Reseller API

[GreenLantern]

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.

[AnyWho]

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

[GreenLantern]

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.

[AnyWho]

Glad you like my suggestions. Now let's keep our fingers crossed and hope Voipo implements them real soon.

[tollfreeservice]

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.

[teamme]

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.