Enxoo BSS

(enxCPQ - core package)

The main goal for previous versions of Enxoo BSS (V10-V12) was to refactor the core CPQ and Order Management functionalities within the Enxoo app by reviewing the business process, introducing a new data model, and equipping the app with a proper API layer. Version 13 introduced last missing part of the E2E process of Product Offering Qualification.

Having completed that, the main goal for V14 was the stabilization of the Enxoo BSS product and improvement of E2E process. Second goal that V14 focused on was the enhancement of order management process by introducing in-flight changes, the ability to make controlled changes during order delivery.

In-Flight Change

Version 14 introduces In-Flight Change process in Enxoo BSS package, which allows making changes during Order delivery, before Service was activated. In-Flight Change process allows to introduce minor changes, requoting changes and cancelations. To support In-Fligth Change process data model for Product Orders will be extended with two new objects: In-Flight Change and In-Flight Change Item (Data Model Overview) and additional permission set to manage those objects (Security - Permission Sets).

Depending of In-Flight Change type, process consists of different set of steps, most of the steps are automated by system and User is responsible for specyfing details about changes that should be made on Product Order and completing the In-Flight Change when ready.

A full User guide for the In-Flight Change functionalities can be found here: In-Flight Changes.

Minor changes

In-Fligh Change process stars by clicking create in-flight change button on Product Order and selecting type and reason. For minor changes User additionally select Items and/or Elements that should be modified (BSS Create In-Flight Change Component):

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Minor Change In-Flight Change initiation

As a result In-Flight change record with In-Flight change items for each modified item or element are prepared:

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In-Flight Change record

Needed changes are performed on those in-flight change items:

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In-Flight Change Item record

When User is ready and changes in-flight change status to complete which syncs all of the changes on Product Order Items and Product Order Elements. This allows to track the history of changes and manage what changes are allowed during delivery.

Requoting

Second type of In-Flight Changes is Rwquoting. This occurs when changes are impacting Customer or are above certain financial thresholds and need approval. For requoting process starts is similar way as for minor changes and additionally, it is possible to specify cancelation changes that will be placed for canceling existing order.

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Requoting In-Flight Change initiation

As a result of initiating Requoting In-Flight Change, apart from In-Flight change and In-Flight Change Items being created, the Original Cart that order came from is cloned. This allows User to go to new Cart and make changes without starting entire quoting process from scratch. Closing new Cart, closes in-flight change and applies cancelation process on previous Product Order.

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Requoting In-Flight Change

Cancelation

The third type of changes during order delivery is order cancelation. When Product Order is being delivered and some steps were already executed, when Customer cancels the Product Order usually a set of steps needs to be executed to roll back changes and optionally Customer can be charged with cancelation charge. Cancelation In-Fligh Change is started in the same way as Requoting, but after initiating the process the changes are applied on Product Order straightaway and cancelation plan starts.

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Pending Cancelation Order with cancelation plan

As with all other areas of the solution, we equipped the In-Flight Change process with a proper Service APIs (https://enxooteam.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ECPQKB/pages/3408036236) allowing package subscribers to create their own UI and API-based solutions to address their specific needs.

Various Improvements

Here is a list of some of the main improvements that V14 introduces in various areas of the application. More details about all of the improvements can be found in release notes for minor versions of V14.

Location Driven Quoting (Product Qualification)

Automatch columns in Request Items file import

Request Import which can be done using from Request page (BSS Request Items Uploader) was improved with the ability to auto-match excel file columns. After selecting file to upload, User does not need to map each column every time file is uploaded, when file headers are matching the expected columns they get automatically matched.

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Request Item Uploader component

Browse other Products for Request Item

Once Request Item is created and variants are prepared for location and certain products. User might want to add additional products that he wants to find if are available at this location and at what price. This can be done either from Request page by clicking on Browse Other Products, next to Request Item or by clicking Browse Other Products from Request Item page:

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Request Management

Clicking on the button either from Request or from Request Item view, opens a similar component as for adding Request Items, but without the location input since we are adding new products to already specified location:

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Request Item Specification component

Saving additional products adds them to Requested products on already existing Request Item and starts Request Item variants preparation for them. More details about new component can be found here BSS Request Item Specification. It’s also possible to add additional products via REST API, for API Users.

Cart Management

Select multiple products in Product Offering

Previously when adding new Products to Cart, once a product was selected (or product option), a Cart Item was created straightaway and User was redirected to the next page. In scenario when more than one product was added to Cart, User needed to open Product catalog and select the product for each of them, which resulted in preparing the same step many times and was time-consuming.

To take care of this issue Product Offering component was updated with new option - Enable multiple Products selection. This is a new parameter that can be set by Admin when adding component on Cart page or in flow, when not set component will still work as it used to. More details about component can be found here BSS Product Offering Component.

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Product Offering component with the option to select multiple products enabled

Cart Summary view with custom actions

In previous Enxoo BSS versions, it was possible to view list of Cart Items under Cart using the Cart Summary component. However this component allowed only to view Cart Items and form V13 also add them to Product Order, but any mass management of items needed to be done in other ways.

To enable easier management of items in V14 Cart Summary with Actions component (BSS Cart Summary with Actions Component) was introduced, which gives the ability to extend component functionality by allowing to specify what buttons are shown in component header and what flows they should run (similar as in Solution Elements management component). User is still able to decide at what level the checkboxes are visible and chosen items or groups of items are passed to specified flows by setting Select Mode.

