Wholesale: Products & Services

Archived System CR SCR101217-1 Detail

To reduce risk and allow early use of functionality, CenturyLink has decided to implement this interim phase which will enable the Legacy Qwest Consumer market to offer retail services via the new Ensemble flow. This phase will be restricted to brand new Legacy Qwest Consumer accounts not currently in CRIS.

IMA is implementing mitigating functionality during this interim phase which will generally make this process transparent to the Wholesale customer. If a Consumer customer migrates or ports out to a Wholesale customer, capability is being added in IMA to allow Legacy Qwest CLECs to view a CSR when the CSR is in Ensemble instead of CRIS.

The CLEC request will then follow a “business as usual” flow and format with the following minor exceptions. Some provisioning-only FIDs and a small number of USOCs will no longer be contained on any CSR that originates in Ensemble.

This new Retail functionality and capability will likely be introduced via a Trial in a select few serving wire centers. Retail accounts would be built in Ensemble. When an LSR is received from a CLEC, Wholesale will have the ability to return an Ensemble CSR via IMA and process the request in IMA business as usual. If necessary, the account will be established for CRIS billing.

This interim Retail phase could begin as early as February 2018 and this Wholesale functionality will continue within each region until the final local service consolidation.

Status History

Project Meetings

12/12/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said a system notification was distributed on October 26, 2018 to relay CenturyLink production will go “live” with “friendly” consumer accounts on November 26, 2018 however there was a delay to that planned effective date. There were some additional Consumer training that was occurring. The current plan is to go live in mid-December. Mark said we will confirm the effective date. NOTE: 12-19-18 The system changes became live in Production on 12-11-18. The CR is now in CLEC Test.

11/14/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said it was relayed in prior CMP meetings that CenturyLink would distribute a 30 day system courtesy notification when CenturyLink planned to go “live” with “friendly” retail accounts in this interim phase for Retail consumer accounts. On October 26, 2018, system notification number SYST.IMAS.10.26.18.F.16987 was sent; it has a planned “go live” Production date of November 26, 2018. Mark said that when that happens, if a Consumer customer migrates or ports out to a Wholesale customer, the CLEC request will follow a “business as usual” flow and format with the minor exceptions. He asked if there were any questions. There were none.

10/17/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said that the IMA Code has been turned on in Production for production testing only with test accounts. The plan is to go “live” with “friendly” retail accounts on November 26, 2018. With that in mind, on October 26, 2018, CenturyLink is planning to send a 30 day system courtesy notice. Letty Walker - CenturyLink advised that the CLEC order flow will be business as usual. She stated that there may be some very minor changes with USOC and FIDs. Letty asked if there were any questions.

Kim Isaacs – Allstream asked if Retail customer ordering is separate? Kim said they have had trouble previously.

Letty Walker – CenturyLink advised that we are trying to mirror both sides to be consistent.

Kim Isaacs – Allstream asked if CenturyLink retail employees will have access to IMA for retail customers.

Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said he did not think so but we will confirm that in the meeting minutes.

October 23, 2018 NOTE: CenturyLink Retail employees do not have access to IMA.

9/19/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said he had provided a status in August that the code had been installed in production but was dormant. He said by the end of the September, the IMA Code will be turned on in Production for production testing only of test accounts. Prior to becoming “live” with “friendly” retail accounts, CenturyLink will send a 30 day system courtesy notice to all customer/business types. When this happens, the CLEC request will follow a “business as usual” flow and format with some minor exceptions as had been relayed back in October 2017 when this CR was first introduced. Mark said we will likely invite someone from the SME team to review the flow in October. Mark asked if there were any comments or questions with these CR’s. There were none.

8/15/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said that last weekend, the CenturyLink project team implemented the corresponding retail system changes for this CR. Mark said that the software will remain dormant for an unknown period of time as the project team continues to perform internal testing and validation. He said a date has not been determined for any type of customer trial.

6/20/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said this CR is associated with an IMA Patch Release that was previously scheduled to be implemented February 19, 2018 but was moved to Mid-Year. Mark said the planned implementation date is still pending.

5/16/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said this CR is associated with an IMA Patch Release that was previously scheduled to be implemented February 19, 2018. Mark said that date was moved to May but it now appears the effective date will be no earlier than July 2018. Any system downtime will be addressed via an OSS Scheduled Maintenance notice.

