question Re: Inflight change/cancel in Telecom forum

Inflight change/cancel

Gargichatterjee — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 11:47:52 GMT

Hi,

I have a scenario, wherein the order will take multiple days to complete. I want to implement inflight cancel/change on this order. These actions will not be through the UI, rather I need them to be implemented programmatically. In addition to this, I need to do undo transactions as well. To explain this, suppose the network is reserved, workforce appointment is booked and PONR is not yet reached. The customer can cancel the order. So the network reservation as well as workforce reservation needs to be rollbacked(undone). How can I achieve this, please suggest.

Thanks.

Re: Inflight change/cancel

Gargichatterjee — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 11:49:53 GMT

Please suggest based on Utah and Vancouver versions.

Re: Inflight change/cancel

ShashankInamdar — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 12:40:42 GMT

Hi @Gargichatterjee ,

Order Management supports Inflight Change and Cancel via Open APIs i.e. TMF622 - Product Order and TMF641 - Service Order. If you are not using workspace UI to initiate the inflight change/cancel, you should use the patch/cancel APIs that are available OOTB.

Inflight Changes/Cancel orders cancels the in-progress workflows.

The rollback activities will not happen automatically, this will need to be configured as part of your workflows.

You may want to build a separate workflow for compensation activities and invoke it via the Decision table using 'Revision Operation' as one of the inputs. In the case of a Inflight Change & Cancel, the Revision Operation is set as 'Update' and 'Cancel' respectively.

Example:

Spec = Internet Service, Action = Add & Revision Operation = Cancel --> Subflow = Cancel Internet Provisioning

The 'Cancel Internet Provisioning' can then have the rollback etc. activities.

Here's the Order Management course for reference -

https://nowlearning.servicenow.com/lxp/en/telecommunications-service-management/order-management-fundamentals?id=learning_course_prev&course_id=e7d40486977dfdd46eedb30e6253af31

Regards

Shashank

Re: Inflight change/cancel

Gargichatterjee — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 12:55:26 GMT

Hi @ShashankInamdar , I understood that I need to write the flow for undo operations. But how will I know about what all activities have already been completed, and if those are completed, probably I need to have their response as well to undo the task (e.g. during network reservation inventory might generate some workorder number, how will I get those?)

Re: Inflight change/cancel

Gargichatterjee — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 12:57:18 GMT

In the training courses, the demo videos only show about the UI operations, what are the alternates available if we do not want to use the UI for a particular client, then it is difficult to dig up.

Re: Inflight change/cancel

ShashankInamdar — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 13:31:30 GMT

Hi @Gargichatterjee ,

That is a good question. And here's how you can build it.

In the example below, I have two external system callouts - Reserve TN and Book Appointment.

Make use of the Order Task action to represent these.

Build a separate subflow for happy path + compensation actions as shown below.

Thus once the Order Task for 'Reserve TN' moves to In Progress, next step will be to call an extension subflow or a Flow (up to you) with the 3 different switch cases for the Revision Actions.

Within the Order Task, you have an option to configure the Inflight behaviour which will tell OM if the Order Task is to be re-executed or skipped based on the type of Inflight Change. If this is not configured, the Order Task will always be re-executed which will call the extension subflow and process the steps based on the Revision Operation (i.e. Happy path v/s Inflight Change v/s Inflight Cancel)

You can extend this logic further based on your requirements.

Hope this helps.

Regards

Shashank

Re: Inflight change/cancel

MolayD21 — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 13:56:46 GMT

That's great, @ShashankInamdar. Wonderful explanation.

Now two questions from me. 🙂

"you have an option to configure the Inflight behaviour which will tell OM if the Order Task is to be re-executed or skipped based on the type of Inflight Change" - Is it related to Inflight Change Type & Inflight Change Option. If not, then?
Regarding cancel, shouldn't we cancel, instead of close complete, the order task after calling REST - Release TN step?

Thanks,

Molay

Re: Inflight change/cancel

ShashankInamdar — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 14:09:23 GMT

@MolayD21 wrote:

That's great, @ShashankInamdar. Wonderful explanation.

