Welcome to article three, part of a series of articles providing best practice tips and feature deep dives on the Vancouver - Order Management Telecom integration with Strategic Portfolio Management feature.
Order Management (OMT) integration with Service Portfolio Management (SPM) enables OMT Management to automatically trigger request to SPM to stand up a project from a targeted project template.
The integration enables service providers that offer as a paid or non-paid service, project oversight of customer order delivery, a level of project oversight process automation which results the operational costs associated with project oversight of customer order delivery.
The Vancouver release implements a seamless integration for run time synchronization of order task state changes that updates the corresponding project state. No need for the service provider’s project manager to chase down project task status with fulfillment managers or fulfillment agents, then manually update the project task state in SPM project. It’s a first step towards digital transformation for SPM to OMT integration.
In this article we will discuss and take you through:
- The implemented run time synchronization end-to-end integration flow
- How to use the OMT UI task relationship tables to view the captured project oversight project/order task relationship information
- Best practice tips on ensuring you’ve probably prepared your OMT project management oversight decision tables to ensure the appropriate conditions inputs are configured to stand up the appropriate project.
- Demonstrate real time order task to project task synchronization of state changes.
- Posting fulfillment manager and agent work notes and comments to be captured in project work notes and activities log.
- A demo recording will be made available to show how this works for a new customer order – top order lines instantiated as a project, where there are 3 sites that correspond to 3 top line order items that creates 3 projects for project task tracking of domain order state and order task state.
Project manager expectations
As a project manager, I want order management for telecom to automatically stand up from customer order line item(s) one or more projects in SPM based on our business’s requirements for determining a customer order qualifies for project management oversight.
Based on the business requirements, when a customer order submitted to OMT for fulfillment qualifies as a project for project oversight of the order.
My expectation is that OMT has the means to know and assess the conditions at runtime that dictates that a customer order requires one or more internal and or customer projects to be stood up as one or more projects in SPM.
I then expect OMT to establish and maintain automatic synchronization order task state to project task state updates as fulfillment managers and agents updates the order task states that correspond to the project task state.
This will allow me to focus more creating a customer experience meets the customer’s expectations because I am able to pay more attention to managing potentially critical issues that may occur in the project and resolve in a timely fashion.
Service provider’s ServiceNow OMT administrator expectations
In order to support our requirements for automating (determining) and standing up of customer order line items as projects, and customer domain orders and order tasks as project tasks in SPM, I need an easy way to configure project management oversight for customer orders business rules in OMT.
Further, based on our business requirements, there is a need to be able to easily configure BR conditions for what domain orders and order tasks qualify for project management oversight associated with the project.
Service provider’s ServiceNow project oversight stakeholders
As a business stakeholder involved in a role in OMT integration with SPM for project management oversight based on my role, I need the following access controls and read/edit capabilities:
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SPM integration access controls |
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Role |
Access controls in SPM integration |
Contains roles |
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· Order fulfillment agent [sn_ind_tmt_orm.order-fulfillment_agent] · Service order agent [sn_ind_tmt_orm.service_order_agent] |
Order fulfillment agents have read access to product orders, product order tasks, service orders, and resource orders. Service order agents have read access to service order requests, service orders, resource orders, and related fulfillment tasks. Agents have access to the following project information: · Read access to the Project form fields. · Read access to the Order Line Item to Project Relationship table. · Read access to the Order Line Item and Order Task related lists in PPM. · Read access to the Order task to Project Task related list in Order Management. |
· it_project_user · sn_customerservice.projectmanager (if using Customer Project Management) |
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· Order fulfillment manager [sn_ind_tmt_orm.order_fulfillment_manager] · Service order manager [sn_ind_tmt_orm.service_order_manager] |
Order fulfillment managers receive orders, review order line items, verify that orders are ready for fulfillment, and then approve orders. Service order managers ensure that service orders are ready for fulfillment and then approve them. Managers can: · Post notes and comments on order lines and order tasks to communicate with the project manager. · View the relationship between a project and an order line item, project tasks, and order tasks. Managers have the following access to project information: o Read access to the Order Line Item to Project Relationship table. o Read access to the Order Line Item and Order Task related lists in PPM. o Read access to the Order task to Project Task related list in Order Management. |
sn_ind_tmt_orm.order_creator |
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Administrator [admin] |
· Creates the PPM project templates used to generate the projects for orders that require project oversight automatically. · Configures the mapping between order tasks and planned project tasks associated with project templates · Specifies the conditions and decision rules for determining project oversight and the project templates used to create those projects. · Controls automatic closure of project tasks |
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IT project administrator [it_project_admin] |
· Configure access to all Project Management features. · Read and write access to the Project Template Creation table. · Read and write access to the Order Line-Item related list in PPM. · Write access to Order Task related list in PPM. · Read access to the Order Line Item to Project Relationship table. · Write access to the Order task to the Project Task related list in Order Management. |
· it_project_user · sn_ind_tmt_orm.order_creator |
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IT project user [it_project_user] |
· Read access to the Project form fields. · Read access to the Order Line Item to Project Relationship table. · Read access to the Order Line Item and Order Task related lists in PPM. · Read access to the Order task to Project Task related list in Order Management. · Read access to the Project Template Creation table. |
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View - Implemented OMT integration with SPM run time flow diagram.
