Implementer Guide

Everything needed to deploy, configure and operate the bridge — not customer-facing

This tab is for whoever implements and operates the service. It documents internal endpoints, credentials, infrastructure and open confirmation points. The customer-facing documentation is the Documentation and API Reference tabs — keep internal details out of those.

What you are deploying

A single FastAPI service (plus a scheduled orchestrator job) that turns customer portfolio data into balanced schedules for the four German balancing groups n:lead operates:

Two API scopes

Scope	Key	Grants	Used by
external	EXTERNAL_API_KEY	Forecast and data-delivery endpoints only	The customer / their market-communication provider
process	PROCESS_API_KEY	Everything: /v1/process/*, /v1/console/*, plus the external endpoints	n:lead operations, the orchestrator timer, the console

Hand the customer only the external key. If no key is configured at all, the API is open — local development only, never deployed.

Order of work

1. Deploy the infrastructure

   One Bicep file provisions the container app, registry, logs, file share and the orchestrator job — see Azure deployment.

2. Configure the market setup

   Home control area, active areas, balancing-group EICs, Engrate credentials, trader sFTP — see Configuration. Most of it can be changed at runtime from the console.

3. Close the confirmation points

   Real EIC codes, the ECC counterparty, the trader’s CSV format — see Assumptions. Do not go live before these are settled.

4. Run it

   Start the service, watch the console, and understand how the pipeline decides what to re-run.

Where things live

Topic	Page
Environment variables and secrets	Configuration
Azure resources and bootstrap	Azure deployment
Internal pipeline and change detection	Pipeline
Live events, runtime config, start/stop	Console
Building forecasts from mirrored data	Forecast generation
Per-day artefacts and state	Audit trail
Code layout and testing strategy	Architecture
Open confirmation points	Assumptions
Internal endpoint reference	Internal API group in this tab