or a voice line, the order is broken down into a series of suborders to handle the various components of the order, for example, telephone number assignment, circuit assignment, and line card features. Workflow Management Workflow management is the process by which these tasks are tracked and managed. A workflow manager, generally a component of an order management OSS, places tasks that require human attention to appropriate work queues that are assigned to different workgroups - whose job it is to perform certain steps in the overall process. For example, an order for a new telephone line would require a technician to visit the customer site to perform an installation. The workflow manager would then assign an installation task to the technician's workgroup. The Ultimate Guide to Building and Delivering OSS/BSS In an integrated environment, many tasks can be completed automatically, from simple telephone number reservation to activation of serving network equipment, depending on the service in question and the IIC's level of automation. An order management system should provide robust application program interfaces (APIs) that allow it to communicate with surrounding systems, such as inventory and billing applications. As tasks are completed, the workflow manager must continually monitor the overall order status. Tasks are assigned expected completion timeframes based on how long it typically takes to complete a given task. If a timeframe elapses and the customer desired due-date for order fulfilment might not be met without immediate intervention, the workflow manager will trigger a pre- defined action. This action might be to notify a manager that the order is in jeopardy, thus escalating the task in question. A user can then step in to determine why the task is not complete, figure out how to fix the problem, or to re-prioritize pending tasks around the one in jeopardy. Robust order management systems often have jeopardy management routines, SO that business rules can be defined to re-route orders, reassign 