An OCN Service Provider develops and provides OCN services that can be used by CPOs, eMSPs and other parties to improve their charging services - such as contracting, billing, payment systems etc.
The OCN Service is - similar to any other OCPI role - an OCN Party. We make this distinction from other "Services" that might only require customers to send OCPI messages (including custom OCPI modules) directly.
To offer your OCN Service via the OCN Service Interface, make sure the following prerequisites are met:
Now you are ready to publish your OCN Service on the OCN Registry.
An OCN Service is an OCPI party that requires additional permissions from their customers. Such permissions could include the forwarding of session or charge detail record data, for example in a payment service.
Once a customer/user has agreed to the Service's permissions, the OCN Node tied to the customer will automate any such required permissions, lessening the cost of integration with a service.
To be granted the aforementioned permissions, you must then list your OCN Service and the permissions required in a separate smart contract, entitled "Permissions". Thereafter, a user can make their agreement explicit in the same smart contract. Learn more on how to list your OCN Service on our OCN Registry Repository.
You can find a full list of currently implemented OCN Permissions here.
The OCN Service Interface enables third-party services (such as billing, settlement, location data enrichment) to offer their products to the OCPI community by accessing communication between two OCPI parties on the Open Charging Network without the need for endless API development work.
This is done using OCN Permissions, and requires no additional integration work to be done by the OCPI parties.
It reduces the cost for integration work beyond the EV roaming use-case, helping everyone involved climbing the API mountain of Electric Vehicle charging.
We consider this as crucial to a seamless mass-consumer experience and an efficient EV charging value-chain.
Learn how to connect your OCN Service to the OCN and to define what OCPI-based information your service needs from OCN Parties / Service Users (OCN Permissions). Get started here.
Learn how to sign up for an OCN Service by agreeing to OCN Permissions. Get started here.
To get started with the OCN Service Interface and to see how the above given example works in action, see our OCN Demo. It mocks a full set-up of an Open Charging Network with two OCN Nodes, two CPOs, one eMSP and one billing service and allows developers to run through the scenario outlined in this article. Get started here.
If an OCN user wants to make use a particular OCN Service, it has to agree on to the Service's permissions. The OCN Node tied to the customer will automate any such required permissions, lessening the cost of integration with a service
To make use of an OCN OCN Service via the OCN Service Interface, make sure the following pre-requisites are met
Your preferred OCN Service is connected to the OCN
You are now ready to give the OCN Service its required permissions.
Learn more about how to do that on our OCN Registry repository.