Now two questions from me. 🙂

"you have an option to configure the Inflight behaviour which will tell OM if the Order Task is to be re-executed or skipped based on the type of Inflight Change" - Is it related to Inflight Change Type & Inflight Change Option. If not, then? <Correct>

Regarding cancel, shouldn't we cancel, instead of close complete, the order task after calling REST - Release TN step? <Perhaps. Depends on how you want to look at this. A close complete indicates the execution logic of the Order Task is done. A Canceled indicates the Task itself was cancelled. So, this is open to interpretation and OM will not prescribe to one way or the other>

Thanks,

Molay

Re: Inflight change/cancel

Gargichatterjee — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 08:16:01 GMT

Hi @ShashankInamdar ,

I can cancel the service order and the logic is getting executed for the same through the configured subflow. But when I am cancelling the product order itself, then the corresponding subflow is not getting executed. What can be the reason for that? When we are cancelling the order itself then all the service orders should also be revised hence there corresponding logics should also be executed. At least that is the behavious we want to achieve.

Please suggest.

Thanks.

Re: Inflight change/cancel

Gargichatterjee — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 10:26:04 GMT

One more thing I noticed that, in case of inflight cancel, the service orders, which were there during order decomposition their states are getting changed to scheduled. But, if few of them are already executed and completed, there is no re-execution of those tasks for the undo transactions.

For example, the following I am getting as part of inflight cancel. But what we expect is that, there should be an order task generated which will undo SO0001 as well. Please suggest what is to be done here.

Thanks.

		Current State	After inflight cancel

Product Order	ORD0001	In progress	Cancellation in progress
Order Line Item	ORDL00001
Product Order	PO0001
Service Order	SO0001	Close complete	Close complete
Inflight cancel --->	SO0002	In progress	Scheduled
	SO0003	draft	Scheduled
	SO0004	draft	Scheduled

Re: Inflight change/cancel

ShashankInamdar — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 12:48:14 GMT

Hi @Gargichatterjee

I suspect you have not configured the 'Cancel Task Fields' on the Order Task. Please check below for an example. If no Cancel Task Field is configured, on the cancellation, for an already completed Order Task it remains in a completed state. The additional configuration will allow you to put the task back in an 'In Progress' state.

Once the Order Task is back in 'In Progress', the extension subflow can be invoked as shown below ->

Extension subflow -->

Re: Inflight change/cancel

ShashankInamdar — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 14:01:52 GMT

@Gargichatterjee , if and when your issue raised in this thread is resolved, please mark the appropriate reply as a solution so that others in the future with a similar query will find it useful.

Re: Inflight change/cancel

Gargichatterjee — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 15:23:57 GMT

Hi @ShashankInamdar ,

I have configured this on the flow which gets triggered for inflight cancel on Service Order (in Decision table Service Order Fulfilment Policy). So when I am cancelling the service order explicitly it is working fine.

I want to implement the inflight cancel on the customer order itself. For this I have done the configuration of revision operation in decision table Product Order Fulfilment Policy. I am expecting that the subflow written for inflight cancel of customer order will be picked up as it has been picked up for the SO. Is it possible?

Re: Inflight change/cancel

Gargichatterjee — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 15:24:20 GMT

Yes surely I will do that.

Re: Inflight change/cancel

ShashankInamdar — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 15:43:52 GMT

Inflight Cancel behaviour for Product & Service Order is the same from an OM perspective.

If it is not invoking the expected subflows, there is some mis-configuration that needs to be rectified.

Re: Inflight change/cancel

Gargichatterjee — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 15:57:31 GMT

Can you please verify the attachments? It would be helpful.

Re: Inflight change/cancel

ShashankInamdar — Tue, 28 Nov 2023 16:24:42 GMT

Hard to troubleshoot only based on screenshots.

I did notice you have added an additional Input for Revision Operation, which is not required.

You should keep the OOTB inputs for Product Order Fulfilment Policy as is, and instead just add a column under conditions by dot walking on the Product Order table for the Rev operation field.

Also, unless the Cancel flow is very different from the original happy path one - you could have used the original flow (without the Revision Action as condition in the decision table) and controlled it using switch case as discussed earlier in the thread.

For a detailed view, best this is discussed over a call or via Support.

Re: Inflight change/cancel

Gargichatterjee — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 05:25:09 GMT

In our case, we have a lot of logic in our inflight cancel and inflight change flows, that's why we need separate flows.

How can we have a discussion?