Comms (Communications)

The Communications process handles all types of customerClosed In the context of the Cloud Monetisation Platform, an individual or organisation who has signed an agreement to take goods and services from a service provider. A customer receives a bill associated with one or more subscriptions, and can be a single end user or a large company with many subscriptions assigned to one agreement. communications, including letters, emails, SMSClosed Short Message Service. A text messaging service component of most mobile telephone systems. SMS uses standardized communication protocols to enable mobile phone devices to exchange short text messages. and push notifications.

For more information on Communications in CMPClosed Converged Monetisation Platform. The MDS Global product that supports customer care and billing for digital service providers., see Communications in CMP 8.1 Business ConfigurationClosed A module in the CMP Administation console that provides for viewing and modification of business and user applicable system configuration. Overview guide.

The Comms process includes the following jobs:

  • Communication to customers is controlled by Communication (Comms) Requests, which are created in CMP via workflows or automatically upon receipt of notifications from external systems. The Comms Monitor job is triggered automatically when new Comms Requests are generated. This job gathers the details to be included in each individual communication and determines the delivery mechanism, destination and delivery time. Downstream jobs and daemons monitor the output of this job. For example, the Comms Letter Monitor job merges the details with document templates and dedicated daemons distribute communications to the appropriate third parties.

  • Email communications require additional processing to merge data gathered from CMP with document templates to generate the required document type. The Comms Monitor job gathers the data; the Comms Email Monitor job merges the data. The Comms Email Monitor job is triggered automatically when the Comms Monitor job has finished gathering data for Comms Requests relating to emails. This job uses external frameworks ‐ for example, Velocity and Prince XMLClosed Exstensible Markup Language. A markup language used to describe data that allows users to define their information formats, especially in order to display documents on the Internet. ‐ to generate documents. Generated documents are subsequently detected by downstream daemons for transmission to the customer.

  • Letter communications require additional processing to merge data gathered from CMP with document templates to generate the required document type. The Comms Monitor job gathers the data; the Comms Letter Monitor job merges the data. The Comms Letter Monitor job is triggered automatically when the Comms Monitor job has finished gathering data for Comms Requests relating to letters. This job uses external frameworks ‐ for example, Velocity and Prince XML ‐ to generate documents. Generated documents are subsequently detected by downstream daemons for transmission to the customer.

  • Third parties, for example an Online Charging System (OCS) can generate notifications that may of interest to CMP and cause it to send a communication (Comms) to a subscriptionClosed A billing entity that incurs a charge. Examples include a network attached device whose usage you want to measure and charge for, or a monthly software subscription. This job converts notifications received from external systems into Comms Requests, which are the main avenue for generating Comms in CMP. Depending on configuration, this job may also raise a workflow instead of or in addition to the Comms Request. This job is triggered automatically when a notification is created.

  • This job issues communications to subscriptions about upcoming events that are of interest to the subscriberClosed The end user of a network., such as when credit/debit cards and contracts are due to expire or payments due to be taken. Job properties track when the last communication was issued to prevent sending the subscription multiple communications about the same thing. Each invocation of the job produces an audit of what type of communications were issued and to whom. The job would typically be scheduled to run at regular intervals.

For more information on jobs, see the CMP Batch Jobs and JSONClosed JavaScript Object Notation. JSON is a lightweight format for storing and transporting data, often used when data is sent from a server to a web page. Schemas Guide. Alternatively, in the Administration ConsoleClosed An operations web console that allows batch jobs to be scheduled, run manually and monitored. The console also provides for viewing and modification of business and user applicable system configuration., navigate to Daily Operations > Jobs. Click any job in the Jobs List for more details.

The following daemons are associated with Comms:

Type Category Activity Details
Load Comms From Generic Format This daemon collects and decrypts generic CMP files and creates CMP batches, which are available for processing into CMP by the appropriate batch job.
Transmission Comms Push To Handset The Push to Handset daemon picks up entries that are ready to be pushed to a handset. These messages contain the full text to be sent and are sent in an encrypted JSON message.
Acknowledge Comms Receipt Of The Comms Outbound Acknowledgement Daemon takes in a JSON message/file and then updates various values of a particular communication: e.g. an update on the status of a comm from the third party that actually sent it.
Transmission Comms SMS To Handset The SMS To Handset Daemon picks up entries that are ready to be sent via SMS. These messages contain the full text to be sent and are sent in an encrypted JSON message.
Transmission Comms To Document Storage The Comms Document Storage Daemon places Letters and Emails in long term storage to be accessible via AgentView.
Transmission Comms To Email This daemon picks up documents that have to be emailed and sends them to the specified email recipient.
Extract Comms To Generic Format This daemon creates and encrypts generic CMP files that are available for conversion to third party format.
Transmission Comms To Print Bureau The Comms Letter Distribution Daemon is the daemon that zips up a directory of letters and sends it to a target location.

 

For more information on daemons, in the Administration Console, navigate to Daily Operations > Daemons. Click any daemonClosed A computer program that runs as a background process, rather than being under the control of an interactive user. in the Daemons Listfor more details.

The following probes can be run against jobs and daemons in the Comms process:

Name Type Description
Comms Email Verification Punctual Alert Alert probe whether there are unprocessed emails in the CommsRequestTargetDetail table
Comms Letter Verification Punctual Alert Alert probe whether there are unprocessed letters in the CommsRequestTargetDetail table
Comms Monitor Verification Normal Alert Alert probe whether errors have been received in the last X number of minutes.
Comms Monitor Batch Normal Alert Alert probe for the count of errors for the current day.
Comms Monitor Verification Normal Alert Alert probe whether there are unprocessed requests in the CommsRequestHeader table.
Advance Notifications Batch Complete Alert Alert probe that returns the number of times the Advance Notification job has run today. If this query returns a value of zero, this indicates the job has not run today, and an alert will be sent to the recipients configured on this probe.

 

For more information on probes, in the Administration Console, navigate to Daily Operations > Probes. Click any probeClosed In the Administration Console architecture, a mechanism which allows for the execution of predefined queries and for the comparison of the results of those queries against pre-configured targets. Probes can be reviewed and managed via the Admin Console. in the Probes List for more details.