Understanding Business Flags

This product has implemented business flags that represent situations that exist at a customer's service point that are shared across external applications; such as, Oracle DataRaker and Oracle Utilities Customer Care and Billing. The situations that a business flag can represent ranges from critical knowledge that requires manual analysis for resolution to purely informational notifications.

This sharing of information allows users of each system to quickly understand the status of a service point as it relates to situations that users of the system would benefit from. For example, the analytics system (Oracle DataRaker) may identify potential theft situations that should be investigated prior to sending any usage transactions.

The subsequent sections describe business flag functionality that is specific to the service point business flag as implemented by this product.

When creating a new device type there are the following options:


Name	Details	Business Object
Service Point Business Flag Type	Provides configuration for business flags associated to a service point. This type offers an ability to hold a business flag for manual analysis.	D1-SPBusinessFlagType
Service Point Monitor Business Flag Type	Provides configuration for business flags that should initiate service issue monitors and convey results of a field activity to the intended subscribers.	D1-SPMonitorBusinessFlagType

Refer to About Business Flags in the Oracle Utilities Framework Administration User Guide for detailed information about the components of business flags.

Important Business Flag Business Object Options

Below are a list of business object options that are defined on the business flag business object associated to a given business flag type:

Valid Action: identifies a BPA script that can be used to guide the user though an action that can be taken on a business flag. Note: this option should be paired with a business object lifecycle option of "Execution of Valid Actions Permitted" with a value of "true" for any lifecycle status that should support the execution of valid actions.

More detail about these options can be found by visiting a measuring component business object and inspecting the business object options.

Field Activities can Determine Business Flag Confidence

When a business flag results in a field activity being issued and a field team is sent to investigate the service point the result of that field activity investigation will determine the confidence of the business flag. This is done through the field remarks left by the field team. The field activity remarks can either be defined as confirming the business flag or rejecting it. By selecting the appropriate field activity remark the field team will conclude the investigation into the business flag and the final confidence will be updated as appropriate.

For those field activity remarks that should either confirm or reject the business flag the Business Flag Confidence Update algorithm type should be provided for the field activity remark - activation plug-in spot.

Refer to algorithm type Assign Business Flag Final Confidence (D1-ABFFC) for additional details.