We are working on a reseller API soon which has been one of our top requested features.
For those interested in the API, please post what functions you'd like to see in it in this thread.
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We are working on a reseller API soon which has been one of our top requested features.
For those interested in the API, please post what functions you'd like to see in it in this thread.
How about being able to choose certain international countries to include in a bundle for customers that pay a flat rate for international calls.
I beta tested and would not be planning to have a Reseller Plan, but I will watch this with great interest.
The key thing would be to have ways to access features and data that exists now.
Stats based on a client number for instance.
Or are you first targeting tools to make a Sale, versus letting a Reseller craft their own whole version of vPanel?
It's relatively open. Basically the goal of the API is for people to be able to integrate various things into other software or write their own stuff whether it's for order taking, number ordering, writing their own billing system, etc.
We just need to know what functionality you guys would like to see.
It seems like everyone always wants an API but no one can tell us what they want it for so we know what capabilities to put into it :)
IMHO
I bet most potential Resellers are not API designers, but if you have an API, most web designers
could figure out how to integrate it into their website.
It would be great is the customer had the ability to chose the phone number they wanted along with any special features like fax service. Also the ability to automatically suspended and
unsuspended a account.
How about the ability for customers to order virtual numbers or toll free numbers, etc... from within their own control panel? The reseller would of course receive notification of the orders, then bill the customer accordingly.
I definitely think a reseller API will be great to have, especially if it is written to connect to pre-existing billing solutions like WHMCS. Otherwise, I'm afraid there might be a limited number of resellers who will be able to benefit from it.
My own personal development priority is a better account summary page, where resellers could review the usage and limits for all of their accounts without having to open accounts one at a time.
We currently have to devote an hour or more to do periodic, manual account reviews. But with a good summary page, we could do it in a minute or less.
You can do that by clicking "billing" - "usage"
Hi Wingsohot.
Unfortunately, the Usage report only shows account numbers and total costs.
It doesn't tell us anything about what the limits are for each account.
There are also no links that allow us to open an account from that page.
If we just want to find out who's account is who's, we've got to manually cross reference the account number.
Just adding a bit more info to that report page would save (me at least) a ton of time and effort.
Resellers with 100+ accounts need better reports to help us get things done.
Tim,
You’re probably wondering the reason for the underwhelming response to your announcement. It’s because we’ve waited so long for an API, that we’ve found other ways to accomplish what we need. It’s great that you’re willing to respond to our needs and work on solutions now. My advice is to hold off on the API and start with the other things we resellers have been asking for and that will take you much less time to implement. Here’s the list, in no particular order:
- Add new phone numbers to the national Caller ID database.
- Provide our customers the ability to set the outbound Caller ID like on voipo.com
- Notify us by email when you change the rate to a particular country. Right now we have no practical way of knowing when a rate has changed and that causes problems with our customers.
- Enable aliasing capabilities for SIP so we can give our clients sip.mycompany.com instead of sip.voipwelcome.com which is a dead giveaway.
- Offer optional support to our customers for which you would charge us $1 per month per customer, which is what your competitors offer resellers.
- Notify us by email when a customer is getting close to the limit we set and again when he has reached the limit.
- When you introduce the new panel, do not deprecate the current one so as not to disrupt what we already have in place.
Best,
AW
Anywho, those are some great suggestions. I dig all of them.
I second the request for being able to set a warning threshold and receiving emails to reseller. That would reduce the need to open each account periodically to monitor usage, which takes forever once you have more than a few accounts.
Also, being able to use a server alias would really help. Currently, we only use voipo for certain types of customers because of this. We have to use a different provider for our own byod customers, since that provider lets us use an A Record alias to their server IP. If they ever change their IP, we could just change our A Record in a couple of seconds.
FYI to Anywho and others, you can use the voipwelcome IP address, which hides the link to voipo somewhat. We've tried that and it seems to work fine. But there is a risk that voipo will change the IP address, which would require reprogramming a lot of devices one at a time.
Not sure why an A Record doesn't work on voipo, but it's something that that other providers have addressed.
Glad you like my suggestions. Now let's keep our fingers crossed and hope Voipo implements them real soon.
I know that we have orderforms, but I would really love to have the account creating and number selection process integrated into my own checkout.
That way, when a customer completed the checkout, they could choose their number on my site and it would automatically setup their account with that number.
Basically all I'm requesting for the API is orderform functionality but also with the option to add more than 1 number. (ex. customer can choose and sign up for both toll-free number and a fax number at the same time).
