World-class hotels and restaurants always strive to exceed their guests’ expectations, from impeccable dining to flawless service. As electrical vehicles become more prominent, hotels are looking to add EV charging stations to their properties, many of which will be managed by their valet personnel.
When Schneider Electric started deploying charging stations to hotels and other properties, they rapidly identified the need for valet attendants to have real-time information on cars being charged and when charging was complete. They also needed a tool to better manage the queue of cars that required charging.
That’s when Schneider Electric approached AnyPresence to build a mobile app on top of the AnyPresence MBaaS Platform. It was critical to build an intuitive user experience to drive usage by valet attendants. It was also important to help hotels manage multiple locations while ensuring valet attendants could only see data relevant to their respective location.
The result was a native iPad app that pulled data from multiple source systems. The app connects to:
- A ChargePoint SOAP-based API used by the physical EV station to manage charging cars
- A PostGRES relational database that was designed and developed to manage reservations, driver information, and more.
The data coming from the Chargepoint API is mapped to the reservation database. This allows linking of a reservation to its charging station, providing information on when a car is being charged and when the charge is complete.
At a high level, this is how it works.
- Guest John leaves his car and provides his name and his cell phone number to the valet attendant who enters this information through the iPad app.
- When a charging station becomes available, the valet attendant receives a notification and brings the next car in the queue to the charging station. When John’s car is ready to be charged, the valet attendant plugs the car to the EV charging station, and John receives a text message that his car has started charging.
- A few hours later, John receives another message when the car is done charging. The valet attendant also receives a notification in the app to inform him that he can bring the next car in queue to the charging station.
Contact us to start the conversation about your mobile app needs and how AnyPresence MBaaS platform can help drive your mobile app effort.