9 Managing Infrastructure Specifications

Use Infrastructure Specifications in Solution Designer to define your locations, inventory groups, involvement, and role.

Topics in this Document

About Infrastructure Specifications

You use Infrastructure Specifications application to define the locations, Inventory Groups, Involvements and Roles:

  • Locations: A physical location for services and resources, such as an office, residence, or city. See "About Locations"" for more information.

  • Inventory Groups: You can organize and correlate entities in the inventory using Inventory Groups. See "About Inventory Group Specifications" for more information.

  • Involvement Specification: You can define associations between entities for relationships that are not currently supported in UIM. See "About Involvement Specifications" for more information.

  • Roles: You can define the functions played by entities in an inventory. See "About Role Specifications" for more information.

About Locations

Locations define geographic references that are relevant to services or resources. Locations can be specific places, such as a residence or a business, or more general places, such as a city.

In Solution Designer, two location specification types are supported:

  • Place Specifications: You use Place specifications to define entities that represent places that can be located on maps.

  • Property Location: You use Property Location specification for geographic locations involved in connectivity scenarios. Unlike Place entities, Property Location entities are all based on a single specification.

In Solution Designer, two locations Customer Site and Service Location are pre-loaded and can be used in the PSR models. Customer Site location is a Place Specifications with the place type as Address. For example, in a Fixed line service, a Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) that is, a telephone instrument must be installed at that customer location. Use Customer Site in the PSR model to represent the customer location where the CPE must be installed.

Service Location is a type of Property Location. For example, in a Carrier Ethernet service, the service is delivered to one or more service locations by a service provider. Use Service Location in the PSR model to represent the location where the service originates or is delivered.

About Place Specifications

You use Place specifications to define geographic entities that can be located on a map, such as a state, city, street, postal address, campus, or building. Place entities answer the business question of where other inventory entities (such as subscribers, services, equipment, service terminations, and so on) are located.

Table 9-1 shows the four different types of Place specification that describe different geographical entities.

Table 9-1 Types of Place Specification

Place Type Description

Site

Defines a loosely defined place such as a campus, cell site, or VPN site. Unlike a location, a site is not necessarily bound to specific geographic coordinates.

Address

Defines a place using the standard address format to meet your business requirements and national postal standards.

Address Range

Defines a group of addresses as a range, such as an address defined with a low street number and high street number.

Location

Defines a place based on geographic references. It can be a very specific place, such as a residence, or more general places, such as a city or province.

You can geocode a location to identify its placement on the face of the earth and to enable geographic visualizations of your network or business. Using geographic coordinates also makes it possible to calculate distances between locations.
About Property Location Specifications

Property Location entities define where resources are located and where connectivity is terminated. Property Location entities are optimized for defining the locations of devices and services in your network. Property Location entities are all based on a single specification. Service Location is pre-loaded in Solution Designer and is a type of Property Location. You can supplement the default data elements of Property Location entities by adding Characteristics. The added characteristics apply to all the instances of the entity in the run-time environment. To add more characteristics to Service Location, revise the service location. See "Revising Resource Specifications" for information on revising locations. You can clone the service location to create a copy of the service location.

About Inventory Group Specifications

You use Inventory Group specifications to organize and correlate entities in the inventory. You can define inventory groups to organize entities based on certain criteria such as geographic area, serving area, billing area, IP address pool, and so forth. For example, an inventory group containing locations and telephone numbers enables you to specify the telephone numbers that can be selected from a specific serving area. You create Inventory Group specifications in the same manner as you create other types of specifications. See Creating Inventory Group Specifications for creating Inventory Group specifications.

About Involvement Specifications

Involvement specifications enable you to define associations between entities for relationships that are not currently supported in UIM. The Involvement specifications that you create enable you to capture characteristics on the relationship and to specify the roles played by the entities participating in the involvement.

About Role Specifications

You create Role specifications to define the functions played by entities in an inventory. For example, an instance of a Party specification called Individual could have the role of subscriber or employee.

An entity can play multiple roles simultaneously and its roles can change over time. When a role specification is created, you must select one or more role-enabled entity types to which the role applies. When an instance of the selected entity type is created in UIM, the role may be optionally applied to the entity. For example the role of MPLS can be applied to a Logical Device and a Pipe, indicating that they both support MPLS technology.