4/18/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said this CR is associated with an IMA Patch Release that was previously scheduled to be implemented February 19, 2018. The date was moved to sometime in May 2018 but it appears there will be a further delay. CenturyLink will likely send an OSS maintenance notice associated with any downstream system changes.

3/21/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said this CR is associated with an IMA Patch Release that was previously scheduled to be implemented February 19, 2018. The date has moved to May 2018 but a firm date in May is pending. As relayed previously, there may be some potential for System downtime due to downstream system changes. We will talk about it again in April.

2/21/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said this CR is associated with an IMA Patch Release that was previously scheduled to be implemented February 19, 2018. In the January CMP monthly meeting, we identified the patch was moved to March 2018. It appears that date is March 19, 2018. If so, CenturyLink will send a planned system downtime notice due to downstream system changes associated with the patch.

1/17/18 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said as a reminder that this CR was changed to a Patch Release for IMA in the December 2017 System Monthly Meeting. On December 15, 2017, a System notification was sent to communicate that information to the full CLEC community. The notification is included in the package. The planned effective date for the IMA patch was relayed to be February 19, 2018, however, new information as of this morning is that the date for the patch has been moved to sometime in March. Mark said we will provide the planned effective date in the February CMP meeting. There will likely still be an OSS scheduled maintenance window for mid-February due to downstream system changes. A notification will be distributed by no later than February 12, 2018.

12/13/17 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said this CR is associated with IMA Release 41 which had a scheduled effective date of February 12, 2018. As discussed last month, a system notification was distributed on December 1, 2017 to relay that there were no updates to the Draft Technical Specifications. Mark said we received several customer questions on this notice and have since replied directly to customers. He then reviewed each of the three customer questions and the CenturyLink responses. Both the IMA system notice and the Customer questions/CenturyLink response document were included in the December System package. Mark then said that the CenturyLink SME team, including both Operations and IT, have been reconsidering this IMA release and have now recommended a different approach for how it is characterized.

Denise Martinez – CenturyLink then presented a proposal to change the IMA Release 41.0 from being treated as a Major Release to instead categorize the release as a Patch Release. Denise reminded those on the call what was included in the December 1, 2017 notice:

o There are no XML technical specification or GUI changes. o There are no User Guide changes or process documentation updates. o The only system documentation updates are to the header information for the release number and to update the effective date. o There are no updates required to data fields but there are a handful of USOCs and FIDs that will not be provided going forward.

Denise then reviewed the following rationale and benefits of recategorizing the IMA changes as a Patch Release which include: o System documentation updates to header information to show IMA 41 and the effective date will no longer be necessary. o The IMA changes are back end system interface changes and are specific to Retail rather than to Wholesale. o There will be no need to post updates to all of the technical and user documentation. o There will not be any system downtime during the Patch software installation. o Customers will no longer need to schedule with CenturyLink and undergo a migration process from Release 40 to Release 41 thus saving time and resources for both customers and CenturyLink. o If customers still want to perform SATE testing after the Patch release, that can still occur but there is no need to set up new conditions in the SATE environment.

Kim Isaacs – Allstream asked whether IMA 40.0 would have the account with the USOCs and FIDs as normal and asked what would be in Ensemble.

Denise Martinez – CenturyLink said the only change to the process is that if there is a new Legacy Qwest retail account established in Ensemble, if the account is migrated back to IMA, that account will not have the USOCs and FIDs that were on the list. Other than that, there are no changes.

Kim Isaacs – Allstream asked about backward compatibility with IMA Release 39.0.

Denise Martinez – CenturyLink said there are no longer any customers on IMA 39.0. Denise then relayed that with the merger of CenturyLink with Level 3, the two IT organizations have reviewed the system release schedules. There is a change to focus system changes and maintenance activity to occur on the 3rd weekend vs. the 2nd weekend of each month. With that in mind, the effective date for the IMA patch will be February 19 vs. the original date of February 12. We will continue to discuss this System CR in the CMP monthly meetings and we will relay any updates. Denise said hopefully everyone agrees on the approach to now consider the IMA release a Patch. She asked if there were any more questions. There were none.

Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said it is good news to have confirmation that there will be no system downtime for the Patch. Mark said it sounds like we have agreement on the approach so we will move forward.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink said that we will send a system notification to communicate this change to all customers that we are now considering IMA a Patch release by sending an update to the December 1, 2017 IMA system release notification. 12/19/17 UPDATE: The system notification to notify all customers of this change was sent on December 15, 2017 via notification SYST.IMAS.12.15.17.F.16201.IMAR41ChgtoPatchRelease.

