Open API

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 12

I'd like to see Vonage provide an open API that can be freely used by third parties to develop these services that are mentioned in this forum. I know that they have a "Developer's Center" (http://www.vonage.com/features.php?feature=developers) for the 'click2call' feature but that's not enough. There are tons of great features that probably aren't hard to implement if a knowledgeable person has access to the API.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 22, 2006 Posts: 3

I think what we really need is some webservices that allow us to interface into the CID and VM section off the website.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: May 02, 2006 Posts: 2

I know they'd never do this, but if Vonage lines would be available via some protocol spoken by asterix, it would be huge.

In a dream world, I could go to the web site and point my line either at my Vonage hardware, or at my asterix virtual pbx. It would be great if you could jump back and forth via commands isued on the web itnerface.

I can understand why they wouldn't want to do that. It would tend to commoditize their service, and make them more interchangeable with other providers. And it would probably take some chunks out of things like their soft phone business.

But they'd get a ton of new functionality out of it.

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 12

astrashe wrote:

I know they'd never do this, but if Vonage lines would be available via some protocol spoken by asterix, it would be huge.

In a dream world, I could go to the web site and point my line either at my Vonage hardware, or at my asterix virtual pbx. It would be great if you could jump back and forth via commands isued on the web itnerface.

I can understand why they wouldn't want to do that. It would tend to commoditize their service, and make them more interchangeable with other providers. And it would probably take some chunks out of things like their soft phone business.

But they'd get a ton of new functionality out of it.

I didn't realize that Vonage was not compatible w/ Astrisk. i just assumed it was. Surely there must be some compatibility there.

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 22, 2006 Posts: 3

I don't think it's incompatible. I am using the Softphone plan, and I can dial out via Asterisk using all Voip. For the normal lines, I am pretty sure you'll need to use a modem for that. At least that's what I have read.

Posts: 171 · Posted: Sat May 06, 2006 7:26 am Post subject:

I think an API would good. What types of hook would you like to see?

I'd like to see:

- ability to upload/download greetings for voicemail
- ability to download voicemail wav files (couldn't the files be mp3 and take up 1/3 the space?)
- ability to hook into account settings: call forwarding, 3-way, vmail, etc. This way you could have tools that do all sorts of things like turn on call forwarding at a certain time of the day (or night) then turn it back off -- sort of a DO NOT DISTURB setting.

I think some simple api hooks for their web interface would make this a piece of cake and create value for their users -- not to mention a cottage industry for 3rd party tools. Maybe that's what they're trying to avoid. Maybe Vonage wants to control the users interface completely so they'll never allow 3rd party tools to be developed.

So what other API hooks would you like to see...while we're dreaming...

Posts: 12 · Vonage Forum Associate Joined: Mar 02, 2006 Posts: 12

booma wrote:

I think an API would good. What types of hook would you like to see?
...

i'd like to have the ability to perform actions based on caller ID info, like have a special VM msg for callers w/ "Unknown" IDs or another msg for certain known numbers. My dentist is calling? Good, just drop 'im into VM and I'll get the msg that i have an appt tomorrow. My pesky neighbor calling to borrow more tools? Send 'im to his own msg.

I think the cottage industry idea would really enable Vonage to take off.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Sep 13, 2010 Posts: 1

Lighthouse wrote:

I'd like to see Vonage provide an open API that can be freely used by third parties to develop these services that are mentioned in this forum. I know that they have a "Developer's Center" (http://www.vonage.com/features.php?feature=developers) for the 'click2call' feature but that's not enough. There are tons of great features that probably aren't hard to implement if a knowledgeable person has access to the API.

I want to write a Windows Media Center plugin that pulls the minutes used, caller id, and possibly VM. The thing is there already appears to be two different apps, one a Yahoo gadget that pulls your minutes and a media center app that says it can pull your VM, play it and delete it:

Voice Mail:
http://www.mcezone.com/plugins.php (scroll to Optimum Voice MCE)

Caller ID:
http://widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/vonageer

Minutes left + # of VM:
http://widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/voipgauge

Winder if they are taking the raw HTML requests and figuring it out...wish they had open source code.

-Allan

Posts: 171 · Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2010 6:31 pm Post subject:

Well since my post dates back to 2006, and now that I've dumped Vonage, my guess is that an API is not in their future...near or far.

Just for the record, I dropped Vonage because the deal through Comcast was overwhelming less expensive. I used Vonage for more than 4 years and had no problems at all!