AMDOCS OSS 8.

Amdocs Delivery Engine 8.1

Product Description
Document Information

Release: 8.1
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Created: 06/02/11
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Author: Segev Lev
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Last Edited: 06/02/11
File Name: Delivery Engine 8.1 Product Description.docx
Template: Product.dot

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Table of Contents

1 Introduction to Amdocs Delivery Engine .................................................................. 5

Key features and benefits .............................................................................................................. 6
Manages implementation of service delivery and network design ..................................................... 6
Tailored to an operator’s organization and network structure ............................................................ 6
Full visibility of Implementation Project progress ............................................................................... 6
Enables automated flow-through implementation .............................................................................. 6
Integrated OSS Suite ..................................................................................................................... 7
Amdocs Resource Manager .............................................................................................................. 7
Task Engine ....................................................................................................................................... 8
Activation Engine ............................................................................................................................... 8
Custom adapters and integration ....................................................................................................... 8

2 Product Features ........................................................................................................ 9

Template driven Implementation Projects ..................................................................................... 9
Configurable implementation Jobs ................................................................................................ 9
Merging design details: ................................................................................................................ 10
Splitting design details: ................................................................................................................ 10
Define Job dependencies: ........................................................................................................... 10
Generates the Implementation Project plan ................................................................................ 11
Automatic scheduling of Jobs ...................................................................................................... 11
Management of Job completion ................................................................................................... 11
XML Jobs for ease of integration ................................................................................................. 11

3 User Interface Functions .......................................................................................... 13

Views ............................................................................................................................................ 13
Project Plan View............................................................................................................................. 13
WebReports ................................................................................................................................. 13
Project Job WebReport.................................................................................................................... 13
Owner Job WebReport .................................................................................................................... 14
Wizards ........................................................................................................................................ 14
Delivery Project Wizard ................................................................................................................... 14
Job Wizard ....................................................................................................................................... 14
Process Job Wizard ......................................................................................................................... 14
Job Planning Wizard ........................................................................................................................ 14
Resource and Relations Browsers............................................................................................... 14
Homepages .................................................................................................................................. 15

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Amdocs Delivery Engine 1.9 Product Description

4 Licensing Information............................................................................................... 17

Appendix A Glossary of terms .................................................................................... 19

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1 Introduction to Amdocs Delivery
Engine
Service provisioning and network build activities generate activation and
engineering requirements that have an impact across many parts of the
organization, often spanning multiple vendors, technologies and network
domains. Ultimately however, the network is controlled by management
systems that understand only the resources within their control.

In Amdocs Resource Manager, every planned resource assignment or

reconfiguration action generates a DesignRecord that describes the details
of the change. The relative positioning of Delivery Engine in the Amdocs
OSS 8.1 is shown in Section ‎0. Delivery Engine accepts DesignRecords
from any number of completed Amdocs Task Engine, Amdocs Resource
Manager or Amdocs Route Finder Design Projects and generates a set of
work-orders or Jobs that are meaningful to each external domain
management system, field engineering team, or other systems such as
financial asset tracking, purchasing and leased line ordering.

Delivery‎Engine’s‎Implementation‎Projects‎can‎be‎scheduled‎or‎issued‎
manually, printed off as work-orders, or activated electronically through
adapters. With its own workflow manager, Delivery Engine controls the
implementation, issue, sequencing of Job delivery and managing rollback.
In summary, Delivery Engine:

 Separates design from implementation

 Translates planned design changes into implementation Jobs
 Provides project management of the Job implementation

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Amdocs Delivery Engine 1.9 Product Description

Key features and benefits

Manages implementation of service delivery and network design
The ability to separate service and network design from implementation is
essential for managing the delivery of complex services and network
designs. Even a leased line service may require fifty or more different
configuration tasks across a mix of technologies and site engineering
functions. Similarly, tasks such as 3G base station rollout, VPN
provisioning and DSL provisioning, require the coordination of activation
and engineering tasks across a mix of technologies, vendors and network
domains.

Delivery Engine generates the equipment, domain, vendor and department-

specific work-orders required to implement a vendor-neutral, cross-domain
design.

Tailored to an operator’s organization and network structure

Whilst fulfillment and network build functions are common across many
service providers, the detail of each business process, organizational
structure and network structure varies significantly. Delivery Engine uses
Templates to tailor how a design needs to be structured in order that each
system, person or department receives only relevant and correctly
sequenced information.

