The TFNRegistry™ Customer Record Administration (CRA) function includes the input validation, processing, and management of Toll-Free Numbers. A Customer Record (CAD) (also known as a CR) contains the customer and call routing information needed to implement TFNRegistry for a particular Toll-Free Number (TFN). A single TFN might have several CRs associated with it; each record defines service, which will take effect at a unique date and time.
Customer Record Types: The TFNRegistry maintains 3 types of CRs:
- Customer Records (CRs): Which pertains to a single TFN and contain all of the customer’s administrative data and call routing information. Each regular CR in the TFNRegistry is therefore uniquely identified by the combination of its TFN and Effective Date and Time.
- Pointer Records (PRs): Which pertain to a specific TFN, and contain some number-specific administrative information, but point to a separate Template Record (TAD) (also known as a TR). The referenced Template Record contains the detailed service information common to multiple TFNs. Like the regular CR, each Pointer Record (PAD) (also known as a PR) is uniquely identified by the combination of its TFN and Effective Date and Time. But it does not contain all the detailed parameters in a regular CR. It uses a pointer parameter, the Template Name, to point to the corresponding TAD for the remaining information.
- Template Records (TRs): Which are uniquely identified by a Template Name, instead of a TFN, and an Effective Date and Time, and which contain call routing information that can be used (referenced) by multiple PADs for their respective TFNs.
The following figure summarizes the types of records administered by the TFNRegistry and their contained component data portions.
PRs and TRs are used to support scenarios in which some Responsible Organizations (Resp Orgs) commonly re-use the same Areas of Service (AOS) and carrier-selection criteria for large collections or classes of Toll-Free Subscribers and their respective TFNs. The approach is intended to reduce the amount of redundant CRs that would otherwise be administered and thereby reduce the data storage requirements in the TFNRegistry and at the Service Control Points (SCPs). (Not all SCPs support TRs, however, therefore requiring the TFNRegistry to treat such CRs as regular CRs instead of PRs and TRs when data are transmitted to those SCPs.) The SCP implementations of TRs are currently limited to support of TFN “turnaround routing” only, without final routing to POTS destination numbers. The TFNRegistry must (at least initially) assume this network limitation. TRs in the TFNRegistry shall therefore support only the turnaround routing case.
This section provides instructions and illustrations for how a user can perform all the functions related to CRs. The Customer Record Administration menu includes pages that provide the following menu items:
- Customer Record (CAD)
- Customer Record Audit/Resend (CRA/CRR)
- Customer Record Selection (REC)
- High Priority Updates (HPU)
- Immediate Validation Results (IVR)
- Mass Carrier Change Information (CCI)
- Pointer Record (PAD)
- Template Allocation Limit (TAL)
- Template Record (TAD)
- Template Record List (TRL)
- Template Record Selection (TEC)
Each of these pages and functions are described in sub chapters of this chapter. From the TFNRegistry’s Landing page or any page, select the Menu icon and then the “Customer Record Administration” menu item to see the list of sub-menu items to quickly navigate to the desired page.
Disclaimer: Any images in this article are intended to be used as a guide for educational purposes only and they may differ slightly from the Production Environment.
Learn more about this topic in the following video!
Disclaimer: This video is intended to be used as a guide for educational purposes only. Pages shown in the video may differ slightly from the Production Environment.