That would really be great. Currently I have to email them the orderform, they have to fill out all the customer information that the entered during checkout again, and then there's no way for them to choose a second number for their account. I appreciate the orderforms very much but at the same time it is tedious and quite a mess.
I've been waiting what seems like forever for this API and apparently everyone has asked but no one has suggested (as was asked of us). I've been a reseller since the day the program was made available (or very close to it) but have stopped using Voipo since there is no API in place for resellers. Our business model kind of depends on us having API access.
Around 6 months ago I created a API that worked great actually, basically it's a script that acts like a human by accessing the CP and places the order, pulls minute usage information, retrieves a list of available numbers, etc. Although we never had any issues the primary problem to this approach is it's not stable. The moment something changes in the Voipo control panel (like the DID supplier and/or URL) our entire script stops working.
Long story short, the two main items the reseller program is missing are:
1. Custom SIP addresses (sip.mycompany.com). This I know is really simple for VoipO to make happen, please just get it done.
2. An API. What tools would I like to see on the API?
- Number Inventory - (Get a list of DID's available in a specified city / state.)
- e911 - (The ability to update the e911 address on the account)
- Purchase (Purchase a DID and create a new account with the ability to set the usage limits, needs to return a account ID for future reference)
- Usage - The ability to view the minute usage (and optionally the call detail) on a specific account ID.
- Status Toggle - (The ability to toggle the status of a account between active/suspended)
- Features - (The ability to enable/disable specific features [fax,teleblock,simulring,etc])
- Connections - Get a list of current registered devices.
Functions that can wait but would be great now:
- Cancel DID
- Cancel Account
- Set usage limits for domestic and international usage (outside of original Purchase)
It would be best if the API was built on REST instead of SOAP, primarily because SOAP seems to create many more support request from newbies who don't know it too well.
Im going to bump the old thread here... Tim, I know of a company that is now certified to program for WHMCS for modules... we really need to get a provisioning module that will create/suspend/terminate accounts bonus would be tracking usage.
Where are we with an API?
+1Quote:
Originally Posted by uf_shane
We also need provisioning info for ATA that our customers want to use, TOO!
Tim
What's going on with this its almost 3 years now!
This is on our "someday" list, but not something actively in development.Quote:
Originally Posted by chevyman
The last time we were working on an API, we had virtually 0 interest. Many resellers said they wanted it, but then when it was available for testing, virtually none actually used it or provided any feedback so development on it was dropped due to lack of interest.
We have a list of proposed API functions recent sent to us by uf_shane that we're going to review soon to see how easy they would be to implement in a basic API, but that's something our developers will have to review and then we look at the cost/time related to dev and compare it with demand to see if we can fit it in.
If you'd like to put together a proposed list of functionality you'd like to see, feel free to send it over to me at tim @ voipo.com and I can discuss with our developers to see how hard it would be to implement and get a feel for the time needed if we were to do it.
We have to balance keeping service reliable and stable (behind the scenes projects) with new development and we have a huge dev backlog so we have to really look at each potential dev item carefully to determine what we can/can't do when looking at the big picture. We just don't want to invest resources into developing something that doesn't get used and taking away those resources from projects related to things that would get used.
When was this?Quote:
Originally Posted by VOIPoTim
When i search the forum for API i get no results.
can you add something for SMS i get complaints about how inconvenient it is to use.
If you have specific feedback, send it to us at reseller@voipo.com and we'll consider and add to possible dev list. The key is to be specific though...like what you are asking for in terms of SMS. Just e-mail feedback/requests like that and we can get it added to our dev request list.Quote:
Originally Posted by chevyman
I sent a pretty extensive set to Tim guys... now the purpose was for integration into WHMCS one of the most popular hosting billing systems so we know that if the provision module is made available then there will be plenty of hosting companies that will take advantage of the system... its just a matter of getting support behind it, so lets tell them how much it would mean to us if we could automate provisioning, suspending and managing our customers through a single billing system.
A whmcs integration module would be great.
Here's a basic feature set wish list that comes readily to mind...
- Number Browsing for non-customers, w/ Ordering for registered customers
- Create/modify various account types (voice, fax, forwarding, and sub accounts) with domestic and int'l limit options
- Warning for accounts approaching domestic or int'l limits
- Suspend accounts for past due
- Reinstate accounts when paid in full
This would be awesome too, but less of a priority...
- Control Panel (cp.voipwelcome) integration into whmcs so that resellers wouldn't have to use voipwelcome site anymore