An entity's role might be relevant to its involvements with other entities. Not all entity types can be assigned roles. In UIM, role-enabled entities have Role areas on their Summary pages.

When you create a Role specification, you can optionally select a role type. The following are the role types:

  • Technology: This role defines the technology that an entity operates under or supports.

  • Function: This role defines the function that an entity plays.

  • Topology: This role defines the role the topology plays in the network topology, such as hub or spoke

  • Target: This role identifies the entity as a target for activation systems. A network target is a resource on which services or other resources must be activated. For example, in a Mobile Service example, a voice mail service must be activated on a voice mail server. In this scenario, the voice mail server is the target for the voice mail account.

    In Solution Designer, you can create Role specifications with the Target role type. In UIM, Role entities that were created using the specifications with Target role type can be associated to logical devices and parties to identify them as network targets.

    When you assign a Target role to a Logical Device or Party entity, it becomes a target for other entities associated with it in various ways. Logical devices are network targets for:

    • Logical device accounts associated with them

    • Logical devices in their hierarchies (unless those logical devices are themselves network targets)

    • Device interfaces in their hierarchies

    • Any entities with which they have custom involvements based on the Manages (Oracle Provided) base specification

    Parties can be network targets for:

    • Any entities associated with them

    • Any entities with which they have custom involvements based on the Manages (Oracle Provided) base specification

Creating Infrastructure Specifications

You can create the following Infrastructure Specifications:

Note:

Two locations Customer Site and Service Location are pre-loaded in Solution Designer.

Creating Locations

You can create the location in Solution Designer. Two locations Customer Site and Service Location are pre-loaded in Solution Designer and can be used in PSR Models.

To create locations using the Infrastructure Specifications application, do the following:

  1. Click Create Infrastructure Specification in the Infrastructure Specification application.

  2. Click Location Specification in the Create Infrastructure Specification pop-up.

    The Create Location Specification page opens.

  3. Enter the following fields:

    Table 9-2 New location Fields

    Field Name Required or Optional Description
    Name Required Unique name of the location.
    ID Required Unique Id of the location.
    Initiative Required The initiative that the location belongs to. This location is available only for the selected initiative across the application until the initiative is released.
    Type Required The type of the location and defaulted to Place Specification and can't be modified.
    Place Type Required The types of place specification.
    • Site defines a place that does not have a single, precise location.
    • Address defines ways to locate places based on textual information.
    • Address Range define a place using groups of related addresses.
    • Location defines a place based on geographic references.
    Start Date Optional The starting date of the location.
    End Date Optional The ending date of the location.
    Description Optional The description of a location.

    Note:

    The location must have a unique name and ID.

  4. Click Create and Continue.

    The Location editor page opens.

  5. You use the following tabs to define characteristics on locations:

    • General Information: Displays the general information of the location.

    • Characteristics: Defines the characteristics for the locations along with the hard attributes that are added by default. You can use the existing data elements or create a new data element. Data elements are added as characteristics to realize them in UIM. See "Defining Characteristics" on how to define entity characteristics.

    • Used by: Lists all the PSR Models and specifications that use the location.

  6. Click Go to Infrastructure Specifications at the top left, to return to the Infrastructure Specifications page.

Creating Inventory Group Specifications

You create Inventory Group specifications to organize and correlate entities in the inventory.

To create Inventory Group specifications:

  1. In the Solution Designer landing page, click the Infrastructure Specification application.

  2. Click Create Infrastructure Specification in the Infrastructure Specification application.

  3. Click Inventory Group Specification in the Create Infrastructure Specification pop-up.

    The Create Inventory Group Specification page opens.

  4. Enter the following fields:

    Table 9-3 Create Inventory Group Fields

    Field Name Required or Optional Description
    Name Required Unique name of the Inventory Group.
    ID Required Unique Id of the Inventory Group.
    Initiative Required The initiative that the Inventory Group belongs to.
    Inventory Group Type Optional The type of the Inventory Group. The values are Flow Identifier Resource Pool and IP Address Resource Pool. If you select any value, the corresponding Group Entities are added by default.
    Group Entities Required Select the specifications that belong to the Inventory Group. Only the selected specifications are available for that Inventory Group instance at UIM run-time. The group entities are populated based on the Inventory Group Type selected and you can select multiple entities along with the default entities. The selected entities are retained when you modify Inventory Group Type. You can deselect them manually.
    Start Date Optional The starting date of the Inventory Group specification.
    End Date Optional The ending date of the Inventory Group specification.
    Description Optional The description of Inventory Group specification.

