Deploying the Component

External Fulfillment System Integration

PLM supports integration with CloudBlue Connect. To learn more about CloudBlue Connect, please refer to the CloudBlue Connect documentation.

Note: The CloudBlue Connect Extension is not required for that integration.
You must prepare the following items:
- An API token for the CloudBlue Connect API with the following properties:
  - Extension: Custom
  - Permissions: All
  To prepare that API token, follow these instructions.
- The Hub Instance ID of the hub that is intended for PLM integration. If you already have a hub for your CloudBlue Commerce installation, you must use its Hub Instance ID. Otherwise, create a hub with the following properties:
  - Name: The name of that hub. For example: PLM integration
  - Type: API
  - Instance ID: The Hub Instance ID of that hub. You can specify any string as a value. For example, specify a GUID.
  - Description: The description of that hub.
  Important: A Hub Instance ID and a Hub ID are different items. You must prepare the Hub Instance ID of your hub.

Kubernetes Resource Requirements

Container	CPU cores	RAM in GiB
inhouse-products	1.0	2.0
camunda	0.5	1.0

Notes:

1. These resources are required to support up to 1000 products or 10,000 subscriptions.

2. Every 1000 products or 10,000 subscriptions require 10 GB of storage on your database server.

Required CloudBlue Commerce Components

The PLM component must be installed together with other core components:

OSS 21.10 or later.
BSS 21.10 or later.
UI and Branding 21.10 or later.
Payment Management 21.10 or later.
Order Management 1.10or later.

To support specific products and scenarios, the following components must be installed:

Rating Engine
- 1.8 or later to use NCE-specific policies
- 1.10 or later to use cancellation penalty
- 1.14 or later to use auto-renewal settings for switches and scheduled changes
Usage Collector 1.8.1194 or later, to manage PAYG products.
UX1 Marketplace
- 6.3 or later to place sales orders via UI
UX1 Subscription Management
- 4.3 or later to validate change order parameters
- 4.7 or later to use scheduled changes
- 5.2 or later to support NCE policies for immediate switches
- 5.3.1603 or later to support a subscription partial upgrade
Order Management
- 1.10.571 or later to support NCE policies for immediate switches
BSS
- 21.9.232 or later to support NCE policies for immediate switches

For placing orders through API:

Providers who already integrated with CloudBlue Commerce and place orders through APS API may use the same API calls. However, the request payload must be adjusted according to a service-specific list of parameters.
For providers who consider integrating with CloudBlue Commerce, we recommend using Simple API 1.6 or later.

Firewall Requirements

The connections in the table must be allowed for the PLM component to work.

From	To	Port
The PLM component	Your PostgreSQL database server	5432
The PLM component	The CloudBlue Connect API	443

Deployment

Note: Ignore messages about Usage Collector during deployment if you do not plan to manage PAYG products with PLM. If you want to manage PAYG products in PLM but use VRMD, then plan switching from VRDM to Usage Collector as described in this article. This must be done before you start managing PAYG products with PLM. Usage Collector deployment is required only if you do not use VRDM yet and would like to start managing PAYG products with PLM.

To deploy the component, perform the following steps:

Add this section to your config.yaml:
```
 components:
  ...
  inhouse-products:
    connect_apibaseurl: https://api.connect.cloud.im/public/v1
    connect_apikey: CONNECT_API_TOKEN
    connect_hub_instance_id: CONNECT_HUB_INSTANCE_ID
  ...
```
Important: If access to the Internet is restricted in your environment and the CloudBlue Connect API is not accessible from your Kubernetes cluster, you must perform the instructions in Appendix: Configuring Access to the CloudBlue Connect API Through a Proxy Server.
In the section that you added, specify the following settings:
- components.inhouse-products.connect_apikey: The API token that you prepared.
  
  Important: The format of that API token must be ApiKey SU-DDD-DDD-DDD:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, where X is an alphanumeric character, and D is a numeric character.
- components.inhouse-products.connect_hub_instance_id: The Hub Instance ID that you prepared.
  
  Important: A Hub Instance ID and a Hub ID are different items. You must specify the Hub Instance ID of your hub. For example: XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX, where X is an alphanumeric character.
Perform the instructions in Preparing a Deployment Container.
Perform the instructions in Running the Deployment.

Notes:

- During the deployment, Camunda, a third-party software component used by PLM, is automatically installed.

- The database for the PLM component, the database structure, and the secret with database access settings are automatically created by the a8n-db component during the PLM component's deployment. The database server is chosen based on the settings of a8n-db specified in config.yaml.

How to Upgrade Product Lifecycle Management to the Latest Version

To upgrade the Product Lifecycle Management component, follow Upgrading Components using the Product Lifecycle Management deployment parameters in config.yaml.

Hiding Menu Items

The Products and Order Fulfillment menu items are visible for resellers. They are displayed empty and we recommend that you hide them. To hide these menu items, complete the following steps:

Log in to the classic PCP as a provider,
Go to Operations > Settings > UX1 Navigation.
Select the following UI controls:
- navigation@http://com.odin.platform/inhouse-products#fulfillment
- view@http://com.odin.platform/inhouse-products#fulfillment
- view@http://com.odin.platform/inhouse-products#fulfillmentView
- navigation@http://com.odin.platform/inhouse-products#productInventoryVue
- item@http://www.parallels.com/pa/pa-core-services#products
Click Hide.

Useful Information

How to Obtain the Current config.yaml from CloudBlue Commerce

When updating CloudBlue Commerce components, you may need to obtain the current config.yaml.

To obtain the current config.yaml from CloudBlue Commerce, on a machine with kubectl, execute the following request:

kubectl -n NAMESPACE get secret config-yaml-backup -o "jsonpath={.data['config\.yaml']}" | base64 -d

Note: NAMESPACE is the namespace of your CloudBlue Commerce installation.
To find it, execute the following command:
kubectl describe svc oss-proxy | grep namespace

How to View the Deployment Parameters with Default Values for the Component Version You Want to Install (values.yaml)

To view the deployment parameters with default values (values.yaml) for the component version you want to install, run the following command from the machine with kubectl:

helm show values <component_name_for_config.yaml> --version <component_version> --username <username_for_deployment_repository> --password <username_for_deployment_repository> --repo <a_link_to_repository_with_CloudBlue Commerce_components>

For username and password to the deployment repository, please contact your Technical Account Manager.