- After order approval, top order line items that satisfy conditions in the 'Project Management Oversight for Order Line Item' instantiate projects
- On creation of domain order or order task, if eligible as per 'Project Management Oversight for Domain Order' and Project Management Oversight for Order Task ' respectively, the domain order or order task is linked to project task(s)
Project Oversight - Three Site Customer order project - SD-WAN Service Package
Our setup for a three site New/Add SD-WAN customer order to be stood up in SPM, then for OMT to maintain run time task state synchronization to SPM project task state:
Preconditions one: a customer project template with project tasks that has the new/add fulfillment flow order tasks created as project tasks in the template.
View – New/Add SD-WAN Service Package Project template
Precondition two – OMT project management oversight decision tables used to enable OMT-SPM runtime integration flow to work have been configured to enable OMT to determine that three projects should be instantiated in SPM for the SD-WAN Service Package:
View – Project Management Oversight for Order Line-Item decision table.
View – Project Management Oversight for Domain Order decision table
View - Project Management Oversight for Order Task decision table
A project template or a customer order has been created.
Step one - approved customer order
Customer order has been created, submitted, and approved in OMT by the fulfillment manager.
View – CSM/FSM Configurable Workspace - Order submitted
View – CSM/FSM Configurable Workspace - Order approved.
Step 2 – OMT determines the customer order’s top order line items are a candidate for project management oversight and based on the Project Management Oversight for Order Line Item has created three customer projects in SPM!
Three projects have been created! Yea…but…how did we know these are our three projects, there are like a “zillion” more projects in here!?
Best practice suggestions:
- Configure your project template with a Project Manager assigned in the template.
- This allows you to at least filter on project manager when sorting.
- It has a benefit of routing the project to “John Miller” Project workspace
- Manually create a program that has a collection of projects for the customer account program
- In real word scenarios for a customer order delivery project, the project stood up will have a future start due date, and will initially be in the planning phase, not execution phase. A program manager has already been assigned and has worked with project managers to create the project outline – draft project plan. The program would have been created for the collection of customer order line projects with a program name. So easy to sort out your projects under the program assigned.
- Uniquely identify the Project Name – sometimes a project is stood up by OMT when the order has been approved but has a generic project name or duplicate project name due to a new project template was created from an existing project template so two projects in project workspace share the same project name.
Since you are in the planning phase, you have an opportunity to rename the project and can do that from OMT seamless integration with SPM project details:
- in configurable workspace, locate the order, and the top order line item, then verify it’s been stood up as a project:
2. Select the top order line item number to get OLI details form
3. We see that the order line has a corresponding project – using the Order Line Task Relationship table, we were able to view what project has been instantiated by OMT to SPM
4. We clicked on the customer project number and OMT gives us a edit view (refer to the roles table for permissions) and OMT took us to the SPM project view of the project. Here, since we are still in project planning, or some phase prior to project execution, we have an opportunity to rename the customer order delivery project to something more appropriate and unique.
Step 3: OMT and SPM project to order relationship views.
Now that we have created three projects that are a collection under a program (created manually), we can use OMT new relationship tables to orientate ourselves to what project, project task corresponds to an order line item, domain order and order task.
So, let’s find the corresponding project task for a domain order, since we’ve already shown how to find a project that corresponds to a top order line item.
View – CSM configurable workspace – Order Line-item form – click on PO number
View – CSM Configurable Workspace – find the Project Task Oversight tab and view that there is a customer project task corresponding to the domain order. For now, don’t pay attention to “hey, I see there is also a project task for the same domain order”. Will explain later!
Now we can do a few things:
- We can click on the project task and OMT will provide us a view of the customer project task form and see from the project task point of view – what the project state currently is.
- We can then click on the Customer Project Task tab to see what the child projects under the parent project task (Domain Order as parent project task) are, and see the current project states, to ascertain why the parent project task is not closed – what child tasks are still open.
- We can then click on one of the child project tasks to see if there are any work notes posted on why the fulfillment agent has not completed yet a particular order task that corresponds to my project task.
