Service Order Overview

Service Order Management provides functionality that orchestrates the field activities and smart meter commands that are necessary to change the state of service at a service point. This can involve complicated business logic due to numerous, often continually-changing variables, such as:

• The type of service order request; such as, enable service, disable service, cut, reconnect, and back-to back.

• Whether the service point is connected to the source of power, or not.

• If there is a device installed. If a device is installed, is it a smart meter, non-smart meter, or an item?

• The device’s state at the service point; for example, pre-commissioned, connected, or disconnected.

• If it’s a smart meters, what is the head-end system that manages the device at the service point/ If it’s a non-smart meter (scalar), how close is the scheduled read date to the start date?

Additionally:

• Every implementation performs field work requests differently; for example, a cut service for non-payment is performed differently in every locale.

• Every head-end vendor requires different messages, in terms of the number and type of messages, and they change over releases of their software

• Field workers may perform different work than was requested by the system; for example, the system might request a simple reading, and the worker might decide to exchange the meter because the meter is old and broken..

• A service order request may be cancelled after it is scheduled or has been dispatched

Service orders are designed to resolve all of the above concerns, and provide a flexible and configurable solution to meet the challenge of managing customer service requests.