11/15/17 System CMP Meeting Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said this CR was presented in October 2017 associated with IMA Release 41. The scheduled effective date is February 12, 2018 with the Draft Technical Specifications due December 1, 2017. Mark said we don’t believe any technical documentation needs to be updated. The CR originator Denise Martinez will present our proposed approach to handle the system notification.

Denise Martinez – CenturyLink presented the proposed CenturyLink approach for system notification which has the following highlights: • There are no XML tech specs or external docs that need to change so no documents will be posted to the Document Review site. • At Day 73, CenturyLink will send the IMA initial draft tech spec notice that will state that only the version number will need to change from Release 40 to Release 41 and the effective date will need to be updated. • In the initial system release notice, CenturyLink will include the list of USOCs and/or FIDs that are no longer going to be used when a CSR originates in Ensemble with the interim Phase 2. • Since there are no documentation updates, there will be no formal customer comment cycle and no customer walkthrough will need to be held. • At Day 45, no Final tech spec notice will be sent. • At Day 28 – January 15, 2018, when the Draft GUI notice is due, CenturyLink will send a system notification confirming the release effective date and relaying that the documents will be posted on the release effective date with the updated Release number and effective date of February 12, 2018. • If there is a Process change notice associated with the IMA release 41, the Level 2 product process notice will go out as normal on Day 28. If there are no changes, no notice will be distributed. • If anything of what was just relayed needs to change – effective date, functional changes, etc., CenturyLink will communicate that in the CMP monthly meeting and via the appropriate notification. • If there are no issues utilizing this approach, CenturyLink will update the OSS calendar to reflect the plan.

Kim Isaacs – Allstream said that she is concerned that there will be no customer comment cycle provided – especially on the USOCs/FIDs that won’t be on the CSR created in Ensemble.

Denise Martinez – CenturyLink said we felt the changes are very minimal and CenturyLink is in the process of finalizing that list. The number of FIDs/USOCs impacted is around 20 to 30 – maybe not that many. There are provisioning only FIDs and a handful of USOCs – many of which are already suppressed today.

Kim Isaacs – Allstream asked the type of service that will be impacted.

Denise Martinez – CenturyLink said it is residential service - POTS and HSI.

Kim Isaacs – Allstream asked what will be provided instead, ISOCS or descriptors?

Denise Martinez – CenturyLink said she thought once the list is available, it will become more clear on the minimal impact.

Kim Isaacs – Allstream said there is time before this becomes a big concern.

Mark Coyne – CenturyLink said with the initial notice going out on December 1, 2017, the notice can be discussed in the December meeting on the 13th.

Susan Lorence – CenturyLink said what CenturyLink was trying to accomplish is to prevent the volume of notices and the walkthrough when we felt there was nothing CLEC impacting. Susan said we could relay on the initial notice that any questions or concerns could still be sent to CMP COMM.

Kim Isaacs – Allstream said they would look at the December notice and talk more in CMP next month.

Mark Coyne – CenturyLink asked if there were any other questions. There were none.

10/18/17 System CMP Meeting Denise Martinez – CenturyLink presented the new CenturyLink Walk On CR for planned changes to IMA associated with the Local Service Consolidation. Denise said the CR is associated with an interim phase that is impacting Legacy Qwest Retail accounts and reviewed what was included in the CR Description. Denise said if a Consumer customer migrates or ports out to a Wholesale customer, the CLEC request will follow a “business as usual” flow and format with the minor exceptions. The exception is that some provisioning-only FIDs and a small number of USOCs will no longer be contained on any CSR that now will originate in Ensemble. The interim Retail phase could begin as early as February 2018 and will likely start with a Trial in a few serving wire centers. Denise gave a high level view of the flow: An eligible retail consumer account is established for billing in Ensemble. If a CLEC LSR is received for one of these Ensemble accounts, a CSR will be returned via IMA and the LSR will then be processed in IMA as usual. Based on the type of request - migration or port out, if necessary, the account would be established in CRIS to support ongoing billing. Denise asked if there were any questions.

Kim Isaacs – Allstream asked about the list of FIDs or USOCs that would be impacted and also asked which specific wire centers would be included in the trial.

Denise Martinez – CenturyLink said the SME team is currently working on the USOC and FID list. It would be their best understanding of the impacts at this time. She said the wire centers have not yet been identified but would be provided when they are selected.

CenturyLink Response