- Or we can look at the customer project and project tasks purely from the SPM point of view and see the same project task state and work notes information.
View item 1 – OMT sent you to the Customer Project Task form in SPM
View item 2 – All customer projects under Customer project tab – list
View – item 3 – John Miller sees that Ken spilled his coffee, and is late to complete his order task, reason Jim’s corresponding project task state is still “Work in progress”! And he still calls me Jim, ahhh!
View – item 4 – John Miller’s Project Workspace
View - item 4 – Project Task “LLD Creation”
View – Item 4 – project Manager view of LLD project task and Details
View 4 – John Miller’s project workspace – Activity tab, with comments posted from Ken, the fulfillment agent. Note – that John can also see that OMT provides to him what the corresponding order task order task number is!
View – item 4 – See in the fulfillment manager’s configurable workspace the OMT task number which corresponds to the above customer project task
Let's get back to the question of why we saw two different projects, an internal and customer project when viewing the top order line item’s project to OLI relationship.
OMT Order workspace view for ORD0001152 that has three – one per customer location where the SD-WAN Service Package will be delivered.
View – Configurable workspace views for the 3 OLI locations or ORD0001152
View - Santa Clara customer project number
View – Dallas customer project number
View – Houston customer project number
Note – the observant eye sees a situation wherein ORDL0001398 has both an internal project (PRJ) and customer project (CSPR) instantiated by OMT request to SPM; this is because the decision table entries configured have the same input conditions but targeted to different project templates!
View – Project Management Oversight for Order Line-Item decision table
I would need to specify additional conditions to have project instantiation unique for either an internal or customer facing project for OMT not to trigger both and internal and customer project for the same OOB condition/row inputs (if this is indeed what I do not want to occur).
View – Project Management Oversight for OLI decision table – add more input attribute columns
Notice for ORDL0001401, it also has two customer projects – again, I would need to resolve this and create unique conditions so that OMT is not requesting SPM to create duplicate projects for the same account!
View – Project Management Oversight for OLI decision table
There may be situations where I want the same conditions configured such as if for scenarios where the project manager wants a project created for a different set of project task to order task tracking, not all tasks to be tracked. For the Premium SD-WAN Offering_Houston project template I have only domain orders as project tasks to be tracked that correspond to the project task template project tasks configure.
For the New/ADD SD-WAN Service Package I have defined a project template that has all 39-domain order and order tasks to be instantiated and tracked as project tasks. So, I’d have to figure out some uniqueness inputs to not duplicate instantiation at runtime.
This completes the article-based portion of the OMT integration with SPM run time synchronization deep dive. Before we go to the short live demo showing real time project task state updates for Santa Clara project corresponding to OMT Order Line item …1398, let’s review the run time task synchronization business rules and state mappings between SPM project tasks and OMT order task state.
Runtime synchronization mappings
- One Time synchronization: when a project is created, the attributes configured in CSM Table Map are updated on the project. Similarly, when each domain order and order task is created and if matching project task is located, the attributes configured in corresponding CSM Table Map are updated on the project task.
- Run time synchronization: when an Order Line Item, Domain Order or Order Task is updated that has corresponding projects or project tasks, runtime synchronization on update of state, work notes and additional comments will be executed from OMT to SPM.
- Runtime Synchronization on state change for Domain order or Order Task
View – OMT order entity sync to project task entity – state sync mapping
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Domain Order /Order Task State |
Project Task State |
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Completed |
Closed Complete (If all associated order tasks or domain orders are 'completed' or if all associated order tasks or domain orders are terminated with a mix of 'canceled' and 'completed' states) |
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Canceled |
Closed Skipped (If all associated order tasks are canceled and if all associated domain orders are either 'canceled' or marked 'completed' with Revision Operation=Cancel) |
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All other states |
Work In Progress (At least one associated order task or domain order is not yet in a terminal state) |
Implemented OMT Synchronization business rules for this feature:
- On state change for a domain order or order task, if there are associated project tasks, then for each associated project task,
- Check if the project task has no open child project tasks + all associated order tasks are terminated, then update project task state as per table above.
- Exception to this rule: If the system property 'sn_ind_tmt_orm.project.task.auto.closure' is 'false'. In this case, the project task will not be updated to a terminal state and will remain in progress even though all child project tasks as well as associated order tasks/domain orders are closed.
Note - On state change for an order line item, the state of the associated projects will not be updated in a similar manner to that of the order task to project task updates. The order line-item state update will be reflected as a work note on the associated projects.
Demo Recording:
OMT integration with SPM - run time project task/order task state sync
Passcode: f8@3*z+E