  5. Click Create and Continue.

    The Inventory Group editor page opens.

  6. You use the following tabs to define characteristics for Inventory Groups:

    • General Information: Displays the general information of the Inventory Group.

    • Characteristics: Defines the characteristics for the Inventory Group with the hard attributes that are added by default. See "About Hard Attributes" for details on hard attributes.

    • Used by: Lists all the specifications that are related to the Inventory Group.

Creating Involvement Specifications

Use Involvement Specification to define associations between entities for relationships that are not currently supported in UIM.

To create Involvement Specifications:

  1. In the Solution Designer landing page, click the Infrastructure Specification application.

  2. Click Create Infrastructure Specification in the Infrastructure Specification application.

  3. Click Involvement Specification in the Create Infrastructure Specification pop-up.

    The Create Involvement Specification page opens.

  4. Enter the following fields:

    Table 9-4 Create Inventory Group Fields

    Field Name Required or Optional Description
    Name Required Unique name of an Involvement Specification.
    ID Required Unique Id of an Involvement Specification.
    Initiative Required The initiative that an Involvement Specification belongs to.
    Start Date Optional The starting date of an Involvement Specification.
    End Date Optional The ending date of an Involvement Specification.
    Description Optional The description of an Involvement Specification.

  5. Click Create and Continue.

    The Involvement Specification editor page opens.

  6. You see the following tabs:

    • General Information: Displays the general information of the Involvement Specification.

    • Used by: Lists all the specifications that are related to the Involvement Specification.

Creating Role Specifications

Use Role Specification to define associations between entities for relationships that are not currently supported in UIM.

To create Role Specifications:

  1. In the Solution Designer landing page, click the Infrastructure Specification application.

  2. Click Create Infrastructure Specification in the Infrastructure Specification application.

  3. Click Role Specification in the Create Infrastructure Specification pop-up.

    The Create Role Specification page opens.

  4. Enter the following fields:

    Table 9-5 Create Role Fields

    Field Name Required or Optional Description
    Name Required Unique name of the Role Specification.
    ID Required Unique Id of the Role Specification.
    Initiative Required The initiative that the Role Specification belongs to.
    Role Type Optional The type of the Role Specification. The available role types are Technology, Function, Topology, or Target. See "About Role Specifications" for the supported role types.
    Applicable Entities Optional The entities that the role specification is applicable to. The role specification is available to all the entities by default in UIM run-time. If you select specific entities in Applicable Entities, the role specification is available only to those selected entities at UIM run-time.
    Start Date Optional The starting date of the Role Specification.
    End Date Optional The ending date of the Role Specification.
    Description Optional The description of Role Specification.

  5. Click Create and Continue.

    The Role Specification editor page opens.

  6. You see the following tabs:

    • General Information: Displays the general information of the Role Specification.

    • Used by: Lists all the specifications that are related to the Role Specification.

Viewing Infrastructure Specifications

You can view the specifications from the Infrastructure Specifications application or from the Initiative Items tab in the Initiatives application.

To view the Infrastructure specifications:

  1. In the Solution Designer landing page, click the application that you want to work with.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • In the Infrastructure Specifications application, search for a specification using the following criteria:

      • Specification name
      • Status
      • Initiatives
      • Type
      • Last Updated

      The Infrastructure specification result is filtered based on the search criteria.

    • In the Initiatives application, search for an initiative and click the Initiative Items tab in the initiative editor page.

  3. Select an Infrastructure specification to view the details.

    The Infrastructure specification editor page opens.

  4. You can view the Infrastructure specification details such as General Information, Characteristics, and Used by for the respective specifications in different tabs.

  5. Do one of the following:

    • Click the Go to Infrastructure Specifications link on the top left to return to the Infrastructure Specifications page.