Full visibility of Implementation Project progress

The different tasks required to implement a planned design can vary
significantly in both complexity and timescales. Some tasks, such as
activation tasks, can be carried out instantaneously. Others, such as site
engineering tasks, may take several days, weeks or even months to schedule
and complete. Maintaining visibility of progress, failure and jeopardy
events is essential.

Delivery Engine provides a set of reports, tools and event logging to allow
an end user to investigate the status of an issued Project at any given time.

Enables automated flow-through implementation

Service implementation is typically a manual, labor intensive task requiring
highly skilled individuals. Unfortunately, provisioning backlogs are
commonplace, caused by increasing volumes of services coupled with the
rollout of new network capacity. Scaling provisioning processes requires
both automation (to achieve volume) and also a reduction on the
dependency of skilled staff.

Delivery Engine ensures that service orders and network capacity requests
are implemented correctly and consistently each time. Automating the
implementation is the final step, providing the capability to fulfill a high
volume of provisioning requests without growing staff numbers.

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 Chapter 1. Introduction to Amdocs Delivery Engine

Integrated OSS Suite

Delivery Engine offers key functionality in achieving service and network
change fulfillment. As a result, Delivery Engine may be integrated with
other Amdocs OSS 8.1 products, as shown in Figure 1, to offer fast and
consistent fulfillment or even zero-touch processes.

Figure 1 – Delivery Engine Product Positioning

Amdocs Resource Manager

Delivery Engine is integrated with Resource Manager in two ways: To
initiate Delivery Engine Projects and to enrich Job details.

While Delivery Engine is often used in a flow-through fulfillment process

which includes Task Engine it is also possible to process DesignRecords
created by manual design processes. This approach is particularly beneficial
when the Delivery Engine Project Template is designed to implement non-
service specific implementation processes. For example, a Delivery Engine
Template that assigns Jobs to engineers based on the region the modified
equipment resides in.

Whether Delivery Engine is driven by Task Engine or Resource Manager

users, Job details are primarily created from the input DesignRecord details.
In some cases a DesignRecord may not contain all the information the
external systems require. An example would be an object status change:
The DesignRecord will only provide details of the object identifier and the
status change, however this event may be what drives an external system to
deploy or configure the related network element. In such cases Delivery
Engine has the ability, through callouts, to query Resource Manager for any

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Amdocs Delivery Engine 1.9 Product Description

additional information that may be needed, and add this information into
the Job details.

Task Engine
In a flow-through fulfillment process Task Engine is responsible for the
design of network change and, therefore, generation of DesignRecords.
Task Engine is then able to automatically create an appropriate Delivery
Engine Project and pre-populate it with all relevant DesignRecords.
Ownership of the fulfillment process is then passed to Delivery Engine for
network change implementation control.

Activation Engine
For zero-touch fulfillment, Delivery Engine can be configured to integrate
directly with Activation Engine. Delivery Engine would be configured to
ensure that Jobs contain the relevant details required by the target network
management system. Activation Engine would then be responsible for
taking these implementations details and translating them in to technology
specific configuration commands or scripts.

Custom adapters and integration

Consistent with Amdocs OSS 8.1 open interfaces, Delivery Engine is
designed to integrate with external systems, using adapters where required.
It provides extensive support for data translation from the inventory
representation‎of‎network‎change‎to‎the‎external‎system’s‎representation‎of‎
the change.

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2 Product Features
Delivery Engine offers a range of unique features specifically designed to
simplify network and service delivery. It uses the inventory modeling and
management features of the Resource Manager as an open platform
network inventory, and adds a set of important features specific to
automating the process of turning a service design into a delivery plan.

Template driven Implementation Projects

Delivery Engine allows the selection of any number of DesignRecords and
translates the design details into a single set of Jobs based on the selected
Implementation Project Template. DesignRecords can be selected from any
number of Design Projects. One, some or all DesignRecords from one or
more Design Projects can be selected. Different types of Implementation
Projects can be selected, for example, service specific Templates, or generic
Templates that catch all design updates.

Configurable implementation Jobs

The generic operation of a Delivery Engine Implementation Project
Template is shown in Figure 2. The Template controls the merging,
splitting and dependencies of different DesignRecords in order to generate a
set of real-world implementation work-orders, called Jobs.

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Amdocs Delivery Engine 1.9 Product Description

Figure 2 - Generating implementation Job streams

Merging design details:

DesignRecords and Jobs can be grouped to provide a single composite Job.
For example, a number of individual Jobs containing engineering actions to
be carried out at a location and at a specific time can be merged into a
single Job. This can be done manually by the user using the Job Wizards, or
automatically, driven by a Delivery Engine Implementation Template.

