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Orchestration of Supplemental Orders
When a customer amends or cancels an order, a supplemental order is created. The original order's orchestration plan is updated to adapt to the new requirements of that supplemental order.
Orchestration scenarios for order items or fulfillment rule lines in a supplemental order should match those in the original order. This is required for OM to evaluate the orchestration scenario to correctly identify and implement the plan differences in the supplemental order. If scenarios differ, it may lead to the orchestration plan becoming stuck in a frozen state or orchestration items being incorrectly canceled or discarded.
This update means adding compensating items to the orchestration plan to amend or cancel items that were in the original order. For example, if the original order included an orchestration item to Activate DSLAM, but the supplemental order includes a change to the ADSL bandwidth, then a new, compensating, item is added to modify the DSLAM.
This page shows examples and explanations of how an in-flight orchestration plan is updated when a supplemental order is submitted.
Not every change from a supplemental order is possible. For example, items that have reached the point of no return (PONR) cannot be amended, and neither can any other item in the same bundle. For information about how the PONR rules work, see Rules for How Point of No Return (PONR) Propagates through a Decomposition Plan
Click the thumbnail to see a legend for the examples that follow.
Amend ADSL bandwidth
We'll start with a basic orchestration plan that's partly complete, and then show how it is updated due to a supplemental order to amend the bandwidth.
A customer orders a new ADSL service as well as a streaming service subscription. Both services are going into a single bill.
The diagram shows the original sales order (on the left) and the state of the in-flight processes. Green labels show the state that the orchestration items are at the moment before a supplemental order is submitted.
All of the design and activation of the service is finished, and equipment delivery has been requested. However, there has been no confirmation of the equipment dispatched. PONR is set for the pending task: Equipment has been received. When that task runs, then PONR is reached.
Any compensating items will be put between the completed or running items that are to be amended (shown in blue) and their pending dependencies (shown in red).
After the baseline is frozen (which happens when the Amend button is pushed), the fulfillment operator makes the change to the ADSL bandwidth in the supplemental order, and then presses the Submit order button.
The bandwidth change requires a modification of the DSLAM configuration as well as the AAA configuration, but does not require a new device to be shipped. Order Management adds two (yellow) tasks, called compensating tasks, into the plan. Note that both compensating tasks are added between blue items and red items.
Next, once all the changes have been implemented, but before the equipment has been dispatched, the customer decides to cancel ADSL service. The Video Streaming service is not to be canceled.
Full rollback of an order line
To accomplish the rollback, Order Management does the following things:
Removes the physical wiring.
Releases the DSLAM port.
Releases copper pair.
Rolls back any changes made to AAA.
Cancels equipment delivery.
Note that Physical and Logical Inventory system can impose the rule that one can only release a copper pair if the corresponding ADSL port is released. Hence, we have a dependency between these compensating transactions. The Equipment has been dispatched Push Event is not required any more so it can be discarded. Any activation of Video Streaming should be left intact.
Amend an amendment
As long as an amendment hasn't reached the PONR, it can be amended. There's no logical limit to the number of amendments you can add to amendments.
Order Management handles this in a simple way: Compensation items that were added because of an earlier amendment aren't marked as amended. They just run until finished. This means that any orchestration items added as a result of a compensation for a particular order item revision continue to be associated with this orchestration item even after the subsequent amends or cancellations.
Then the compensation for the second Amend Order will be kicked off. Any Orchestration Items added as a result of a compensation for a particular Order Item revision will continue to be associated with this Orchestration Item even after the subsequent Amends/Cancellations. Hence, Modify Completed Push Event does not need to be associated with the subsequent revisions.
The following image shows the initial state of an order before the first amendment is triggered. Activate Fulfillment has completed, and Provisioning Done Push Event and Update Billing (which is a callout in this scenario) are in the Pending state.
The first amendment to the order
Let's say that a supplemental order changes the fulfillment system. Compensating items must be added between the complete Activate Fulfillment item and the pending Provisioning Done Push Event item. In earlier images, the compensating items would be in yellow. They're blue in the following image, because another amendment is coming soon, so we're counting them as regular order items that will be changed.
The three compensating items use the latest version of the order item OI: Broadband.
The pending (red) item Update Billing also needs to use the most recent version of OI Broadband. So it's updated to be associated with that version.
However, it is not that easy with Provisioning Done Push Event. Push Events are usually activated as a result of some callout being made earlier. In this case, the corresponding downstream system must update the order item associated with the Push Event. The ID of this order item is passed by the callout. Depending on the state of the process the amend order was submitted at, this callout can be associated with the current revision of the order or one the previous revisions. So that it can be activated in all cases, the Push Event should be associated with all previous revisions of the order Item since its initial inception.
The second amendment to the order
This amendment requires yet more changes to the fulfillment system. Let's assume that the Modify Fulfillment item has been completed (so we are in the middle of the compensation for the previous amendment).
The compensation for the first amendment will be allowed to run to completion. Then the compensation for the second amendment starts. Any Orchestration Items added as a result of a compensation for a particular order item revision will continue to be associated with that orchestration item even after the subsequent amendments. This means that Modify Completed Push Event does not need to be associated with the subsequent revisions.
- In-Flight Amendment Orchestration Plan Update Algorithm
When a supplemental order has been submitted, OM updates the orchestration plan according to the algorithm described here. - Allow a Supplemental Order to Override a Change to an Attribute
When an attribute's value is changed by a fulfillment operation (for example, by an external integrator), Order Management maintains that new attribute value, even if a later supplemental order calls for a different value. You can change that default behavior.
