Call for Participation: OASIS Field Force Management (FFM) TC

[chet.ensign@oasis-open.org]

OASIS members & interested parties, A new OASIS technical committee is being
formed. The OASIS Field Force Management (FFM) Technical Committee has been
proposed by the members of OASIS listed in the charter below. The TC name,
statement of purpose, scope, list of deliverables, audience, IPR mode and
language specified in the proposal will constitute the TC's official charter.
Submissions of technology for consideration by the TC, and the beginning of
technical discussions, may occur no sooner than the TC's first meeting. The
eligibility requirements for becoming a participant in the TC at the first
meeting are: (a) you must be an employee of an OASIS member organization or
an individual member of OASIS, and (b) you must join the Technical Committee,
which members may do by using the "Join this TC" button on the TC's home page
at [a]. To be considered a voting member at the first meeting, you must: (a)
join the Technical Committee at least 7 days prior to the first meeting (on
or before 13 June 2011); and (b) you must attend the first meeting of the TC,
at the time and date fixed below (20 June 2011). Participants also may join
the TC at a later time. OASIS and the TC welcomes all interested parties.
Non-OASIS members who wish to participate may contact us about joining OASIS
[b]. In addition, the public may access the information resources maintained
for each TC: a mail list archive, document repository and public comments
facility, which will be linked from the TC's public home page at [c]. Please
feel free to forward this announcement to any other appropriate lists. OASIS
is an open standards organization; we encourage your participation. Best
Regards, /chet ---------------- Chet Ensign Director of Standards Development
and TC Administration OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information
society http://www.oasis-open.org Primary: +1 973-378-3472 Mobile: +1
201-341-1393 ---------- [a]
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ffm [b] See
http://www.oasis-open.org/join/ [c]
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=ffm

