INTERACT is a complete mediation system that provides advanced capacity to collect, process, and deliver data, as well as to receive instructions, manage and execute commands in provisioning tasks.

Operating mainly online, it allows operations over different network elements it establishes communications with, in real time. It is also possible to carry out operations by lots, if so desired.

Additionally, it has a completely graphic management, operation, and monitoring system, based on a WEB-type model. Every access to INTERACT is done from a browser.

INTERACT is highly configurable and offers the user numerous options in defining protocols, formats, commands, etc., that ensure easy and quick integration of INTERACT to any environment containing different network elements of different brands and suppliers.  

Interact.Collection

The collecting part of INTERACT has been developed in multiple tiers, initially the following:

Input device drivers tier
Internal processing tier
Output device drivers tie 

It was created by developing objects in the most abstract way possible, so as to change the order, add or remove any of these components while the rest continued to work, as if no changes had taken place in the configuration of the product.

TCP/IP based drivers have been developed in Java (Telnet, streams, FTP and others), that is, they are part of the new objects designed.

Input device drivers tier (IDD).

Given the modular structure of the Interact system and that its design is based on components, the device drivers are the objects that read from the centrals and must then write on discs, if this is how the system is configured, or they must transfer the information collected to another object. This object is able to collect CDRs on line and in batches.

Internal processing tier (IPT)

When information collected reaches this tier, parameters will indicate how the CDRs must be processed, whether individually, by blocks, or by files.

Objects and components developed for the internal processing tier consider the following transformation stages of the IPDRs:

• Coding
• Filtering
• Formatting
• Enrichening
• Consolidating
• Storing

Output device drivers tier (ODD)

As outputs one may have CDRs, blocks or files, any of which will require a generic interface to select the protocol used to deliver information. It will be combined with time, amount, size, or shape parameters to be delivered, whichever is met first.

The IPDR may be treated as a CDR, since it is a generic object having features and values that allow it to be treated as an object.

Interact PROVISIONING

The provisioning system of Interact allows sending instructions to several origin systems (input streams) to manage subscribers / users / subscribers of the services that provide network elements.

The systems that generate provisioning instructions must issue a generic command or instruction that may be received by Interact in a format that the user may customize, based on individual commands or files.

Generic instructions are then received by a receiving module, which assigns an ID for each. At the same time, the receptor identifies if the instruction received was requested for online delayed execution or if it is a mass provisioning instruction (for a large number of subscribers).

If instructions were to be massive, they are sent to a process that schedules them for later execution, individually, for each subscriber specified in the instructions. This process will equally receive those instructions identified as being executable “offline”.

Generic instructions to be executed online are transferred to the module that allows identification of the network element to which the final command or instruction should be transferred, in order to carry out the specified provisioning task. This process is known as “dispatcher”.

It is common that a “generic instruction” affects several network elements, since certain data about a subscriber may be related to services managed by different equipment or devices (network elements), such as voice mail.

The process analyzes responses generated by the network element and creates a generic response, which is sent back to the dispatcher by means of similar mechanisms. The dispatcher validates the response obtained from the interpreter and determines if the generic instruction being executed needs any specific response, in order to continue with the remaining instructions addressed to other network elements.