Ability to manage/submit charging data to employers for payroll/home charging rebate purposes

Charge Anytime use is reported in the app to show the rebate given. I have no idea if that is detailed enough though or fit for purpose. Just a wild thought.

From what I’ve heard, the data in the app apparently isn’t enough by itself for the HR/Payroll/Benefits/Perks use cases right now but the CSV dump is what most employers are after.

I had the idea while talking to insert Sekrit Mysterious OVO Employee earlier today and they felt it was one worthy of the suggestions box to at least keep tabs on it. This just feels like one of those features which could help make getting those submissions in just that little bit smoother if you have a company car for example. Bonnet already does it for public charging via Fleet functionality and everything is in one place now, so it feels like it could happen and that’s the test I tend to apply for these ideas - is it something that feels like a nice to have that makes sense based on the current offering.

​@Blastoise186 thanks for this - sounds like a good idea to me, and it’s one we’ll pass on internally. We’ll let you know if we hear anything further on this 😁.

Is there a standard format for CSV dumps then because that is a very primitive output type. I would have expecting an XML.

As someone who has just asked the "how do I get this data?" question in another thread, I would like to make the point that I would like to download this data as a private individual, not just give permission for an employer to do so, and CSV is fine. 

I have kept fuel consumption (or more accurately, fuel purchased and mileage) data on both car and motorbike for years. Nerdy but necessary for someone who likes numbers and spreadsheets! I can download my car's trip records which show distance and energy used (CSV) but I would like the supply-side data as well. CSV might sound simple-minded but it works for me. It's how I get my bank account records, and more recently solar irradiation data and estimated PV output, and it's simple to read into a spreadsheet. XML, I suppose, would be usable but only with rather more work on my part.

No worries - definitely feel free to suggest self-serve CSV dump as an idea too! I wanted to let you take the credit for that one as you came up with it.

The Charge Anytime team considers both valid as separate ideas/suggestions, so feel free to head into https://forum.ovoenergy.com/topic/new?type=idea and you can pop yours in directly.

I was thinking that you just pass on the XML to the employer not create it. XML is format agnostic whereas CSV requires agreement of the format between the sender, OVO, and the employer. It's just a comment on how data is normally exchanged these days.

Peter 

Peter - I think that there are two suggestions on the table to be looked at in parallel. One is the “proper” way to do things for, in effect, computer-to-computer data transfer where an XML schema and formal definitions are relevant. The other is a less formal “personal” use where CSV would be perfectly adequate, and I am assuming that it would be trivial to add column headings to avoid any misinterpretation. This is how the MyAudi app allows me to download journey data and I’m looking for an equivalent for the charging side.

However, now I look into it, it appears to be trivial to import XML directly into Excel anyway, so maybe it’s a non-issue. Once in Excel, I can do whatever manipulations I need, including transfer into an Access database if I get keen!

As a retiree, I am my own employer - and employee and unpaid dogsbody. No-one external to satisfy apart from my own obsession with looking at this kind of data.

​@Nealeb You sound like a resourceful person able to convert formats. We’ve been discussing this in our ‘Green Room’ and I was reminded that outputs from an api are usually in JSON rather than XML although I made the discovery that JSON was nearly called JSML, JavaScript Markup Language. Who knew?

You can get data from a variety of places including the App/Web page. As an example of a conversion I do for Agile Octopus settlement period prices I copy the day’s query into an Excel page and search for the data I need. The vertical format on the LSH is converted to the horizontal format at the top for my spreadsheet.

As you can see you can just take any relevant data (and not anything else) and format it as you wish. I think this is eminently doable and hope this goes forward.

Peter