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Virtimo Market Communication Service.
The first cooperation community for market communication.
Little effort, quick, cost-effective,
Highest stability, ideal scalability,
Integrated collaboration features.
All communication standards
For the energy industry right
Out of the box with the first
Cooperation community for
Market communication!
Dashboard
For large-scale energy suppliers, market communication consists of up to several hundred thousand processes per day for different departments, specialised process groups and internal IT systems. In order to easily and efficiently keep an overview of this multitude of processes, the MCS offers a central dashboard.
The Dashboard allows for monitoring all communication and interface processes on the basis of various flexibly combinable widgets. Some default widgets are already included; additional custom widgets can be individually configured. All widgets are interactive, so that mouseover will overlay additional information. Similarly, individual process statuses can be hidden (e.g. all processes with the status ‘ok’) to facilitate assessing processes of other statuses. The Dashboard contains the following functions, among others:
- Default feature for configuring widget parameters to adjust individual characteristics and their presentation on the Dashboards – e.g. for parameterisation of the depicted time period
- Extendability with specific widgets for various application cases (e.g. for nomination, GeLi, publication, …) for a faster prioritisation of necessary actions in case of service restrictions, overview of the connection status of individual market partners, etc.
- Drill-down option from the Dashboard for displaying process details: For example, a detailed Monitoring view can be drawn up right from the Dashboard which displays the erroneous processes of the day
MESSAGE MONITORING
A complete and easy-to-use monitoring tool for all processes, data flows and interfaces is an important utility for daily work, so that process-related deviations can quickly be identified and corrected.
The module Message Monitoring provides all relevant information for a complete surveillance of the entire market communication and all its details. These include:
- Information about the message (status, time period of reference [e.g. nomination period], IDs, message type and version, and more)
- Business partner involved (name, ID (e.g. EI-Code))
- Communication protocol used, including information about signature and encryption (e.g. AS2/AS4), hash algorithm, signature algorithm, time of receipt, …
- Feature for assigning several messages to one main message (e.g. CONTRL/APERAK), including the option to visualise additional status information
- Extendable detail view for displaying process steps, messages (in raw form and compiled into a web-based tree for easy navigation) as well as CONTRL/APERAK-assignment and display with errors extracted and a provision of documents
- Navigation and structuring via custom addition of further information and meta information (e.g. assigning labels and processing status)
Creation of complex saveable view, filter and sorting settings and high-performance full text search across all artefacts and processes - Process- and module-specific functions for sequence control and analysis
- Full text search
Data Management
The foundation for market communication is made up of various master data, such as contacts, used formats, protocols and information about signatures and encryption. This information is managed centrally in the Data Management module.
It contains the following features, among others:
- Overview and parameterisable search of the communication and partner master data to quickly find all relevant information
- Web-based logging and maintenance of all relevant information about market partners, communication protocols, and signature/encryption methods for all relevant communication protocols:
- ENTSOG AS4 V2 and V3
- Email including signature and encryption according to communication guidelines
- AS2 including signature and encryption according to communication guidelines
- Management of partner certificates and related additional options (CA, certificate ID, URL for retrieving the CA revocation list)
- Management of multiple certificates in order to map overlapping validities
- Add-on option for automated monitoring of the certificate revocation list according to legal requirements, including an alert feature for certificate violations
- Versioned storage of all information (including alteration date and time stamp)
- Comparison between versions to quickly find changes, e.g. for the quick identification of changed parameters since the last revision in case of an error
- In-memory data cache for high-performance data access from inubit workflows
Collaboration
A market communication system does not only provide an interface to the external market, but also one between many internal departments and teams.
In order to enable an efficient collaboration on error cases and the knowledge documentation, the MCS offers Collaboration features which open up the following possibilities:
- Easy traceability: Documentation of coordination and analysis results (e.g. in the event of partner disruptions) for other colleagues/teams/shifts and for downstream analysis (e.g. by auditors)
- Secure processing: Creating tasks for colleagues (e.g. for the documentation of changes to be made in partner master data)
- Improved structuring: Associated cases (e.g. malfunctions with a shared cause) can be identified accordingly by assigning labels
- Improved information distribution: News feed for needs-based information of all participants about current events on the Dashboard
- Increase in processing efficiency and reduction of cost: Direct integration with monitoring and with master data storage (no change to external systems necessary)
Communication Templates
The past years have seen a fundamental change in the energy industry’s market communication. Until a few years ago, communication was mostly organised bilaterally; all sides adhering to standards was a rare occurrence. With the regulatory requirements of the various authorities/associations and the introduction of the Interoperability Network Code (ENTSOG/ENTSOE) and the technical communication guidelines (BNetzA), a fundamental change was made. In contrast to the past, a major portion of market communication is now standardised.
Based on this, Virtimo offers communication templates: Standardised processes for implementing the given communication requirements. The processing templates include the following features:
- The requirements of the “Regulations for the transmission route” of the German Federal Network Agency are supported both for delivery and reception. This protocol implementation also includes signature and signature verification, encryption and decryption, and compression and decompression in accordance with legal requirements. All currently valid protocol and algorithm requirements are supported.
- Technical format check: The received message (EDI or XML) is checked structurally and the corresponding service messages (CONTRL/APERAK/ACKNOW) are created and sent
- Incoming service messages are assigned to the original messages in monitoring, whose status is updated accordingly (e.g. with the note negative CONTRL)
- Received service messages are analyzed, assigned and logged in monitoring
- Content format check: After a positive technical examination, the messages can be checked according to the relevant use cases (for example, based on examination identifiers)
Documentation
Market communication systems represent the central interface to the external market and all respective internal systems on the basis of one-on-one communication requirements. Accordingly, they bundle the processing of the entire data exchange, which can often include several hundred different application cases in larger companies.
With the Documentation module, the MCS offers a flexible option for web-based documentation of the relevant information (e.g. business motivation, IT involved, systems, departments in charge, etc.). This information can be linked with the monitoring, for example in order to be directly available to the support team in the context of the affected workflow in case of a malfunction.
We provide answers.
Your contact at Virtimo.
Dirk Breitkreuz
Board Member
Virtimo AG