    • Click the Go to previous page link on the top left to return to the Initiatives Items tab in the initiatives editor page.

Updating Infrastructure Specifications

You can update the general information for Infrastructure Specifications.

Note:

You can update a Infrastructure specification only if the associated initiative is in Definition and Advanced Configuration status.
To update a specification:

  1. In the Solution Designer landing page, click the application that you want to work with.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • In the Infrastructure Specifications application, search for a specification and open the specification.

    • In the Initiatives application, search for an initiative and click the Initiative Items tab in the initiatives editor page. Select a specification to update the details.

    The specifications editor page opens.

  3. You can update the general information for the respective specifications.

    • General Information: View or update the general information for the selected specification.

    • Characteristics: View or update the characteristics for the specifications. See "Defining Characteristics" for details on defining entity characteristics.

    • Used by: Lists all the PSR Models and specifications that use the selected specification. Click the entity name to the view the general information of the entity.

  4. Do one of the following:

    • Click the Go to Infrastructure Specifications link on the top left to return to the Infrastructure Specifications page.

    • Click the Go to previous page link on the top left to return to the Initiatives Items tab in the initiatives editor page or the parent specification page from where this specification is opened.

Cloning Infrastructure Specifications

You can clone the existing Infrastructure specifications to create a copy and update the details as necessary. See "About Cloning Entities" for information on the cloning process.

To clone an Infrastructure specification:

  1. In the Solution Designer landing page, click the application that you want to work with.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • In the Infrastructure Specifications application, search for a specification.

      In the specifications result list page, click Clone.

      The Clone Specification pop-up appears. Specification includes Location, Involvement, Role, and Inventory Group.

    • In the Infrastructure Specifications application, search and open the specification.

      The specifications editor page opens. Click the Clone in the specifications editor page.

      The Clone Specification pop-up appears. Specification includes Location, Involvement, Role, and Inventory Group.

    • In the Initiatives application, search and select an initiative. Click the specification in the Initiative Items tab in the initiatives editor page.

      In the specifications editor page, click Clone.

      The Clone Specification pop-up appears. Specification includes location, Involvement, Role, and Inventory Group.

  3. Update the name, ID, and description as necessary. See "About Naming Rules" for more information on naming rules for ID.

    Note:

    • You can't select a new initiative when you clone a specification in the Definition and the Advanced Configuration status.
    • You must select a new initiative that is in Definition status when you clone a specification in Released status.

  4. Click Continue.

    The specification editor page opens with all the details.

    You can update the configuration and general information.

Revising Infrastructure Specifications

You can revise an infrastructure specification in the Released status. See "About Revising Entities" for information on revising an entity.

To revise an infrastructure specification:

  1. In the Solution Designer landing page, click the application that you want to work with.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • In the Infrastructure Specifications application, search a specification.

      The specification is listed in the results section.

    • In the Infrastructure Specifications application, search and open a specification.

    • In the Initiatives application, search for an initiative and click the Initiative Items tab in the initiatives editor page. Select a specification.

      The specification editor page opens.

  3. Click Revise.

    The Revise Specification dialog box opens. Specification includes Location, Inventory Group, Role, Involvement specifications.

  4. Select an initiative that is in the Definition status and click Continue.

    The corresponding specification editor page opens.

  5. The configuration and general information can be modified for the revised specification.

Deleting Infrastructure Specifications

You can delete a specification from the Specifications application or from the Initiative Items tab in the initiatives editor page in the Initiatives application.

To delete an Infrastructure specification:

  1. In the Solution Designer landing page, click the application that you want to work with.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • In the Infrastructure Specifications application, search for a specification.

      The specification is listed in the results section.

    • In the Infrastructure Specifications application, search for and open a specification.

      The specification editor page opens.

    • In the Initiatives application, search for an initiative and click the Initiative Items tab in the initiatives editor page. Open a specification.

      The specification editor page opens.

  3. Click Delete.

    A confirmation dialog box appears.

  4. Click Delete in the confirmation dialog box.

    The specification is deleted if it is not associated with any other specifications or PSR models. If you are deleting a revised specification, only the current revision is deleted and the specification reverts to the previously released version.

Note:

You can't delete an Infrastructure specification after you complete the Advanced Configuration phase of the associated initiative.