This section describes new features and functionality included in this release of Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Management including the following:

This section describes new product usability enhancements introduced in this release, including:

The Customer Portal now enables you to initiate a service call process to capture updated customer information, record details pertaining to a controllable device, categorize the service calls as an emergency or non-emergency, and link the new service call with an existing service call. Additionally, you can escalate the service call to a particular role or create a new work order and assign it to the appropriate crew member. You can also mark the service call as resolved based on the interaction with the customer.

This expands the capability of the Customer Portal to capture service calls relating to customer-owned devices.

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

The Customer Insights zone on the Customer Portal enables you to view program enrollments or unenrollments in the "In Progress" state. You can also initiate the cancellation of these enrollments or unenrollments from the zone's actionable insights upon confirmation of the customer.

This provides visibility of in-progress program enrollments and unenrollments.

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Previously, in the Device Setup panel of the Process Flow portal, the Service Order Management (SOM) field activity or work activity was created before the Request Slot option was selected to book an appointment when enrolling or unenrolling customers. In this release, the Device Setup panel initially shows the appointment slots and displays the fields for creating the SOM field activity or work activity after booking an appointment. The modified panel sequence enhances the enrollment and unenrollment process flow by presenting the available crew shifts as appointment slots and the selected appointment slot persists and updates on the work activity. If enrolling in more than one program, like a thermostat program and energy efficiency program, separate work activities need to be created and the application presents appointment slots for each activity.

This minimizes the creation and cleanup of unnecessary activities.

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Enrollment involves identifying a specific customer that is eligible for a particular program, and establishing a relationship between the customer, the program, and if appropriate, a device location where one more controllable devices are (or have been) installed. In this release, the enrollment process workflow captures information such as interaction notes, notification preferences, number of thermostats on the premise, and setback value for thermostats from custom fields and passes these to the work activity. The captured information persists to the enrollment service task created for each enrollment process.

This provides flexibility to capture additional information during interaction with the customer that can be sent to the field work system.

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Unenrollment involves removing a previously enrolled customer from a program, and deactivating program subscriptions and related controllable devices. The unenrollment process flow now enables you to determine whether the field work activity removes the device, the customer ships the device, or the customer retains the out-of-warranty device. A new Program panel populates the details of the enrolled program along with the controllable device and its age, providing additional information for decision making. Additionally, the Device Setup panel within the process flow provides device removal method options that indicate whether a work activity is required.

This provides the flexibility to select the best device removal option during an unenrollment.

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

This section describes new program enhancements introduced in this release, including:

You can create and manage non-device related programs like Critical Peak Pricing Programs or Peak Time Rebate, and enroll customers to these programs. These programs typically handle customer behavior-driven demand management. In addition, you can configure your enrollment process to allow or disallow enrollments to these programs. Customers enrolled in non-device related programs receive event notifications that define their behavioral patterns when they participate or opt-out.

This provides the capability to enroll customers to behavior-driven demand programs.

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Qualifications are questions related to the customers and their premises that are used to determine eligibility to enroll in the program. However, there are instances where the customers do not have the responses to these question at the time of data capturing, which results to them not completing the enrollment process. The Program now provides a "Required" or "Optional" setting to either make the responses to the questions mandatory or not required. Optional responses to qualification questions lessen the non-completion rate of enrollments.

This flexibility to set responses to enrollment qualification questions as mandatory or optional provides a better customer experience.

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

The Enrollment Channel/Source field that appears on a service task displays whether the customer was enrolled in a program via the self-service portal, contact center agent, or an external aggregator (Bring Your Own). This allows you to track the channel or source for each customer enrollment and generate a report to analyze the volume and efficiency of each source.

This allows you to categorize and report customer enrollments based on channel or source.

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

This section describes new field work enhancements introduced in this release, including:

The Program Enrollment process was enhanced to allow for the creation of a single work order for bundled enrollments. For example, enrolling in a Smart Thermostat program and its related In-Home Energy Assessment program generates one work order instead of two separate work orders. Previously, separate enrollment service work orders had to be created for enrollments to related programs.

This reduces the creation of separate work orders for multiple enrollments by a single customer.

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

Completion events are used to capture closeout information against activities received from an external application. Controllable devices are installed devices at a location that enable participation in demand response programs and program events. The application now automatically records controllable devices against metered service points during work completion events.

This provides you with information to determine interoperability and compatibility, define load or capacity characteristics, determine device performance metrics, and more.

You don't need to do anything to enable this feature.

This section describes new integration-related enhancements introduced in this release, including:

The Admin Sync flow now sends the manufacturer and model information held in Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Management to Oracle Field Service. The information is recorded within Oracle Field Service, which becomes accessible to field crews to use for capturing the details of a customer-owned controlled device like an HVAC unit.

This enables you to send the configured manufacturer and model combination to Oracle Field Service and capture details of customer-owned controlled devices.

To enable this feature, refer to the Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Cloud Service-Oracle Field Service Configuration Guide for more information.

Oracle Utilities Customer Cloud Service initiates master data synchronization for the Person, Service Agreement, and Service Point objects to Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Management. The synchronization process handles the initial and incremental updates, and creates a tab-delimited flat file with the required attributes to be transferred from Oracle Utilities Customer Cloud Service to Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Management via Oracle Integration Cloud Service.

Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Management processes the records from the Person file to create the equivalent Contact records, the Service Point file to create the Metered Service Point records, and the Service Agreement file to create the Metered Service records. Oracle Utilities Customer Cloud Service's initial synchronization handles the first-time load of customer data and the incremental synchronization handles updates to the customer data. Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Management returns an acknowledgment for incremental updates only. Up-to-date and synchronized customer information in Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Management correctly determines the customer's program eligibility.

This leverages the Oracle Integration Cloud-based file integration flows to synchronize customer information, which forms a prerequisite for enrolling customers on programs they are eligible.

To enable this feature, refer to the Oracle Utilities Customer Cloud Service Integration to Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Cloud Service Configuration Guide for more information.

The pre-built integration flow enables a field worker to send controlled device details as part of the work completion from Oracle Field Service to Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Management. For example, the pre-built integration flow can send the manufacturer, model, and device serial number of the customer-owned device like an HVAC unit while you are installing a Smart thermostat. Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Management then processes the work activity completion details and records the controlled device to the asset location of the controllable device.

This allows you to efficiently manage event participation by providing the capability to receive and process customer-owned controlled device details from Oracle Field Service.

To enable this feature, refer to the Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Cloud Service-Oracle Field Service Configuration Guide for more information.

You can capture updated customer name, contact number, email address, and miscellaneous interaction notes from a work activity created by the enrollment or unenrollment of customer to/from a program. You can then pass the captured customer information to Oracle Field Service within the work activity, which becomes visible to the handheld device of the field crew when performing the required work.

This enables field crews to use additional customer information to complete their work activity related to a controllable asset.

To enable this feature, refer to the Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Cloud Service-Oracle Field Service Configuration Guide for more information.

The work activity outbound message contains activity, asset, and location information, which the field crew receives and uses to perform the work. Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Management captures the following user-defined attributes for activity, asset, and location and sends them to Oracle Integration Cloud Service:

Oracle Integration Cloud Service processes the information and passes it to Oracle Field Service. Oracle Field Service translates the information to custom properties that appears on the field crew's handheld device.

This enables field crews to receive additional information and complete their work.

To enable this feature, refer to the Oracle Utilities Digital Asset Cloud Service-Oracle Field Service Configuration Guide for more information.