Delegations between parties
How delegations work
Delegation between parties mean that the delegating party gives another party, the delegated party, the rights to act on its behalf in Datahub. The delegated party is usually a service provider that would not otherwise have the right to act in Datahub.
Delegations issued by parties to each other allow the service providers for suppliers and DSOs to have a direct connection with Datahub. These service providers must have an agreement with Datahub, after which they receive credentials for the Datahub interfaces.
The following table presents examples of the most common purposes for delegations between parties.
No. # | Purpose of the delegation | Delegated Datahub party | Validity of the delegation | Rights provided by the delegation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2c | A separate billing service provider handles the supplier’s billing. | Third party | Period specified by the supplier | Customer information, metering data, agreement information and product data retrieval |
3c | A metering data collector for the DSO delivers metering data directly to Datahub. | Third party | Period specified by the DSO | Delivery and retrieval of metering data |
3d | A service provider handles the management of the DSO’s balance errors. | Third party | Period specified by the DSO | Retrieval of billing information for balance errors |
3e | A separate billing service provider handles the DSO’s billing. | Third party | Period specified by the DSO | Customer information, metering data, agreement information and product data retrieval |
Parties can issue each other delegations for specific datasets and/or specific events. Events reported to Datahub can be delegated to multiple parties, but notifications sent from Datahub can only be delegated to one party. If a supplier or DSO has outsourced an operation to a service provider, the party uses a delegation to inform Datahub of which party is entitled to which information (for example, customer information and accounting point data and their retrieval) and to initiate which event (for example, metering data delivery). The delegated party receives rights to Datahub information and processes (such as metering data delivery) according to the details of the delegation. The market parties report the necessary delegation requirements to the Datahub operator, which will then update these in Datahub. Market parties can check their delegation information in the Datahub CMS user interface.
If a party has given a delegation to another party to perform an information-request-type event on its behalf, both the delegating and delegated parties can perform the information request as if they were the delegating party. If the reporting of metering data has been delegated to another party, the delegating party can request a copy of the message sent by the delegated party.
A party can delegate the processing of a specific task to any other Datahub party with which it has an agreement. Thus, a delegation can be issued to another supplier, DSO or third party, in which case each party can function in several different roles in Datahub. Delegations between parties cannot be transferred forward to a third party. A delegated party cannot delegate the same information or function it itself has been delegated with to another party. An authorization to customer information received from a customer can also not be delegated to another party. Events related to party information (DH-9XX) and update requests to customer or accounting point information (DH-112, DH-113 and DH-124) cannot be delegated to another party.
A supplier or a DSO can give another party (supplier, DSO or third party) the right to report events to or retrieve notifications from Datahub on their behalf. An inbound delegation gives a party the right to start a process (e.g., DH-311-1 Notification of a new agreement) on behalf of the delegating party. An outbound delegation means that a message normally received by the delegating party is forwarded to the delegated party instead (e.g., DH-111-2 Forwarding customer information to DSO).
In delegations, the authorization to market data is based on the rights of the delegating party. More precisely, Datahub checks the rights according to the juridical sender indicated in the transaction (see Inbound delegation below).
Inbound and outbound delegations can be applied separately to different parties, regardless of the market event. In other words, the initiating transaction message and the forwarded messages of the same market event can be assigned to different parties (in a process where the notifying party also receives forwarded messages).
Each inbound/outbound delegation between two parties is specified in Datahub via the CMS user interface. Only the Datahub operator can do this. The operator adds a delegation based on a service request created by the delegating party in the Datahub support portal. Delegations are created individually in Datahub at the message level, and the parties can search and view (but not update) delegations via the user interface.
Delegations apply to both synchronous and asynchronous events.
Inbound delegation
An inbound delegation of a market process gives the delegated party the right to send B2B messages to Datahub on behalf of the delegating party. The delegating party can issue this right to several different parties per market event.
In a transaction based on a delegation, the delegated party sends a message to Datahub. In this message, the physical sender field of the message must contain the delegated party’s identifier, and the juridical sender field must contain the delegating party’s identifier. The process role in the message is set according to the juridical party (e.g., in DH-311 transactions, the process role is ‘DDQ’, i.e. supplier, and not ‘THP’, i.e., third party).
In the metering data report event (DH-211), the delegating party can also indicate that it wants a copy (CC) of the forwarded message. In this case, the forwarded message also appears in the delegating party’s message queue.
Outbound delegation
An outbound delegation defines which forwarded messages are sent to the delegated party instead of the delegating party.
In delegated outbound messages, the physical recipient field contains the delegated party’s identifier, and the juridical recipient field contains the delegating party’s identifier. The process role in the message corresponds to the role of the juridical recipient according to the transaction definition.
Unlike inbound delegations, there can only be one delegated party for each outbound message to ensure successful delivery of data. An outbound delegation is only applicable to events that include forwarded messages. Synchronous reply messages are always sent to the physical sender of the message and therefore do not require outbound delegation.
The copy option (CC) of outbound messages is currently not specified for any of the current market transactions and is therefore not applicable for the time being.
In outbound delegation, all messages related to the same process (there can be several notifications) are assigned to one organization.
General rules for delegations
The following principles apply to delegation of processes (market events):
Inbound or outbound events/messages where the market/process role is ‘Third party’ cannot be delegated.
Metering, imbalance settlement, product and invoice row data requests can be delegated, and the retrieved data is always returned to the physical sender who initiated the transaction.
Delegation information
The following information must be given in Datahub for each individual delegation:
The start date of the delegation
Delegating party
Delegated party
Direction (inbound/outbound)
Event to be assigned
Copy to the delegating party
Only possible for the DH-211 event
Delegation description (optional)
The information listed above must be entered in the service request. Instructions can be found in the Datahub Services portal.