--
Best regards, 

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CALL FOR PARTICIPATION OASIS Field Force Management (FFM) TC Name of the TC:
OASIS Field Force Management (FFM) Technical Committee Statement of Purpose:
Enterprises that deploy large field staffs to deliver services to their
customers face a host of data use and integration challenges. As the on-site
representatives of the enterprise, their field force serve as remote nodes
for the entire organization, offering and delivering services, delivering
information, committing the enterprise to future actions, and so on. Each of
those "field work" operations may touch multiple central data stores,
including: -- the contact data in a CRM, -- job ticketing (task tracking and
completion) systems, -- the enterprises's inventory and accounting systems,
whether integrated into an ERP system or not, -- records of completed
installations, for purposes of product life cycle service and future customer
relationship purposes, -- sales, management and human resources systems
tracking the field agents, and so on. In addition to the challenge of
connecting and coordinating multiple enterprise data systems, field force
management also heavily depends on the ability to carry data across to the
field staff, who often are at the other end of loosely-coupled, heterogeneous
networks composed of many disparate nodes. The devices expected to work
together and share meaningful data include mobile phones (enterprise and
personal), smartphones, personal PIMs, laptops, company mainframes, and other
special purpose devices, and are used in a highly mobile fashion requiring
robust abilities to represent and reuse location data. The term "Field Work"
in this context refers to a unit of work that is expected to be conducted by
an individual (or group of closely co-operating individuals) without need for
strong supervisory guidance at each step. Specification of such units of work
contains sufficient amount of information necessary for accomplishing
expected activity in self-guided way, within the expected time window and
resulting in the desired outcome. Such a task may be completely independent
of other activities, or be part of a larger project where number of
activities are planned for and scheduled in relation to each other. In the
context of FFM TC effort, field work is not limited to particular industry
segment or activity type. For example, field works in telecom, utility,
facility maintenance, community services, construction, and others would be
valid subject for FFM TC effort, as well as certain types of activities
regardless of business segment (e.g. sales or field surveys). The FFM TC will
develop an integration interface that can be used between systems responsible
for work planning and systems responsible for field request communication
towards the addressable field force. In such scenario, a standardized,
semantically rich and problem-domain-neutral interface is required. In order
to enable fast delivery of fully integrated software solutions addressing the
needs of both types of system. Due to fast-changing business requirements
typical for field service value chains that interface should be able to
accommodate desired changes in content and interaction patterns without need
for extensive customization of already deployed systems. The common data
structures must be capable of rapid, flexible revision and extension, without
disruption, to maintain the systems' ability to faithfully represent changes
in business models, plans, and support structures. Scope of work of the TC:
The TC will specify a generic, extensible, vendor-neutral integration
interface, based on open standards, for relaying field work requests between
one or more work planning and one or more field communication systems.
Principal use cases for the interface include: -- field work request
dispatching (including request updates and cancellations), and -- collection
of status and input data from the field in a reliable and scalable manner.
The TC may identify additional use cases for inclusion. The FFM interface
shall specify at least one protocol bindings. And the TC may specify bindings
(or provide guidance) for use of multiple alternative protocols, such as a
variety of messaging systems or formats, or different degrees of information
security. Out of scope: The FFM TC will not address implementation aspects of
the systems generating field work requests, nor of the systems accepting and
making those available to field personnel. FFM's projects is to provide an
interface and data specifications permitting those two classes of black box
to interoperate, generally without perturbing the behaviors inside those
boxes. However, the protocol bindings, shared data models, and related
interface requirements that the FFM Interface provides may impose some
requirements on systems that employ it. Testing materials are out of scope.
This TC shall not develop FFMII conformance test suite materials (other than
the conformance clauses as may be required within a specification), nor
conformance certification methods for implementations of the issued
specifications. For these and similar activities, a parallel Adoption
Committee may be considered for creation at a later time, if deemed
desirable. List of deliverables: The FFM TC plans to produce several related
deliverables within both the OASIS Standards Track and Non-Standards Track.
Standards Track Deliverables: -- Field Force Management Integration Interface
(FFMII) specification (primary base specification), which may be one or
several related specifications as the TC deems desirable. The FFMMI may
include one or more formal taxonomies or code lists for the compact and
efficient re-use of recurring information. [[9] months from the first
meeting.] -- Such FFMII related technical artifacts (e.g., data models and
machine-readable API) as the TC deems desirable. Non-Standards Track
Deliverables: -- FFMII non-technical overview. [[9] months from the first
meeting] -- FFMII business drivers and design goals statements. [[9] months
from the first meeting.] -- Use case scenarios and exemplar models. [[9]
months from the first meeting.] The TC's deliverables shall re-use and
leverage existing open data standards and architectures where possible. IPR
Mode under which the TC will operate: RF on Limited Terms Mode. The
anticipated audience or users of the work: The anticipated audience for TC
deliverables produced within the OASIS Standards Track includes independent
software vendors (ISVs) active in the area of work planning systems and in
field communication systems. Similarly, systems integrators focusing on
delivery of integrated and coherent model-driven solutions for respective
customers will be candidates for using the standardized technology. The
anticipated audience for TC deliverables produced within the OASIS
Non-Standards Track is business entities conducting field activities and
seeking guarantees of interoperability between systems. Such businesses
typically need to address different aspects of field operations and to
support interaction between disparate systems. Industry strategists,
independent consultants, and device designers may benefit from the results of
the FFM TC's work as well. Language of the Technical Committee: The business
of the Technical Committee will be conducted in English. Non-normative
information regarding the startup of the TC: The proposers are unaware of any
currently published work that fulfills the interface scope described here
using open data standards. The following existing specifications and
documents may be relevant or of interest: - XML (W3C) as way of data
serialization for exchange - SOAP (W3C) as one of applicable protocol
bindings - xCal (IETF) for serialization of scheduling information - OASIS
WS-Calendar (in progress) First meeting: Date: Monday, 20 June 2011 Time:
9:00AM EDT Location (in person or by telephone): Telephone Sponsor: Nokia
Siemens Networks Meeting schedule and Sponsor: Nokia Siemens Networks is the
sponsor of these meetings. It is anticipated that the initial release of the
FFMII interface shall be produced through regular [biweekly] teleconference
meetings, together with [semiannual] physical sessions as the TC deems
appropriate, until reaching a releasable state. The meeting schedule for
subsequent maintenance releases and interface extensions will be driven by
identified need for enhancements, based on experience from existing
deployments. It is anticipated that deliverables produced on the
Non-Standards Track will be developed through work in regular meetings and
asynchronously on the TC's mailing list, with informal rounds of TC review
comments and draft revisions, until deemed completed by the appropriate TC
votes. Names, Electronic Mail Addresses, and Membership Affiliations of at
least Minimum Membership Who Support This Proposal: Timo Perala,
timo.perala@nsn.com, Nokia Siemens Networks Pertti Lounamaa;
pertti.lounamaa@pajatman.com; Pajat Management. Sami Vaskuu;
sami.vaskuu@newelo.com; Newelo Oy Juha Tuominen; juha.tuominen@rossum.fi;
Rossum Oy Juha Tiihonen; juha.tiihonen@tkk.fi; Aalto University Primary
Representative Statements of Support: Timo Perala, Head of Services and
Operations Standard, timo.perala@nsn.com, Nokia Siemens Networks. I approve
the FFM TC charter. Pertti Lounamaa, primary representative,
pertti.lounamaa@pajatman.com, Pajat Management. I approve the FFM TC Charter.
Providing a standardized interface between workforce scheduling systems and
mobile field data collection systems will help SMEs like Pajat Management to
effectively address markets in collaboration with other vendors in ways that
it could not do alone. Sami Vaskuu, CTO, Newelo Oy, sami.vaskuu@newelo.com,
as the primary representative of Newelo, I approve the FFM TC Charter.
Johannes Lehtinen, Senior SW Architect, johannes.lehtinen@rossum.fi, Rossum
Oy. I approve the FFM TC Charter. Having supplied mobility related data
transfer services since 2000, Rossum Oy warmly welcomes all standardization
effort targeted at mobile work force management and field work reporting
interfaces. We are confident that the FFM TC Charter will produce a
high-quality outcome that will definitely boost the co-operation and
cross-fertilization of various solutions and services in the field force
management area. Juha Tiihonen, Project Manager of Product Data Management
Group, juha.tiihonen@tkk.fi, Aalto University, School of Science, Department
of Computer Science and Engineering. I approve the FFM TC charter. Convener:
Thinh Nguyenphu; thinh.nguyenphu@nsn.com; Nokia Siemens Networks Member
Section: None Contributions of Existing Technical Work: None Draft Frequently
Asked Questions (FAQ) document: TBD Proposed Working Title and Acronym for
the Specification(s): The base specification shall be named the Field Force
Management Integration Interface (FFMII) specification.