TM Forum API Design Pattern for Comms Product Catalog
TM Forum API Design Pattern for Comms Product Catalog
Introduction[edit]
Pega Product Catalog is designed based on TM Forum SID data model. Communication Service Provider (CSP) Product manager can define catalog, offer (bundle/simple), product specification (simple and composite), pricing and, pricing rules in Pega Product Catalog to offer products and services to its customers.
TM Forum Product Catalog API[edit]
TM Forum’s Open API program is a global initiative to enable end-to-end seamless connectivity, interoperability and portability across complex ecosystem based service – reference (https://www.tmforum.org/open-apis/about-the-program/) TMForum Open API has become telecom industry standard for different systems to integrate.
As an alignment to TMForum, Pega Product catalog has built required interface to integrate with other systems and TM Forum has awarded Pega Product Catalog with Product Catalog Management API (TMF 620) for this. User can view Pega’s certification on TMForum website https://www.tmforum.org/certifications-awarded/ in the list of awarded certifications. This API enables seamless integration of other systems with Pega Product Catalog for operations like Create, Update, Delete and Retrieve catalog entities.
Pega Product Catalog has been certified for interface on 3 objects - Product offering, Product specification and Product offering price entities.
Product specification: Product specification entity is used to define the technical/functional/ configurational specifications of a product. A product specification can be of type resource, service, or product
Product offering price: The Product offering price entity is used to define different types of charges for products e.g., subscription charges, termination charges and so on.
Product offering: Product offering is the entity which is sold to customers. The Product offering entity holds various information about a product, such as pricing, configuration, discounts, eligibility, compatibility with other offers and characteristics.
The Product Offering and Product Specification entities support Parent-Child relationships. Product Offering API uses Bundle Offer feature and Product Specification uses Composite Specs features in Catalog to support Parent-Child relationships. The Product Offering Price does not support Parent-Child relationship.
TM Forum 620 Product Catalog API is a set of REST services that provides standard interface between Pega and external systems (BSS/OSS) through Web services. It provides GET, POST, PATCH and DELETE API methods for Product Offering, Product Specification and Product Offering Price entities.
TM Forum Product Catalog API Operations[edit]
- GET- Used to fetch details of the respective entity in the response. This operation can be further classified to GET{id} and GET List, to fetch details of a single entity or list of entities.
- POST- Used to create new entity in the system.
- PATCH- Used to update information on the existing entity in the system.
- DELETE- Used to remove entity in the system.
Review the request and response elements of TM Forum API[edit]
The input request and output response format for each API is as per JSON structure defined for TM Forum Specification guide v4.1.0. The error codes were also defined as per TMF Specification guide.
Significance of TM Forum API[edit]
- Standard interface to integrate with product catalog
- Reduces time to launch partners’ services and products
- Reduces time to market (TTM) for new products and services
- Reduces time to implement
For more information on How to implement these APIs refer to Implementation guide
For more details about TMForum visit TMForum Home and API page TMForum APIs