Managing Product Specifications

About Product Specifications

A product is an entity that your business sells and represents commercial products. A product defines a set of product characteristics, validation rules, and relationships. For example, you might create products for Broadband, Broadband_Bandwidth, and Email. After you create products in Solution Designer, you can create or review the associated attributes in the Product Specifications.

Products are used by orchestration processes to map order lines to fulfillment actions and to map order lines to Service specifications.

Use the following guidelines when creating products:

Ensure that your products represent functionality meaningful to a customer.
Define products to facilitate reuse in multiple bundled offers. Minimize overlap among product definitions to ensure that a simple assembly of product offers can be maintained. Duplication among product definitions can complicate the customer relationship management processes and increase the operating costs.
Define products so that they do not expose unnecessary details. For example, a Broadband product includes only data elements that represent the properties of the service being ordered, such as upload speed, download speed, service address, customer ID, and so forth. Products do not include data elements that represent technical elements of the service, such as the MAC address or IP address of the home location register (HLR) server.

Creating Product Specifications

A product specialist can create product specification in Solution Designer and then configure it. A product can have multiple CFSs as its children.

For creating and configuring a product specification, you must have the following in Solution Designer:

An initiative. See "Creating Initiatives" for more details.
Domains. See "Creating Domains" for more details.
CFS. To configure a product, you must create CFS within the same initiative so they are available for the product to build the hierarchical relationship between them.

To create a product specification:

In the Solution Designer landing page, click the Product Specifications application.
In the Product Specifications application, click Create Product.

The Create Product Specification page opens.

Enter the following fields:

Table 5-1 New product Fields

Field Name	Required or Optional	Description
Name	Required	Unique name of a product. In the Mobile Service example, Mobile product is the product name.
ID	Required	Unique Id of the product.
Initiative	Required	The initiative that a product belongs to. This product is available only for the selected initiative until the initiative is released. Specifications from the released initiative are available system-wide.
Primary Domain	Required	The primary domain of a product. Only one primary domain can be selected for the product.
Secondary Domains	Optional	The secondary domains that are associated with a product. Multiple secondary domains can be associated with a product. The domain type for the secondary domains must be same as the selected primary domain.
Start Date	Optional	The starting date of a product.
End Date	Optional	The ending date of a product.
Description	Optional	The description of a product.

Click Create and Continue.

The Product Specification editor page opens.
Use the following tabs to define the product:
- General Information: Provides the general information for the product.
- Configuration: Configure the relationship between a product specification and the CFSs. This builds a hierarchy between the products and CFSs. See "Configuring Product Relationships" for details on how to configure the relationships between specifications.
- Commercial Parameters: Configure the commercial parameters for the product using the existing data elements or create new data elements. Commercial parameters are carried from the upstream order management systems and you define them in the product. See "Defining Commercial Parameters" for details on how to define commercial parameters.
- Parameter Mapping: Configure the mapping of the commercial parameters of a product to the design parameters of the CFS. See "Mapping Commercial Parameters" for details on parameter mapping.
Click Go to Product Specifications at the top left to return to the Product Specifications page.

Configuring Product Relationships

You can define the relation between product specifications and CFSs in the Configuration tab.

To configure product relationships:

In the Solution Designer landing page, click the Product Specifications application.
In the Product Specifications application, select a specification by searching for it.

The corresponding specification page opens.
Click the Configuration tab.
Do one of the following:
- Click Create Configuration if no configuration exists.
- Click Edit if you already have any configuration defined, which opens the diagram in the edit mode in full screen.
The Edit Configuration page opens.
In the Edit Configuration page, click the + symbol to relate the product to an existing CFS that matches the product's domain. You can add multiple CFSs according to the business needs.
Mark any one of the relation to be primary. You can also change from a Primary relation to an Auxiliary relation.

To mark a relation to be primary:
1. Hover over the relation between product and any one of the CFSs, and click the + sign.
2. Select Make Primary. The primary relation that you selected is displayed with the text primary.
  
  You can also change the primary relation to an auxiliary relation and mark any other CFS as primary.
Click Done.

