Skyetel tenant functionality
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https://skyetel.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SUG/pages/664141827/Tenants+Invite+Only+Alpha
@Skyetel said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
@JaredBusch said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
@Skyetel said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
@JaredBusch said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
@Skyetel said in I guess Skyetel doesn't want business:
The ideal situation is to have the end user create their own account and have the IT team administer it. You don't have to share an account - you can create a new account for the IT Administrator and he can administer it directly without sharing credentials. (Thats what @scottalanmiller does)
There is no menu, that I can find, to create a sub account on my account to enable someone else to log in and administrate my account.
Shoot in a support ticket and they create them for you along with a temporary password.
Part of this?
https://skyetel.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/SUG/pages/664141827/Tenants+Invite+Only+AlphaTenants is being designed for use cases such as this and is under active development. It will also include a Tenant Portal where end users can view their assets (like phone numbers or call recordings or faxes) without being able to make changes or with different permissions from the Administrator.
So with the issues of being able to get a Skyetel account created soon to be mitigated, I'm looking at the functionality I need out of them for the client that started me down this road in the first place.
This client has multiple offices and needs/wants to be able to track out billing separately for each office.
With most SIP trunk providers this has meant multiple accounts with multiple email addresses. Twilio was the first provider I found that I could set up one account and then have sub accounts all with separate billing.
Skyetel does not yet have anything public, but as was mentioned in my previous thread, they have some tenant functionality in alpha testing.
I dug into the linked article andI'm not sure if it will work well for my scenario or not. For a place reselling phone service via Skyetel, this looks like a solid solution in the works.
But for this client, they just want to know that when I recharge $200 with their credit card that it is all going towards Office C and not Office B. Tenant reporting seems to all be in arrears. and not something designed for this billing scenario.
Are any of the @Skyetel users in this community using this functionality yet?
How is it working?
Would it fit my billing need? -
@JaredBusch said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
This client has multiple offices and needs/wants to be able to track out billing separately for each office.
Tenants has two intended use cases:
- People who are reselling Skyetel's services, and want to be able to track, brand and re-bill our services under their own name
- Companies who want to be able to break out different parts of their usage into groups that are meaningful for reporting and reimbursement.
In both cases, there is only one billing relationship. So we would bill the Skyetel account holder, and then based on how each of the Tenants used our services, the account holder would see where the money was spent. Each Tenant does not have their own Skyetel account - and it would be up to the Skyetel account owner to sort out being reimbursed if the owner of the Skyetel account is different than the user of our services.
That being said, we have been discussing a Reimbursing concept. (This would kinda be a third option) The idea would be that BundyIT would own the Skyetel account and your customer would only have access to Tenants (basically a read-only version of the Skyetel portal). They would associate their credit card to that Tenant account, and at the end of the month we'd charge it and "reimburse" your Skyetel balance whatever the amount that Tenant used. The downside to this is that there would be a period of time where you are sorta floating them. The upside is that it does keep things sticky between you and your customer and prevents them from making changes that are harmful. (this also prevents you from having to worry about the taxes and things - since the Tenant would clearly see they are Skyetel customers)
This wouldn't apply to your use case, but we also plan on building a billing system for our resellers where they can add markups, pricing plans, etc.
We have also talked about creating a separate feature where one Skyetel login would give you access to multiple Skyetel accounts. So you could sign up your customer for us - they'd have their own account and their own billing - but your login would let you manage all of their numbers and endpoints along with every other customer you have approved access for. We tend to prefer the idea of Tenants and Reimbursement to this, but if guys have more feedback about it, let me know. (Multiple accounts per login wouldn't be built till after tenants, and would be a huge change to our authentication system - so this would take months to build)
We're building all of this right now and can make changes based on feedback. So please feel free to give us ideas and suggestions
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@Skyetel said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
We're building all of this right now and can make changes based on feedback. So please feel free to give us ideas and suggestions
That's why I posted.
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@Skyetel said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
@JaredBusch said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
This client has multiple offices and needs/wants to be able to track out billing separately for each office.
Tenants has two intended use cases:
- People who are reselling Skyetel's services, and want to be able to track, brand and re-bill our services under their own name
- Companies who want to be able to break out different parts of their usage into groups that are meaningful for reporting and reimbursement.
This is what I got from my reading and the post in the prior thread. Neither of these scenario's fit this client's needs.
I do not resell. So that entire part of your design is something I exclude. Now, that does not mean I cannot still make use of some of those features if it works. But knowing that it was not the designed target means I do not try and shove it where it does not fit, though I still try it on.
Here is the scenario in a little more detail.
Client has 4 offices. All costs are tracked separately for each location. Basically they are mostly treated as wholly separate companies.
Recurring costs paid by credit card, like voice service, are all paid with a single card. So with VoIP.ms, I setup 4 separate accounts with email aliases for each branch.
