Field Force Management Integration Interface Specification V1.0 Committee Specification 01 approved and published
We are pleased to announce the approval and publication of a Committee Specification by the members of the OASIS Field Force Management (FFM) TC [1]:
Field Force Management Integration Interface Specification Version 1.0
Committee Specification 01
05 October 2012
Overview:
This document describes the Field Force Management Integration Interface (FFMII).
FFMII provides a flexible interface between Enterprise Resource Management System (ERMS) and Field Force Management System (FFMS). The role of ERMS is to take a holistic view at work scheduling and resource allocation from the corporate point of view. For this purpose it needs to manage individual units of work performed without strong supervisory guidance (Field Work) in a way aligned with the business objectives of the company. The role of FFMS is to communicate with available set of workers (Field Force) and to provide individual workers (Assignees) performing Field Work with technical means of accessing information about and sending feedback on work assigned to them.
While ERMS defines the structure, content and resource allocation of dispatched work, FFMS is responsible for communicating that information to the field and enforcing any specified constraints on user provided feedback. For facilitating structured communication between ERMS and FFMS in heterogeneous scenarios, FFMII defines flexible mechanisms that enable Work Request modeling (data content, workflow), exchange, work history collection, and collection of data from the field. Information carried with work requests, work request structure (work-flow, schedule) and data to be collected can all be defined dynamically ‘as data’.
This data driven architecture makes FFMII very flexible and adaptable to numerous industries. Additional FFMII capabilities include Field-Initiated Requests that facilitate structured requests and reporting information outside the usual work flow, such as reporting absence, requesting additional work, or providing a sales lead. Reference Data Management provides means to establish custom data repositories with arbitrary content. This enables e.g. input value selection, content validation, or delivery of documents to Field Force. Furthermore, flexible Integration Topologies are supported. Further flexibility is provided by scalability of FFMII itself: Basic features of FFMII are mandatory, and some features are optional. This allows both simple basic implementations and a range of more complete implementations.
URIs:
The prose specification documents and related files are available here:
PDF (Authoritative):
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ffm/FFMII-SPEC/v1.0/cs01/FFMII-SPEC-v1.0-cs01.pdf
HTML:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ffm/FFMII-SPEC/v1.0/cs01/FFMII-SPEC-v1.0-cs01.html
Editable source:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ffm/FFMII-SPEC/v1.0/cs01/FFMII-SPEC-v1.0-cs01.doc
Distribution ZIP files
For your convenience, OASIS provides a complete package of the prose specification and related files in a ZIP distribution file. You can download the ZIP file here:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/ffm/FFMII-SPEC/v1.0/cs01/FFMII-SPEC-v1.0-cs01.zip
Members of the Field Force Management (FFM) TC requested a Special Majority Vote to approve the Committee Specification. The Committee Specification Draft had been released for public review as required by the TC Process [2]. The vote to approve as a Committee Specification passed [3], and the approved CS01 is now available online in the OASIS Library as referenced above.
Our congratulations to the TC on achieving this milestone.
========== Additional references:
[1] OASIS Field Force Management (FFM) TC
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ffm/
[2] Public reviews:
15-day public review, 31 July 2012: https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/201207/msg00007.html
30-day public review, 29 May 2012: https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/201205/msg00014.html
[3] CS ballot:
https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/ballot.php?id=2290