Splitting design details:

A single DesignRecord may give rise to zero, one or more Jobs. For
example, a DesignRecord describing the end to end routing for a new
circuit would typically need to be broken into several real-world Jobs, one
for each network domain management system and vendor.

Define Job dependencies:

Delivery Engine generates any dependencies between Jobs and allocates
expected Job durations. Delivery Engine then groups Jobs based on
matching rules, for example:

 Merge Jobs that relate to the same piece of equipment.

 Merge engineering Jobs to be performed in the same location, for
example, merge all cross-connect and cabling operations for each
different site.

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 Chapter 2. Product Features

Generates the Implementation Project plan

The final stage in generating an implementation plan is to define a Project
start date, end date or both. Based on the dependencies, and expected Job
durations, the Delivery Engine assigns planned start and completion dates
to each Job, and displays the results in a Gantt style chart view.

If the user changes the structure of an Implementation Project by changing

its Job dependencies or Job merging, the Implementation Project plan is
updated. Similarly, changing Job duration, changing Job, or Implementation
Project provision status values, or changing an Implementation Project
name automatically updates the Implementation Project plan.

Automatic scheduling of Jobs

Delivery Engine has a built-in scheduler to automatically issue Jobs for
implementation. The implementation may be controlled directly by
Delivery Engine with configuration and status update information being
transferred via a network implementation adapter. Alternatively, Delivery
Engine can hand off Job management to a workflow management system,
updating Job status on receipt of update messages.

Management of Job completion

Delivery Engine has its own workflow component for managing the life-
cycle of issued Jobs and the progression of the Implementation Project.
Delivery Engine manages the issuing of Jobs, Job completion, and rollback
in the event of failure. Once issued, the Job status may be in-progress,
completed, aborted, or failed. Events are raised against exception
conditions. All Events are logged against each Implementation Project and
can be transmitted to an external system of person for resolution, for
example, by email.

XML Jobs for ease of integration

Delivery Engine Jobs are generated in XML format for ease of content
configuration and for ease of integration with external systems.

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3 User Interface Functions
The Delivery Engine is fully integrated into the Amdocs Resource Manager
client and consistent with other Amdocs OSS 8.1 products. For example,
Wizards guide the user through the steps necessary to construct and issue an
Implementation Project, WebReports provide graphical and interactive
summaries‎of‎Delivery‎Engine’s‎Implementation‎Projects,‎and‎Delivery‎
Engine components appear as extensions of the standard Browser
capability.

Views
Project Plan View
The Project Plan View provides a Gantt-style view of the Implementation
Project plan. It provides a mechanism to tailor the information displayed to
show the critical path and related Jobs and to filter by Job provisioning and
issue status.

WebReports
Project Job WebReport
The Project Job WebReport lists all Jobs within a selected Implementation
Project.‎It‎provides‎details‎of‎each‎Job’s‎scheduled‎start‎and‎finish‎dates,‎
whether or not the Job has been‎issued,‎the‎Job’s‎provision‎status‎and‎which‎
DesignRecords gave rise to the Job.

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Amdocs Delivery Engine 1.9 Product Description

Owner Job WebReport

The Owner Job WebReport lists all the Jobs assigned to a particular Cramer
user.‎It‎provides‎details‎of‎each‎Job’s‎scheduled‎start‎and‎finish‎dates,‎
whether‎or‎not‎the‎Job‎has‎been‎issued,‎the‎Job’s‎provision‎status‎and‎which‎
change record gave rise to the Job.

Wizards
Delivery‎Engine’s‎Wizards step the user through the creation of an
Implementation Project, subsequent editing of the plan, and the
management of the Job and Project life cycles.

Delivery Project Wizard

The Delivery Project Wizard creates the Implementation Project and
generates Jobs from a selection of DesignRecords belonging to one or more
Design Projects held in Resource Manager. A merge facility can then be
used to combine Jobs within the Project according to configurable rules.
Finally, dependencies between Jobs are calculated and a Project plan based
on the expected duration of each Job is generated.

Job Wizard
The Job Wizard allows the manual editing of both the dependencies
between Jobs and the way the Jobs are grouped. It also allows Jobs to be
manually created and added to an Implementation Project.

Process Job Wizard

The Process Job Wizard allows a user to issue Jobs and to update the status
of Jobs. Jobs can be defined to be issued automatically or started
automatically by Delivery Engine.

