Subscriptions and purchases

Overview

The Orders module enables an operator's CRM system to associate products with particular user accounts. This means that when an end user makes a purchase (buys one or more VOD items (an "impulse purchase") or subscribes to a bundle of products (which can include live channels and/or access to VOD content for a period of time)), the CRM system can call the Orders APIs to ensure that the correct entitlements are assigned to the user's account so they can access the content.

It provides an audit trail for both bundles and orders.

OpenTV Video Platform's Purchase service supports purchasing products through a client app. The Purchase service notifies the operator's CRM, which is responsible for handling authorisation and billing.

Concepts

• Product – anything that can be purchased. This can include live channels, VOD content, and capabilities (such as the ability to record in the cloud). All products are defined in Content and Product Manager (CPM), either via ingest or by calling the CPM Products APIs – see CPM commercial API documentation.
• Bundle – a collection of products. A bundle cannot contain other bundles.
• Subscription – the purchase of time-limited access to a product or bundle
• Impulse purchase – the purchase or rental of one or more VOD contents (as opposed to a subscription that includes access to a VOD catalogue)
• Bundle lifecycle – a bundle goes through a number of different states:
  • DRAFT – the bundle has been created, but not published.
  • LIVE – the bundle is live (published) and can be purchased by customers (depending on its availability dates).
  • ARCHIVED – the bundle has been archived and can no longer be purchased. It cannot be re-published – if you want to do this, you must create a new bundle.
• Order lifecycle – an order goes through a number of different states:
  • CREATED – the order has been created.
  • ACTIVE – the necessary entitlements have been created for the order, and the user can access the content. The order will remain in this state until it is cancelled (if it is a subscription) or the content's validity period ends (if it is an impulse purchase, for example, a movie rental).
  • FAILED – the order could not be created.
  • CANCELLED – the order has been cancelled (for example, the order was for a subscription that has been cancelled).
  • ARCHIVED – the order has been archived. This happens when the order has not been modified within a certain period. Once an order has been in this state for a certain time, it is purged (deleted).

Supported use cases

The supported use cases are broken down by who initiates them – the user (that is, a client app) or the operator.

This section includes the following user-initiated use cases:

The use cases that the operator can take part in are described in this section.