Member Insights
My API Story: A simple solution for assuring customers' faults
We talk to Telstra's Ana Ristevski about how TM Forum Open APIs are helping to reduce the time to serve and fix service problems for the telco's service agents.
17 Jun 2021
My API Story: A simple solution for assuring customers' faults
We talk to Ana Ristevski, Product Owner of Converged Service Assurance – Product Enablement Technology at Telstra about how TM Forum Open APIs are helping to reduce the time to serve and fix service problems for the telco's service agents.
Tell us about yourself and your job
I am the Product Owner of the assurance capability for Converged Services. Primarily I work in a cross functional team of experienced network specialists and IT developers and we develop and deploy APIs that allow the business to assure customers’ faults and concerns simply and effectively. My team understands how a service behaves and works in the network in all its complexity and we have abstracted the complexity so that IT business systems can consume the APIs and perform complex checks and fixes quickly and consistently.
Why do you believe in TM Forum’s Open API program?
It is great to see a common catalog of APIs across industries. As the saying goes, many hands make light work, but more than that, I see that bringing together the experiences and the challenges experienced by many businesses helps us all do better and be better for our customers.
What TM Forum Open APIs are most valuable to your company?
Telstra is a signatory on the Open API Manifesto, so we find many Open APIs relevant in various product applications. My product uses the TMF653 Service Test Management and TMF656 Service Problem Management APIs.
Why did you choose to highlight those APIs?
The Service Test Management and Service Problem Management APIs allow the network teams to present to business users a very simple service test API that is powerful behind the scenes. It interacts with the network is in a consistent manner, and it checks the quality and parameters of the service and rectifies violations found in the service.
How do you use those APIs?
The Service Test Management and Service Problem Management APIs generally work hand in hand. The team here decided that in order for the Service Problem Management API to run, a Service Test management API needs to be executed first. The API treats the configuration database as the source of truth and compares it to the service throughout the network. Our first release of the APIs allows Telstra’s internal teams to consume the API. However, we expect in the future to extend this so that true closed loop assurance can be realized, and to allow the customers themselves to execute the service tests from within their Telstra apps and self-support and assure where it is preferred. Also, there will be continued reuse across the various retail consumers, retail enterprises and wholesale segments.
How have you benefited from using these APIs?
The support agents and customers benefit most from these APIs. Their time to serve and fix the service problem has reduced greatly. In the past the support agent would have to perform checks in more than one system to try and pinpoint the customers’ service problem. All the complexity has been removed from the agents’ view. These APIs are integrated into the IT Service Desk at various points of the support process. Different service tests can be run at different times, depending on the customer service experience.
Where do you use the APIs?
The Service Test Management and Service Problem Management APIs are hosted on Telstra’s Network as a Service API gateway and can be consumed by any of our business units that require to assure any IoT and Mobility services. Currently many CRMs and Customer IT Service Desks consume the APIs.
Have you used them in conjunction with any other APIs?
I am the Product Owner of the assurance capability for Converged Services. Primarily I work in a cross functional team of experienced network specialists and IT developers and we develop and deploy APIs that allow the business to assure customers’ faults and concerns simply and effectively. My team understands how a service behaves and works in the network in all its complexity and we have abstracted the complexity so that IT business systems can consume the APIs and perform complex checks and fixes quickly and consistently.
Why do you believe in TM Forum’s Open API program?
It is great to see a common catalog of APIs across industries. As the saying goes, many hands make light work, but more than that, I see that bringing together the experiences and the challenges experienced by many businesses helps us all do better and be better for our customers.
What TM Forum Open APIs are most valuable to your company?
Telstra is a signatory on the Open API Manifesto, so we find many Open APIs relevant in various product applications. My product uses the TMF653 Service Test Management and TMF656 Service Problem Management APIs.
Why did you choose to highlight those APIs?
The Service Test Management and Service Problem Management APIs allow the network teams to present to business users a very simple service test API that is powerful behind the scenes. It interacts with the network is in a consistent manner, and it checks the quality and parameters of the service and rectifies violations found in the service.
How do you use those APIs?
The Service Test Management and Service Problem Management APIs generally work hand in hand. The team here decided that in order for the Service Problem Management API to run, a Service Test management API needs to be executed first. The API treats the configuration database as the source of truth and compares it to the service throughout the network. Our first release of the APIs allows Telstra’s internal teams to consume the API. However, we expect in the future to extend this so that true closed loop assurance can be realized, and to allow the customers themselves to execute the service tests from within their Telstra apps and self-support and assure where it is preferred. Also, there will be continued reuse across the various retail consumers, retail enterprises and wholesale segments.
How have you benefited from using these APIs?
The support agents and customers benefit most from these APIs. Their time to serve and fix the service problem has reduced greatly. In the past the support agent would have to perform checks in more than one system to try and pinpoint the customers’ service problem. All the complexity has been removed from the agents’ view. These APIs are integrated into the IT Service Desk at various points of the support process. Different service tests can be run at different times, depending on the customer service experience.
Where do you use the APIs?
The Service Test Management and Service Problem Management APIs are hosted on Telstra’s Network as a Service API gateway and can be consumed by any of our business units that require to assure any IoT and Mobility services. Currently many CRMs and Customer IT Service Desks consume the APIs.
Have you used them in conjunction with any other APIs?
The Service Test Management and Problem Management APIs are often used in conjunction with our TMF640 Service Activation and Configuration API. TMF640 is used to retrieve a value or parameter of a service, so that the support agent knows the service parameter being checked in the network with the TMF653 Service Test Management API.
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