Customer order decomposing in multiple (>100) Resource Orders

[Joshua Chen FX]

use case:
- managed services customer, they sell ''services'' as product, e.g. sd wan monitoring and installation
- 1 customer order = 1 PO > PS requires RS (Routers)

For quantity requirement, would you:
- enter the quantity at ordering

• 1 order line > 200 product orders > 200 resource orders

OR
- have a CHAR = quantity on the PS and quantity mapping with the RS

• 1 order line > 1 product order > 200 resource orders (quantity mapping)
  
  from a service assurance or day2 operations (MACD), would it make more sens to do it against 1 product inventory/install base item or 200 product inventories?

[ShashankInamdar · Accepted solution]

@Joshua Chen FX Based on your description, you are selling a Managed Service Offering that entitles the customer to have an 'n' number of Routers. 

In this use case, it may be more appropriate to drive the 'n' quantity via characteristics rather than setting it against the Order Line Item.

The option of "200 product orders > 200 resource orders", seems unsuitable (although not invalid) because the product being sold is Managed Service and not the Router. The Router appears to be an entitlement.

As an example, are you selling 200 iPhones or a Corporate Mobility plan that entitles customer to 200 iPhones that you manage?

For MACD scenarios - do you have use cases of changing a particular Router inventory record of the 200 that would be created? This can be done using TMF652 - Resource Order Management, although not supported OOTB.

For Assurance use cases, each of the Router inventory record (corresponding to the RS) can be mapped against a CMDB CI record against which Incidents, Change Requests can be tracked and managed.

An alternative, as a food for thought, is not to define a Resource Spec in the P-S-R Catalog and instead create them directly in the CMDB CI. You need to consider what do you gain or lose by maintaining the Router record in the Inventory tables as well as in CMDB.

Look forward to your view!

[Joshua Chen FX]

@ShashankInamdar 

thank you, i think what you said make sense.

for the 200 RS (200 resource orders > each of them would have a subflow with tasks such as ''isntall router'', ''configure router'' ,etc.)

- is there a way to only have one task for the 200 Routers so that the agent (installing the 200 routers) only have to close 1 task?
-The point is not to overwhelm the agent with having to close hundred of individual tasks

[ShashankInamdar]

Based on your question, I assume these are all manual tasks?

There are a couple of ways to do this, but before we get there I have to ask - how will you track individual installation/config router progress? How will you handle fallouts for some router tasks with just one task?

[Joshua Chen FX]

@ShashankInamdar correct, for now it will be manual task. so if each resource order has 3 tasks in the subflow, and we have 10 resource orders, it will be a total of 30 tasks to close. all these tasks are completed by the same agent.

- i think the business need to track the individual router progess is LESS important than the agent having to closes all tasks manually for each resource order. If there is a way to balance the 2 requirements, i am open to suggestion 🙂
- same as above for fallout

[ShashankInamdar]

Ok, fair point.

A solution I can think of is to make use of 'Order Stage' field on the parent domain order.

Thus, assuming your instantiated structure is 1 Product Order decomposed to 200 Resource Orders, have an automated or manual step to update the Order Stage field on the Product order to a pre-defined value such as 'Router Install & Config complete' - which then can be used as a trigger in the Subflow for the Product Order to auto close all Order Tasks corresponding to it's child Resource Order.