Brendon McLoughlin's Blog

The following is in reply to:

http://forum.skype.com/index.php?showtopic=392781

For what it is worth, here's my understanding having found myself in a similar position at the start of today.

Re: (1) - Can we assign 'Online Numbers' (The new VoIP / Geonumbers) to members (pre-existing Skype named accounts) which have not been created using the 'Business Control Panel->Add Members->Create Business Accounts' option.

Short Answer: Not currently ( see http://heartbeat.skype.com/ for more details ) ... it would appear that only NEW! members currently can be assigned the new online numbers using the 'Business Control Panel' AFTER! you have created them using the option: 'Business Control Panel->Add Members->Create Business Accounts'

I have read many posts, which by in large are more confusing the issue, than being of any real help, because the bottom line appears to be:

Open a new Business Account = Open new business account members to match (if you want it to work correctly). Later lets look at the workaround I employed.

Re: (2) "Is this a bug..."
It would, by in large appear to be the case, that perhaps when the system was designed / deployed, it may not have been 100% compatible with pre-existing (old style) Skype accounts and therefore will not allow them to be migrated correctly into a new 'Business Account' using the 'Business Control Panel' and the process of trying to assign a 'Online Number' to these old Skype accounts fails as a result.

Re: (3) "Shedding some light on this ..."
As a person who by in large allowed 'Skype' to pass me by, I ventured the VoIP route (with good success). Looking at the Skype carry-on ... I would have to say …

///////////// Topic Restarts Here for Skype Forum Readers ///////////

1. A lot of the problem appears to me, to perhaps be some very, very, poor migration planning and pre-deployment testing in this area of VoIP integration.

I would go as far as to say, I believe some people are in for a large number of surprises in relation to call charges for VoIP to VoIP / Skype to VoIP.

In my testing of Calls to VoIP, Geonumbers or SIP uri’s from Skype, all those terminated outside of the Skype network proved to have call charges related to them and were NOT! free as I would have normally expected and I would normally enjoy from my standard VoIP providers.

2. The scale of frustration which can be witnessed when surfing the customer feedback (and that is being very polite about these comments) on the forums and the wider web is in my view on a monstrous scale.

This has a life of its own at this point, I believe, it is because of what I would call a very, very, poor perception of technical support recourses, customer notices, replies (or lack of them) to cry’s for help from business customers. The lack of satisfactory levels of response, feedback, resolve times and monitoring of the scale of the problem appears to be amazing. This appears to show up again and again in postings across the web from the Skype forums through tweets and re-tweets on Tweeter down to little known customer blog’s like my own.

If even a small percentage of these are accurate and hold water, it would mean that the problem would be on such a scale that would at the very least make someone like myself very nervous from a business operations view point about the entire service.

I think the motto, “Do not put all your eggs in one basket”, can be heard ringing in most of these poor business customers ears.

3. “The customer is always …. AAAAaaaa?” …, 'End-Users' have not at all helped in general terms with this problem, the bombardment of postings without real research and searching for solutions is understandable yet ill founded.

While this view will not be popular, it is my personal view that, some (all be it in small amounts) of the fault falls within the grey area between the service provider and the customer.

In short, "If it ant broke don’t fix it ..." is perhaps the motto that springs to my mind.

If you spend a little time thinking about this type of a problem, it should come to you, that you need to stop trying to bend the system to suit you and instead, start from blank ... test, retest and perhaps then deploy (assuming your happy that is) the system of choice.

Having spent hours of my personal time reading postings on the forums and various independent web posts on the subject during my testing, in the finish, I throw all this research away and started from nothing. Once I started from scratch, it was simple and I was up and running in 10mins.

What was a major en-lighting moment for me, was figuring out that “New Account” = “New Members”, and so, I then worked around this principle ... and away we went ...


//////////////// <<< Assigning Numbers to Old Skype Accounts >>> ///////////////

4.

The workaround I choose to employ…

( try this at your own risk! … but it worked for me )

I found this ... once I stood back from the problem (so to speak). It is a workaround, but it works for me and perhaps no one else, but it has its advantages in my case.

Anyway, here's what I did.

a. Add a ‘New Member’ using the web based Skype 'Business Control Panel'

b. Assign the new ‘Online Number’ to the ‘New Member’ using the web based 'Business Control Panel'

c. Open a Desktop PC version of the 'Skype' software client and ‘Sign in’ using the ‘New Members’ details

d. Send a 'Contact Request' to the ‘Old Member’

e. ‘Sign Out’ and then ‘Sign In’ again using the ‘Old Members’ details and accept the ‘New Contact Request’.

f. ‘Sign out’ again and then ‘Sign In’ again using the ‘New Members’ details and ‘Forward all calls’ with zero rings to the ‘Old Members’ account using again just Skype Desktop PC client. Also see notes below.

Notes:
You need some credit allocated to the 'New Account' to allow inbound 'Call Forwarding', but I also discovered, that using the 'Business Control Panel', I could allocate my own values, in this case, I allocated €5 to the new account. I would imagine you could go down to allocating cents, if required, but I did not test this idea, so I cant confirm it. Keep in mind that calls between 'Skype' accounts ('Old' or 'New) are free!, which is what my work around is doing.

One real advantage with this approach is that, you can receive inbound calls on one account / line and make out going calls on another account / line!. In my testing, I have calls coming into my 'Linksys SPA942 - Line 1' via my 'Old Member' account, while I can make calls out using my 'New Member' account from my 'Skype' phone (Soon to be replace by my 'Linksys SPA942 - Line 2' when the beta testing has been completed by Skype).

And because my 'Old Member' account receives free Skype calls, I believe I dont need to top up / subscribe that account any longer, but it remains active and will carry on very happy allowing inbound calls for my newly assigned online number!.

… That’s it, … in my case it works excellent and I can forward the online numbers to other users using my 'Skype Forwarding' solution much simpler than using the 'Business Control Panel' to do the same task. Also, I am not sure, but I believe this my also help avoid the notorious ‘Blocked Account’ issue, which appears to be another subject of much Skype debate.

Ok, I know in my heart that someone is going to think ... ok, but that's a lot of work, if you had to do that for lots of new and old accounts and there were lots of new numbers to be assigned.

Yes and No, but now we are not trying the bend the system into shape, we are using the system of our choice as our alternative is, “you cant currently assign a new number to a pre-existing (old) member account”.

I think in my case, my workaround is much easier than waiting for a solution to find its weary way to you, with no idea of when or how long it may take for the solution to finally appear.

BTW:
Keep in mind also, there maybe another work around which is better suited to large scale deployments, i.e. perhaps some research into the ‘Skype API’ will yield some positive alternatives as I also believe as a developer, it cant be that difficult to code your way out of a large scale problem … I know … that’s easy for a developer to say … and I know, why didn’t Skype deal with this problem up front … hey … what can I say, But…

That’s just my 2 cents....

If you have any comments or questions about the above, please feel free to feed the birds or send me a message at:

http://twitter.com/GoMobileIE