meter, service order requests can be received from other applications.

Retrieve Required Data

The service order field activity uses a set of pre-processing algorithms to derive and populate data needed by the activity, such as the device, service point, address, effective date, and others.

Request Appointment (Optional)

If the service order field activity task type specifies that field tasks of this type require an appointment, the service order field activity checks for available appointment slots in the field work system and sends a notification to the appointment handling system.

Create Outbound Communication

The service order field activity creates an outbound communication to send the service order field activity to the field work system. The outbound communication gathers the information required by the field work system before being sent. This information is retrieved by a set of processing scripts defined on the field task type.

Receive Inbound Communication

When the service order field activity has been completed, the field work system sends an inbound communication back to Service Order Management.

Inbound communications can contain Field Activity Remarks (entered by field resources when they perform and complete their field work. If the Field Activity Remarks reference completion events, they are executed.

The inbound communications create completion events as defined on the field task type. If the service order field activity was successfully completed, it creates the "Completion Events When Successful" completion events. If the service order field activity was canceled, it creates the "Completion Events When Canceled" completion events.

Execute Completion Events

After receiving the inbound communication, a service order field activity algorithm transitions any active completion events into their executed state.

Complete Processing

The service order field activity completes its processing by doing the following:

• Updating the parent orchestration activity

• Sending a success response to the requester

• Transitioning the parent orchestration activity to the next state in its lifecycle

• Sending a service order field activity completion outbound communication to subscribing systems.