Entity Lifecycle Management

15 Entity Lifecycle Management

Manage Entity Lifecycle Using Initiatives

Use this topic to understand how you can manage the publishing and the lifecycle status of catalog entities using initiatives.

All the catalog entities are associated with an initiative and whenever an initiative lifecycle status changes, the status change trickles down to the entities that belong to initiative. Pre-determined rules drive the lifecycle status transition in Launch Cloud Service. However, roles with Change Lifecycle Status privilege can override the lifecycle status of an entity to any desired status.

An initiative goes through these lifecycle statuses for two instances – test and production.

Scenario 1 – Release a new product offer in the market

Test Instance

In design: Your entities are being designed. You must confirm an initiative to move it to the next status.
Ready to publish: This is an interim status. After you publish and receive confirmation from the spoke system, the status moves to the next one.
In test: If you have successfully tested, you can move the initiative to Active, otherwise, you can move it back to In design status. Once you have QA approval, move the initiative to Active status.
Active: You can export the initiative from a test environment and import it to a production instance.

Production Instance

In design: Import the above initiative from the test environment to the In design status.
Active: Manually change the status to Active. Publish the initiative to production instance.
Launched: Initiative status changes to Launched. The entities of that initiative are now available in the external selling channels. In the test instance, you can manually change the initiative to Launched as well.

Scenario 2 – Revise a product offer to release in the market

Test Instance

In design: Your entities are being designed. You must confirm an initiative to move it to the next status.
Ready to publish: This is an interim status. After you publish and receive confirmation from the spoke system, the status moves to the next one.
In test: If you have successfully tested, you can move the initiative to Active, otherwise, you can move it back to In design status. Once you have QA approval, move the initiative to Active status.
Active: You can export it from a test environment and import it to a production instance.

Production Instance

In design: Import the above initiative from the test environment and the initiative moves to the In design status.
Active: Manually change the status to Active. Publish the initiative to production instance.
Launched: Initiative status changes to Launched. The entities of that initiative are now available in the external selling channels. In the test instance, you can manually change the initiative to Launched as well.

You can handle similar scenarios involving bug fixes and major releases in parallel, multiple test instances, and, or retiring or obsoleting an entity, and so on in the same manner as described above.

Note:

All content changes to be made in the test instance only, and not the production instance.

You can associate entities with an initiative only in the In Design status. You can design your product offer, add, or remove entities. After your design is complete, you can confirm your initiative to move it to the Ready to publish status. Now you can't update your entities. After all the entities in an initiative are ready to be published you can publish the initiative.

Optionally, you can also mandate approvals for your initiatives. For example, you can mandate that an initiative must go through an approval process before it moves to Ready to publish.

Lifecycle Stage and User Actions

The following table lists the actions that you can perform on catalog entities depending on the lifecycle of an entity. Additionally, you can also transition within these life cycle statuses by associating the entities with an initiative.

Table 15-1 List of User Actions on Product Offers

Actions	Status	Description
View	In design Ready to publish In test Launched Active Retired Rejected	You can view the offer details in a read-only mode. This serves as a snapshot of the catalog entity.
Edit	In design	You can open the catalog entity in an edit mode. This takes you through the guided UI flow.
Confirm	In design In test	You can confirm your product catalog entity to move it to the Ready to test or Ready to publish statuses.
Clone	In design Ready to publish In test Launched Active Retired Rejected	Opens the Clone catalog entity dialog box. Eventually takes you to the guided UI flow.
Revise	Launched	You can create a revision of the launched catalog entity.
Retire	Launched	You can associate your product catalog entity with an initiative and the initiative can be retired.
Obsolete	Retired	You can obsolete a product catalog entity after it has been retired.
Publish	Ready to publish	You can publish your product catalog entity to a spoke system for testing.

Configure a New Lifecycle Status

Use this topic to know how you can create and manage a new lifecycle status for entities.

As a product administrator, you can create and configure new lifecycle statuses in addition to the ones that are already shipped in the Launch application.

Create a Lifecycle Status

You can add a lifecycle states only between In design and Launched status. For example, you can add a testing phase, such as Unit testing or UAT testing in the testing phase.

Here's how you can create a new lifecycle status:

Go to Administration > Lifecycle Status and click Manage.

The entity lifecycle status configuration version in active state appears.
Select Save as New Version from the Save drop-down list.
In the new version, click Create Status.
On the New Status page, enter the status name.
Select where you want to add the lifecycle status from the Create After drop-down list.

A sequence number gets allocated to the status.
In the Other Information section, define the next User Action.
From the Error State drop-down list, select an error state for the status.
Enable the following options as required:
1. Edit Initiative: Specify if the initiative can be edited.
2. Edit Initiative Entities: Specify if the initiative entities can be edited.
3. Requires Approval: Specify if the initiative requires approval.
4. Allow References in Other Initiatives: Specify if the initiative can be referred to in other initiatives.
5. Enable Publish: Specify if the initiative can be published.
Enter the destination.
Click Add Destination.
Click Create.

Your new version is now active.

If you want to create more versions, select Save as New Version on the Lifecycle Status page. After a new version is activated, it's only applicable to the new entities that get created thereafter. Ensure that at any point of time, only one version must be in Active status.

After you have created a new lifecycle status, you can create revisions, where you can add multiple lifecycle statuses as required and activate the new lifecycle configuration. However, ensure that at any point of time only one lifecycle workflow is active in the application and all the associated entities transition according to the lifecycle statuses defined in lifecycle workflow, in active state.

You can create a new lifecycle configuration from an Active lifecycle configuration only. Any newly created lifecycle creation will be in the Pending status and will need an activation process. When you activate a new lifecycle configuration, the current one is inactivated. The initiatives following the older, inactive configuration lifecycle will continue in that process. It's only the newly created initiatives that will follow the new lifecycle status configuration.

Additionally, you can also define the conditions that control the lifecycle status transitions, such as:

Edit initiative: Specify if you can edit initiative entities.
Edit initiative entities: Specify if you can add or remove the initiative entities.
Requires Approval: Specify whether approval is required for a lifecycle transition.
Enable Publish: Specify if the status can be published to spoke systems.
Allow References in Other Initiatives: Specify if the catalog entity reference can be made in another initiative.

You must also specify the destination and the next user action for every status that you create.