Implementing Signup
How to use the Signup Component
Our signup component is provided as a responsive site, either in a standalone, fully managed flow, or as an embed for whitelabeling.
Fully managed flow
If you’d like us to handle the entire process, we provide the signup flow with a minimal Axle-branded experience which includes your logo in the top right.
Whitelabeled flow
In whitelabeled mode, the signup flow is provided as a smart-phone sized panel on a white background.
It can be embedded using a standard iframe:
Passing information into the iFrame
In most cases it’s necessary to collect standard information such as name, address, and contact details.
If you already have these details for a given customer, you can pre-populate them by passing them as query parameters to the iframe:
If all the fields are filled for a particular page, it’s skipped entirely.
Valid Query Parameters
| Parameter | Notes |
|---|---|
| Contact | |
email | Required for any other params to be prefilled |
first_name | |
last_name | |
| Address | |
street_address | |
postcode | Formatted XXX XXX |
city | |
| Meter | |
mpan | The Meter Point Access Number (MPAN) for this customer’s smart meter. We will validate this matches the address the user enters. |
Backend integration
If you would like to pass user information but dislike doing so via the URL, we can integrate with a backend API to retrieve relevant information. In this case, we consume a token from the url:
And then hit your API with that token, in order to obtain relevant user information.
Success and failure URLs
After the flow has successfully completed, our default behaviour is to display our own, market-specific completion page, like this one for the Local Constraint Market (LCM):
If you prefer, we can also redirect users to a page of your choosing upon success or failure of the signup flow. In this way, we can return users to your site, whilst providing an event for you to update your record of user participation.
Emailing users
If Axle is in a user-facing role, we send a confirmation email once a user has completed the flow. If we’re instead handing the user back to you via a success URL, we suggest that you send an email to this effect.
Data storage
User data is stored in Axle’s database, hosted on Google Cloud, per our role as a Data Processor. In order to obtain smart meter access we pass the Meter Point Access Number (MPAN) to a partner who in turn validates it with the DCC in order to grant us access.
All data is backed up nightly, and TLS encryped at rest and in transit.