About Fulfillment Functions

Fulfillment functions are operations that can be performed to process an order item. In the context of the conceptual model, the line item is an action or a product. After you create fulfillment functions, you associate them with fulfillment patterns. You also associate actions with fulfillment patterns, and the fulfillment pattern associated with any action determines which fulfillment functions can be associated with the action.

Fulfillment functions can be realized as OSM Order Component specifications. In OSM, line items are sent to a fulfillment pattern, which includes a set of order components that can be used to process the line item. The order components represent work that needs to be done against the line item. The fulfillment pattern determines which order components are to be used based on the conditions and dependencies defined in OSM. Each order component can have dependencies to other components (for example, one component may require that another be completed first).