Job Planning Wizard

The Job Planning Wizard allows a user to alter any parameter of a Job that
may affect the Implementation Project plan, for example, fixed time
constraints on the Job, the Owner of the Job or its expected duration.

Resource and Relations Browsers

Delivery Engine Project and Job details can be browsed from the Projects
Tab in both the Resource and Relations Browser. Jobs details and
dependencies (successors, predecessors, child Jobs and related
DesignRecords) can be explored by drilling into further levels of detail.
Events relating to Delivery Engine Projects are also listed in the Resource
Browser.

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 Chapter 3. User Interface Functions

Homepages
All Delivery Engine objects have a dynamically generated HomePage
allowing access to configuration information on the object, and links to
other related objects. Every HomePage has standard attributes for naming,
audit trail and status management purposes.

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4 Licensing Information
Product name Amdocs Delivery Engine
Product Code IN7-SV-0300-00
Product pre-requisites Amdocs Resource Manager
Amdocs OSS Studio – Expert User
Platform pre- Amdocs OSS 8.1 Platform Requirements
requisites
API OSS Studio Product Description.
Licensing The product is licensed on a deployed instance
basis with a base price plus a service capability
increment
Notes An adapter product is required to connect each
external system to Delivery Engine.
Amdocs does not grant the rights to connect to
the external systems; these rights must be sought
from the external system vendor.
Delivery list  Right to use license
 Software
 Documentation
 Installation notes and release notes

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Appendix A Glossary of terms
Job Life-Cycle Management
Jobs may be operated on in many ways. They may be issued in
advance of being started, may be in-progress, complete, aborted, or
failed. Once a Job has been issued, the Delivery Engine may act as
either the master or the slave of a specific Job’s‎state,‎enabling‎it‎
either to hand off the Job management to a workflow management
system or not.

The Delivery Engine has a built-in scheduler that allows it to

automatically issue or start Jobs without any user intervention at the
appropriate time. Such Jobs are referred to auto-issue or auto-start
Jobs.

DesignRecords
A DesignRecord describes a change that has been made to the
network model in Resource Manager. For example, a change record
is created when a user specifies a new device. One or more
DesignRecords are the source information for Delivery Engine.
Delivery Engine takes control of DesignRecords and through
Template matching, determines how DesignRecords are used to
create implementation Jobs.

Jobs
Implementation Jobs are produced as a result of DesignRecord
processing and describe the real-world activities that must be carried
out in order to achieve planned configuration changes in the network.

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Amdocs Delivery Engine 1.9 Product Description

Jobs can be processed, grouped and have dependencies with other

Jobs. For example, before a device can be installed it has to be
ordered. These Jobs can be carried out at different times and different
Owners can be assigned. Delivery Engine combines Jobs into merged
Job Groups and create dependencies between Jobs so that the
installation of a card cannot be carried out until the node has been
installed.

Events
Events capture specific actions occurring within the Delivery Engine.
They are usually caused by something not happening on time, or
some other exceptional circumstance, for instance, the failure of a
Job. In such situations, the Job or Implementation Project Owner
needs to be aware of specific Events occurring within the Delivery
Engine.

Owners
An Owner is the role of an individual person, a group of persons or an
external system. Every Job and Implementation Project is assigned
an Owner by relating it to an Owner. Individual users may belong to
many Owner Groups and Owner Groups may themselves contain
other Owner Groups.

They are defined in terms of working times, days etc in order that the
Delivery Engine may use the working time of an Owner to calculate
the Implementation Project plan taking into account non-working
days.

Projects
In Resource Manager Projects provide a means of grouping
DesignRecords which, together, relate to some larger design or
fulfillment activity.

Task Engine and Delivery Engine extend the use of Projects to also
include work-flow steps that either controls the creation of
DesignRecords‎(in‎Task‎Engine’s‎case)‎or‎work-flow steps that are
driven‎by‎the‎Project’s‎assign‎DesignRecords‎(in‎Delivery‎Engine’s‎
case).

Templates
Templates generally refer to any definition of an object, collection of
objects or process that is defined once but reusable many times.

In the context of Delivery Engine a Template defines the behavior of

a Project instance. The Template configuration specifies how
DesignRecords are interpreted, and the work-flow (Jobs) that are
created and assigned to implement the fulfillment design.

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Document Release Information
Edited Doc
Release Editor Comments
Date Version
8.1 Segev Lev 06/02/11 Updated for version 8.1 8.1

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