You can do the following in the Edit Configuration page:

To remove a CFS, click the CFS and click Remove in the specification details pop-up. Removing a specification removes it from the canvas but doesn't delete it permanently.
You can search for any entity including components by clicking Search. Type the name of the entity that you want to search in the model. The searched entity is expanded in the model tree and when you click the entity in the left side, the entity along with its children is shown in the model canvas.
You can set the display settings for the configuration. You can select Entity icon and Entity type to display the entity icon and the entity type. You can choose the orientation to display the configuration horizontally or vertically.

Defining Commercial Parameters

To define commercial parameters:

In the Product Specifications application, search and open the specification page and click the Commercial Parameters tab.
Click Create for adding the first commercial parameter or click Add Commercial Parameters to add a new commercial parameter.

The New commercial parameter dialog opens.
Enter a data element and name. The default value is pre-populated with the default value that you entered in Data Elements. You can select an existing element or create a new element to be a commercial parameter. Select + Create Data Element to create a new data element. See "Creating New Data Elements" for more details.
Click Add.

The commercial parameter is added to the product specification.

You can search for the associated commercial parameters in the Commercial Parameters tab.

Mapping Commercial Parameters

You map the commercial parameters of the product specification to the design parameters of the related CFS specification. When mapping parameters, the data elements and feature groups must be of the same type. For example, you must map a commercial parameter of boolean type to a characteristic of boolean type only.

When you map the commercial parameters, you can add converters to map the unit of measure conversion and value map conversion.

This mapping information is carried to the notes of the Product Specification in Design Studio. In Design Studio, you can create the appropriate OTM configuration or XQuery based on the mapping defined by the Product Specialist.

You can map the commercial parameters manually, automatically, or through both the methods:

To map the commercial parameters manually, see "Mapping Commercial Parameters Manually"
To map commercial parameters automatically, see "Mapping Commercial Parameters Automatically"

You can map the parameters automatically and also choose to map few of them manually.

If you have to perform any mappings other than the available mappings, you can map them by writing the custom code in the extended designer class. To write the code for parameter mappings, see "Extending Solution Designer" in Developer's Guide.

Mapping Commercial Parameters Manually

To map commercial parameters manually:

In the Product Specifications application, search and open the specification editor page and click the Parameter Mapping tab.

In the Parameter Mapping tab, click Edit. The Parameter Mapping drawer opens.
You can manually map all the commercial parameters. The Source column lists all the defined commercial parameters and the Destination column lists the mapped design parameters of the related CFSs.

For mapping multiple commercial parameters manually, perform the following steps:
1. Click Add mapping in the text box in the Destination column.
  
  The Select destination slider slides.
2. Do one of the following:
  - Hover over the design parameters and click Select parameter which associates the selected design parameter to the commercial parameter and closes the slider.
  - Click Auto select to automatically map the commercial parameter to the design parameter of the child CFS based on the name and referenced data element type.
You can map a source design parameter to multiple destination parameters. You must map a feature group source parameter with only a feature group destination parameter with matching multiplicity. You must map all the required characteristics to the source design parameters.
(Optional) Add converters for mapping unit of measure or value map. See "Adding Converters in Parameter Mapping" for details on how to add converters.
After you complete the parameter mapping, click Save.

The parameter mappings are saved and displayed in the Parameter Mapping tab.

Mapping Commercial Parameters Automatically

To map the commercial parameters automatically:

In the Solution Designer landing page, click the Product Specification application.
In the Product Specifications application, search and open the specification editor page and click the Parameter Mapping tab.

In the Parameter Mapping tab, click Edit. The Parameter Mapping drawer opens.
Click Automap to map all the source commercial parameters with the matching destination design parameters at once. Clicking Automap maps the commercial parameters and design parameters of the child CFS with the same name and data elements type of that source entity. You can change the automatic mapping and manually map to a different parameter. You can map manually for some parameters and use Automap for the rest of the parameters. In such case, clicking Automap automatically maps the appropriate parameters and retains the manual mappings that have different names.

You can click Automap multiple times as needed. If a new CFS is added later, you can click Automap to automatically map the parameters of the newly added specifications.