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Cart Summary with Actions component

Discount Management improvements

During the Sales process, it is possible to manually add discounts to charges for items that are being sold. This can be achieved using the discounts component either from Cart page (for all Cart Items) or from the Cart Item page. In this version, various improvements were added to the discounts component to improve the usability and allow to handle mass quoting scenarios. More details about components can be found here BSS Discount List Component and here BSS Add Discounts Component.

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Mass Discounting

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Additional item information while adding discounts

Search for nearest Network Nodes improvements

When Product configuration requires Network Nodes if they are defined in the system they can be returned to Sales User on product configuration screen. In such scenario list of matching Network Nodes is provided and the best matching one is selected by default. Previously the matching was done based on technology and distance, however there are scenarios when there are couple of Network Nodes in the same location. To accommodate this issue, selection order was added on Network Node, which allows to additionally set order of importance for Network Nodes.

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Setting auto selection order on Network Node

Additionally, in scenarios when functionality for finding Network Nodes described above is not enough, Admin is able to set up custom logic for Network Nodes search using Enxoo BSS settings.More details on how to set up a custom strategy can be found here [FST] Nearby Nodes Strategy - custom policy implementation.

Order Management

Workflow Timeline improvements

In V12 Workflow Timeline component was introduced that allows to manage delivery timeline. In the current release, this component was enhanced with a better ability to view calendar and improvements in manual replanning. More about the component can be found here BSS Workflow Timeline Component.

To make the management of Workflow easier, scale options: days, weeks, and months were added to the component header. The timeline on the first load displays the scale that best matches the Workflow duration, and the User can easily switch between the views. Users can easily go to the current date, by clicking on the Today button.

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Workflow Timeline component

Second improvement was made when User edits a planned due date on a Workflow Task, it is now possible to select an option to automatically change dates on tasks next in order.  

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Replanning dates on Workflow Task

When the User makes changes to the dates, the checkbox “Adjust dependent tasks” becomes active. Upon clicking Save, the planned dates of subsequent tasks are recalculated, taking as a starting point the new planned due date of the edited task, and adding or subtracting the difference (depending on whether the end date is set sooner or later than previously planned). Upon the tasks dates adjustments, the Workflow end date is updated accordingly.

Workflow Kanban Board improvements

Kanban Board was improved to make managing workflow tasks more convenient. Status labels were changed to expandable sections with the number of tasks displayed, so Users have a better overview of the workflow status and can easily collapse sections they are not currently interested in. To increase clarity, when a task is being moved between sections, a border is displayed on the currently hovered-over section. More about the Kanban Board component can be found here BSS Workflow Kanban Component.

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Workflow Kanban component

MACD

Parallel Modifications

When doing Service modifications there can be two types of changes:

• hot cut - changes are made on Service and making changes automatically switches of old state

• parallel - changes are being made on Service, but current Service is still working for some time. It requires to create new Service based on needed changes and after certain time terminate existing Service

With this release of V14 Enxoo BSS package was equipped with the ability to process parallel modifications, apart of processing hot cut modifications which were previously the only available option.

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Selecting Parallel Modification option on Cart Item

When Parallel Modification is ordered, Product Order is created with:

1. Product Order Item with action Add - created based on data from Cart Item

   1. with Product Order Items for Add-ons and Components with action Add

   2. with Product Order Elements for Solution Elements with action Add

2. Product Order Item with action Terminate under Service from point 1 - created based on data from current Service

   1. with Product Order Items for Add-ons and Components with action Terminate - created based on data from current Services

   2. with Product Order Elements for Solution Elements with action Terminate - created based on data from current Service Elements

Product Order Items and Elements with action Terminate and old Service and Service Element have a Parallel Item/Element/Service field set that links them to new records for Activation.

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Ordered Parallel Modification

More details about parallel modifications can be found on the dedicated article Contract Parallel Modification - Contract.

Service Income history

Enxoo BSS package comes with a set of financial indicators that allow to store Customer charges and vendor costs and monitor the profitability of the deal throughout the process. Details about those financial indicators can be found here https://enxooteam.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ECPQKB/pages/3776184398. Until V13 financial fields which are calculated based on contract length of products and resources were calculated only for scenarios where we are aware of the entire contract length - only for activation or for contract renewal. With this release of V14, those financial indicators are calculated now also for Modifications and Terminations.

A place was added on Service that stores Charges History and on Service Element that stores Expenditure history that by default is be populated based on items and elements on their completion, but also can be populated based on billing using custom implementation - https://enxooteam.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ECPQKB/pages/3951132673. Based on those fields we have full history of how MRC/MRE changed during contract and for macd processes, we are able to count all financial indicators that depend on contract term. Apart from that Requested Delivery date field was added on Cart Item, which serves as predicted end date for current MRC/MRE and start date for new one from Cart Item/Solution Element.

Product Catalog

Attribute Values more flexible when introducing new products

When new Products are introduced to already existing Product Catalog, often similar attribute configurations can be used for them, but not always with the same available options (attribute values). Previously attribute values could be either global (for all products) or exclusive for only one products. When new product was introduced this could lead to attribute duplications due to that. In order to make attribute values and attributes configuration more flexible for such cases, ability to assign more than 1 ‘Exclusive for Product’ product was added, by giving additional field on attribute value where a list of product Tech Ids can be provided. Attribute value will apply then not only to one product specified in exclusive for Product field, but also to the list added in this new field https://enxooteam.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ECPQKB/pages/3742761398/BSS+Attributes#Picklist-and-Radio-Attributes.

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Product Attribute Values configuration

When Admin User sets multiple products as exclusive for products on attribute value, this value is taken into account when setting the rest of the product configuration that is based on attribute values from the product page and during the E2E process.

Bugfixes & Minor improvements

Table of contents:

Minor version releases: