TBC Tool — User Guide

The TBC tool creates TBC chargers in Exploren, this is how we make chargers on Exploren and is the first step of onboarding a new charger.

It lives in the Explortal at tooling.exploren.com.au.

How to use it

 Remember one charger card = one physical charger. A dual-port charger is one card with two station IDs, not two cards.

1. Enter the sales order number — must start with SO or SQ. The tool looks it up in Business Central for the Sales Quote, Order, or the Sales Invoice associated to the SO. If found, fills in the customer name and pre-fills one charger card per hardware line item on the order (model, variant or phases, and power presets). It also counts the Exploren subscription line items (OC-EXP-* SKUs) so you can cross-check quantities.
2. Select the instance — Australia or New Zealand. This determines which Exploren operator, commissioning location and commissioning partner the chargers are created under.
3. Complete each charger card:
   • Serial number — checked against Exploren; rejected if a charger with that serial already exists.
   • Station IDs — one or more, separated by spaces or commas. Each station ID becomes one connector (EVSE) on the charger. Each is checked against Exploren and rejected if it already exists.
   • Model — picking a model sets AC/DC. For AC models, choosing the phases auto-fills power and current; for DC models you pick a variant instead.
   • Max power (kW) and max current (A) — pre-filled by the model/phase selection but editable. Power is entered in kW and converted to watts automatically.
4. Submit. Every field is re-validated before anything is created. On success you'll see the list of created chargers with their Exploren IDs.

Validation runs as you leave each field, so errors (duplicate serial, existing station ID, unknown sales order) show up before you submit.

What is created:

Three levels of resources are created for each charger card, mirroring how Exploren models a charger: the charge point (the physical unit), its EVSEs (one per station ID / port), and one connector (plug) on each EVSE.

1. Charge point — one per charger card

Field	Value
Name	[TBC] [SO number] Customer - Station IDs - Model
Type / status	Private, enabled
Protocol	OCPP 1.6
Network ID & external ID	The serial number you entered (this is what the physical charger connects with)
Location	Commissioning location — AU: 1120, NZ: 2818
Partner / contract	Commissioning partner — AU: 777 (contract 754), NZ: 1854 (contract 2027)
Operator	AU: 1, NZ: 2 (from the instance selection)
Auto-start without authorisation	Off
OCPP security profile	0 (unauthenticated) by default
Tags	The sales order number and TBC

2. EVSEs — one per station ID on the card

Each station ID becomes one EVSE on the charge point, enabled, with:

• The station ID as its physical reference.
• An EVSE number assigned in order within the charger (1, 2, …) — this must match the physical port numbering on the unit.
• The current type (AC or DC, set by the model).
• The power options: max power, max current, voltage and phases. Single Phase = 220-240v (ampeco requires range), Three Phase = 400v.

3. Connectors — one per EVSE

Each EVSE gets a single connector, with the plug type set automatically from the charger's current type:

• AC chargers → Type 2, Socket 
• DC chargers → CCS2, Cable

The tool also adds:

• A pinned note on the charge point recording the sales order, customer, instance, serial, station IDs, security profile, creation time and your name.
• A note on each EVSE with its power settings.
• A Zendesk ticket, assigned to the commissioning team (Bryan), listing the sales order number and the station IDs, with you named as the requester. You do not need to raise a ticket yourself.

If something goes wrong

• Creation fails part-way: chargers are created one at a time, so anything created before the error already exists in Exploren. The error message lists what was created. Report the error to dev team.
• "Creating Zendesk ticket failed": the chargers were created successfully — only the ticket failed. Tell Bryan directly that the chargers are ready, and tell dev team about this error with when it occurred and screenshot of the error.
• Sales order not found / Business Central unreachable: check the SO/SQ number is correct and try again. Business Central itself may be down, try again later.

Things to keep in mind

• TBC chargers are not customer ready. Before a charger can go live it must go through the On boarding Tool/Form and Integration Form.