Characteristics

Characteristics may be of the following common pre-defined types:

  • Feature – A distinct feature or capability of a product. In general, features distinguish a product from other products of the same class. For example features of a mobile device might include: SMS, Voice, MMS, 4G, Stereo Wireless Headset, Keyboard, etc. Features could also be chargeable or non-chargeable, e.g. For billing purposes a device that provides SMS capability could mean it may need a SMS capable billing plan.
  • Instance – Instance characteristics are similar to Features, the feature in question has measurable quantity that is defined for each related product. An example would be a discrete “Free 500 SMS Package” product could have an “Instance” characteristic called “Free SMS”. This characteristic would have a relationship value = 500. Another similar product could be created called “Free 1000 SMS Package”. It would have the same “Free SMS” characteristic associated with it but have a relationship value = 1000.
  • Input – These characteristics represent information values that need to be captured and associated with the product at time of order/order fulfillment. they generally represent information that needs to be propagated to other systems OR will impact the fulfillment process. Input characteristics generally have no values until the order is placed/fulfilled. An example of an Input characteristic could be an MSISDN (phone number) allocated to a mobile device, or a “Contact Address” captured for a business internet product at time of order.
  • Shared - Indicates that the attribute is shared.

Identifying Common Characteristics

The common characteristics/udf in a plan item can be identified in two ways. You can also switch between these two syntaxes using global variable EnableAffinityUDFParent in the AOPD component.

  1. One way to identify the common characteristics/udf in a plan item is explained as follows :

    For example, consider a scenario where there is an affinity between the two plan items with UDFs sharing the same name but different values and they have plan items decomposed from the same orderline. It was difficult to identify which plan item the characteristic belongs to with the previous syntax. In the new syntax, the value at the end of the last colon (:) is always comma-separated line numbers and it becomes easier to correlate the characteristic on the basis of affinityProductID and parentProductID. The changed UDF syntax is as follows:

    <name:parentProductID:affnityProductID:linenumber>

    Where:

    • name = Name of the UDF.
    • parentProductID = Parent of the affinity product ID.
    • affnityProductID = Affinity product ID.
    • lineNumber = Comma-separated line numbers to denote from which order lines these characteristics appeared.

    This functionality can be enabled by setting the value of global variable EnableAffinityUDFParent to true. By default, this behavior is disabled.

  2. The other way to identify the common characteristics/udf in a plan item is:

    <UDF>:<OrderLineNumber>

    Where:

    UDF = Name of UDF OrderLineNumber = Comma-separated line numbers to denote from which order lines these characteristics appeared