Click Reset to remove all the mappings and clear the data so that you can start the mappings afresh.
(Optional) Add converters for mapping unit of measure or value map. See "Adding Converters in Parameter Mapping" for details on how to add converters.

Adding Converters in Parameter Mapping

To add converters in Parameter Mapping:

In the Solution Designer landing page, click the Product Specification application.
In the Product Specifications application, search and open the specification editor page and click the Parameter Mapping tab.

In the Parameter Mapping tab, click Edit. The Parameter Mapping drawer opens.
Map the commercial parameters manually or automatically.
Click Add Converters to add the converter which maps the unit of measure conversion or the value map conversion.

The Add Converter dialog opens.
In the Converter drop-down, select an existing converter or create a new converter by clicking +New Converter. See "Creating Converters" for more information on creating converters.
If you select a measurement type converter, select Convert from UOM and select Convert to UOM. For example, select Convert from UOM as KB and select Convert to UOM as B.
Click Save.
The Parameter Mapping page is displayed and Add Converter changes to Edit Converter.

You can click Edit Converter and the Edit Converter drawer opens. You can remove the converter or change the converter in the Edit Converter drawer.

Viewing Product Specifications

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

To view the product specifications:

In the Solution Designer landing page, click the application that you want to work with.
Do one of the following:
- In the Product Specifications application, search for a specification using the following criteria:
  - Specification name
  - Status
  - Initiatives
  - Domain
  - Last Updated
  The product 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.
Select a product specification to view the details.

The product specification editor page opens.
You can view the product specification details such as configuration, commercial parameters, and general information.
Do one of the following:
- Click the Go to Product Specifications link on the top left to return to the Product 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 Product Specifications

You can update the configuration, commercial parameters, parameter mapping, and general information. You can update the primary domain and the secondary domains if the specification does not have any child specifications associated with it.

Note:

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

To update a product specification:

In the Solution Designer landing page, click the application that you want to work with.
Do one of the following:
- In the Product 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.
You can update the specification configuration, commercial parameters, parameter mappings, and general information for the respective specifications.
- General Information: View or update the general information for the selected specification.
- Configuration: View or update the relationship between the specification entities. This builds a hierarchy between the specification entities. See "Configuring Product Relationships" for details on configuring specifications.
- Commercial Parameters: View or update the commercial parameters for the specifications. See "Defining Commercial Parameters" for details on defining commercial parameters.
- Parameter Mapping: View or update the parameter mapping. See "Mapping Commercial Parameters" for details on parameter mapping.
Do one of the following:
- Click the Go to Product Specifications link on the top left to return to the Product 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 Product Specifications

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

To clone a product specification:

In the Solution Designer landing page, click the application that you want to work with.
Do one of the following:
- In the Product Specifications application, search for a specification.
  
  In the specifications result list page, click Clone.
  
  The Clone Specification pop-up appears. Specification includes product.
- In the Product 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 product.
- 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 product.
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 Definition and Advanced Configuration status.
- You must select a new initiative that is in Definition status when you clone a specification in Released status.
Click Continue.

The specification editor page opens with all the details.

You can update the configuration, commercial parameters, and general information. You may configure parameter mapping after cloning, as it is not copied when cloning a specification.

Revising Service Specifications

A product specialist revises a product specification. See "About Revising Entities" for information on revising an entity.

To revise a product specification:

In the Solution Designer landing page, click the application that you want to work with.
Do one of the following:
- In the Product Specifications application, search a specification.
  
  The specification is listed in the results section.
- In the Product 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.
Click Revise.

The Revise Specification dialog box opens. Specification includes products.
Select an initiative that is in the Definition status and click Continue.

The corresponding specification editor page opens.
The configuration, commercial parameters, parameter mapping, and general information can be modified for the revised specification. See "Updating Product Specifications" for more information on modifying the specification details.

Deleting Product Specifications

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

To delete a product specification:

In the Solution Designer landing page, click the application that you want to work with.
Do one of the following:
- In the Product Specifications application, search a specification.
  
  The specification is listed in the results section.
- In the Product Specifications application, search 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.
Click Delete.

A confirmation dialog box appears.
Click Delete in the confirmation dialog box.

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