Asynchronous order processing for large customer and consumer orders

  • Release version: Xanadu
  • Updated August 1, 2024
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Asynchronous Order Processing for Large Customer and Consumer Orders

    As an administrator for a communications service provider (CSP), you can efficiently handle a high volume of enterprise and consumer orders using asynchronous order processing in the ServiceNow® Order Management application. This feature is particularly useful for managing large multi-site orders from enterprise customers and high-volume orders from consumers.

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    Key Features

    • Order Processing Stages: The process includes order validation, order ingestion, and order creation.
    • Order Validation Control: You can activate or deactivate order validation for synchronous processing through system properties.
    • Asynchronous Processing: Orders are validated and inserted into the Inbound Queue [sntmtcoreinboundqueue] table. Validation errors return error messages, while successful validations trigger a scheduled job to create customer order entries.
    • API Activation: The Product Order Open API must be activated to process orders in async mode, enabling high-volume order handling.

    Key Outcomes

    By leveraging asynchronous order processing, CSPs can manage large volumes of orders more efficiently, resulting in faster processing times and improved order management. This enables you to maintain service quality while handling increased order loads effectively.

    If you're an administrator for a communications service provider (CSP), you can support a high volume of enterprise, multi-site customer orders and consumer orders by using asynchronous order processing in the ServiceNow® Order Management application.

    Overview

    CSPs support both enterprise customers and consumers. Usually, the orders from enterprise customers are large multi-site orders and the orders from consumers are high volume.

    If you have a Telecommunications Service Management subscription, you can use the Product Order Open API to receive an order in the ServiceNow® Order Management application. Order processing goes through three stages:
    • Order validation
    • Order ingestion
    • Order creation

    How synchronous order processing works

    With synchronous order processing, an order is received in the Order Management application through the API. Then, the order records are simultaneously created in a customer order table after the order validation.

    As an administrator, you can activate or deactivate the order validation for synchronous order processing by setting the create_product_order_validation_sync and create_service_order_validation_sync system properties to True (Default) or False in the ServiceNow AI Platform. Synchronous order processing takes longer than asynchronous order processing when it comes to creating a large number of customer order records.

    How asynchronous order processing works

    In asynchronous order processing, a high volume of orders or a large number of order payloads are received through the Product Order Open API (Scripted Rest End Point) in the Order Management application from the external Configure, Price, and Quote (CPQ) systems. The order details are first validated and are then inserted into the Inbound Queue [sn_tmt_core_inbound_queue] table. If there are any validation errors, an error message is returned in the response.

    This validation is managed by the create_product_order_validation_async system property for product orders and the create_service_order_validation_async system property for service orders. These properties control the validation in the asynchronous processing of orders before the orders are inserted into the Inbound Queue [sn_tmt_core_inbound_queue] table. The default value is set to True.

    When the order details are successfully validated, a scheduled job runs to pick up the records from the Inbound Queue [sn_tmt_core_inbound_queue] table and then creates entries in the customer order table as shown in the following diagram.

    Figure 1. Asynchronous order processing workflow
    Workflow showing how an asynchronous order is created. For text description, refer to the steps that follow.
    The asynchronous order processing follows these steps:
    1. You must activate the Product Order Open API. The new parameter mode enables the API to process the orders synchronously or asynchronously. For more information about the API, see Product Order Open API.
    2. After you receive a high volume of orders or a large number of the order payloads through the Product Order Open API in the async mode, the order details are first validated. The order details include the product offering, order line items, order specifications, order line items characteristics, and the specification relationship of order line items.
    3. After the validation of the order details is complete, an entry for each order with a unique record ID is created in the Inbound Queue [sn_tmt_core_inbound_queue] table. The following diagram shows how the inbound queue state model works.
      Figure 2. Inbound Queue state model
      Model for Inbound Queue State process. For text description, refer to step 3 in this section.
    4. When all the orders are captured in the Inbound Queue [sn_tmt_core_inbound_queue] table, a scheduled job runs to create the customer orders for the records in the New state.