Simplifying Reconciliation and Stock Keeping Across Your CloudBlue Commerce Installations

If you have several CloudBlue Commerce installations, you can use Product IDs as a simple and reliable way to identify the same product across your installations for stock keeping, reconciliation, and reporting purposes.

To simplify reconciliation, stock keeping, and reporting across your installations, you can configure CloudBlue Commerce to automatically assign unique Product IDs to Billing resources. Unique Product IDs ensure more accurate data aggregation, which is important for:

• Better accounting accuracy, easier stock keeping and reconciliation across your CloudBlue Commerce installations.

• Simpler and more accurate data collection for business intelligence and reporting.

Automatically assigned unique Product IDs compensate for the deficiencies of MPNs, which may not be unique per resource or may be missing for some resources.

To use the same Product IDs for the same resources on several CloudBlue Commerce installations:

• Step 1: Activate the Product ID functionality on the source and target installations.
• Step 2: Assign unique permanent product IDs to billing resources on your source installation.
• Step 3: Transfer resource configurations from your source installation to your target installations.

Step 1: Enable the Product ID Functionality

To enable the Product ID functionality on several CloudBlue Commerce installations, on each installation enable the following special feature in the Billing database: FEA_UNIQUE_PRODUCT_ID

Step 2: Assign Unique Product IDs to Billing Resources on the Source CloudBlue Commerce Installation (Configure the Product ID Template)

To configure CloudBlue Commerce to automatically assign unique Product IDs to Billing resources:

1. Go to CloudBlue Commerce > Billing > System > Settings > Product ID Template.

   Note: The Product ID Template settings become available after you enable the feature.

2. Click Edit. To make Product IDs more human readable and recognizable, in the Product ID Template field, add a text prefix to the placeholder @@UUID@, for example:

   Product_ID_@@UUID@

   The prefix will appear in all Product IDs, for example:

   Product_ID_#$!@#$1234

   Product_ID_$%$!$%5421

   Product_ID_$@#%$%7632

   Important: Review your configuration before saving it. The Product ID Template configuration is saved permanently and cannot be changed. There can be only one Product ID Template configuration per installation.

3. Save your Product ID Template configuration. All existing and all new Billing resources will automatically receive unique Product IDs.

Step 3: Transfer Resource Configurations from Your Source Installation to Your Target Installations

This procedure is relevant for the following scenarios:

• When you need to add new APS applications that support PCM to the Product Catalog. For example, Office365 and CloudBlue Connect-based applications.

• When you need to add resources to already installed APS applications.

Prerequisites

• On the source system and each target system, the Product ID functionality is enabled.
• On the source system, the Product ID Template is configured.

• On each target system, the Product ID Template is not configured.

  Important: If the Product ID Template is also configured on a target system, there may be a synchronization conflict because a resource that was added directly to the target system may have the same Product ID as a resource on the source system. This will lead to a synchronization conflict.

• PCM prerequisites are satisfied.

Synchronizing Resource Configurations Between Installations

To transfer resource configurations between several CloudBlue Commerce installations:

1. On the source system, using PCM, create the necessary Billing resources and service plans.

   Note: Because Product ID Template is configured on the source system (please see Prerequisites), each created resource is automatically assigned a unique Product ID.

2. Export the resource and service plan configuration from the source system.

3. Import the exported configuration to each target system.

   Important: During the import process, if an existing resource on a destination system has a Product ID and this resource is updated, its Product ID is overwritten. To ensure that all the exported resources are successfully imported, please satisfy the prerequisites.

As a result, the respective service plan and Billing resources are created on the destination systems. Each of the resources has the same Product ID across all systems.