- admin@domain_a.com
- admin@domain_b.com
- admin@domain_c.com
- admin@domain_d.com
Obviously, I can do this with Skyetel also, but honestly, it is a pain in the ass to have to have 4 separate accounts.
With Twilio, I was able to create a project for each location.
Each project has its own billing setup, same card at each, but when it is recharged, I know which project it was for, as they all track separately, and I can send a note to the client's accounts payable person that Jeff City just added $20. Then accounting will make a note in their system that the $20 on July 5th, 219 was is charged against company X in their ERP.
So those are different scenarios for how I have dealt with a situation like this. Your tenant infrastructure does not feel like the right fit for this need. Close, but it is size 12 boot, while the client wears a size 10 Wide.
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I am going to make use of this functionality now, because I convinced the accounting department that I can make a single large deposit to get started, and guestimate the breakdown per office.
Then at the start of each month, I will look at the previous month billing and add funds 4 times for the exact amount spent. so subsequent months after the start up will all be correctly separated.
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@Skyetel you really, really , really need to rethink this annoying restriction.
You are US based only, thus I never use a 1......
Then when it comes to the contact phone number.. There are zero logical reasons to require a US only phone number. It may be an international company and the accounts payable contact is in Tokyo or London.
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ok @Skyetel I set this up and just made a call that should have had the X-Tenant SIP header applied.
How do I validate this in the portal? I cannot see a way to do so.
Call records show no detail. But it was this call.
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Obiously, I know I will get a statement detail come September. But that doe snot help me validate my setup.
I know I could also deal with support. But I'm about to go out fo the office for a couple hours. SO I jsut posted here. Also this is a good conversation.
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@JaredBusch said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
ok @Skyetel I set this up and just made a call that should have had the X-Tenant SIP header applied.
How do I validate this in the portal? I cannot see a way to do so.
Call records show no detail. But it was this call.
We are adding this to the Tenant Management view soon. We needed more raw data so we can build it it safely. (We have to have at least a million records of anything before we start development on these kinds of features. Otherwise we risk building a solution that cannot scale). It will likely be something like "Calls tracked yesterday" and have a "Inbound" and "Outbound" view. So its coming - just needs some time
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@Skyetel said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
@JaredBusch said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
ok @Skyetel I set this up and just made a call that should have had the X-Tenant SIP header applied.
How do I validate this in the portal? I cannot see a way to do so.
Call records show no detail. But it was this call.
We are adding this to the Tenant Management view soon. We needed more raw data so we can build it it safely. (We have to have at least a million records of anything before we start development on these kinds of features. Otherwise we risk building a solution that cannot scale). It will likely be something like "Calls tracked yesterday" and have a "Inbound" and "Outbound" view. So its coming - just needs some time
What about a calls in the last 10 minutes or something for debugging?
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@JaredBusch said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
@Skyetel said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
@JaredBusch said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
ok @Skyetel I set this up and just made a call that should have had the X-Tenant SIP header applied.
How do I validate this in the portal? I cannot see a way to do so.
Call records show no detail. But it was this call.
We are adding this to the Tenant Management view soon. We needed more raw data so we can build it it safely. (We have to have at least a million records of anything before we start development on these kinds of features. Otherwise we risk building a solution that cannot scale). It will likely be something like "Calls tracked yesterday" and have a "Inbound" and "Outbound" view. So its coming - just needs some time
What about a calls in the last 10 minutes or something for debugging?
There is an inherent lag between the time the call completes and the time it is written in our DB due to the amount of volume we get. We have to queue the calls before writing them - so it wouldn't be as "real time" as we'd like it to be.
I actually talked to our dev team about this, and they actually had already written a way to pull the last 8 hours for something just like this for the upcoming Tenant Portal (where Tenant Users can log in and see all of their assets themselves). So they're looking at a way to repurpose it for a debug; so it's going to be built once we have the resources freed up.
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@Skyetel said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
@JaredBusch said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
@Skyetel said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
@JaredBusch said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
ok @Skyetel I set this up and just made a call that should have had the X-Tenant SIP header applied.
How do I validate this in the portal? I cannot see a way to do so.
Call records show no detail. But it was this call.
We are adding this to the Tenant Management view soon. We needed more raw data so we can build it it safely. (We have to have at least a million records of anything before we start development on these kinds of features. Otherwise we risk building a solution that cannot scale). It will likely be something like "Calls tracked yesterday" and have a "Inbound" and "Outbound" view. So its coming - just needs some time
What about a calls in the last 10 minutes or something for debugging?
There is an inherent lag between the time the call completes and the time it is written in our DB due to the amount of volume we get. We have to queue the calls before writing them - so it wouldn't be as "real time" as we'd like it to be.
I actually talked to our dev team about this, and they actually had already written a way to pull the last 8 hours for something just like this for the upcoming Tenant Portal (where Tenant Users can log in and see all of their assets themselves). So they're looking at a way to repurpose it for a debug; so it's going to be built once we have the resources freed up.
Awesome. I did just reply to the support ticket. I have, as far as I can tell sent a call (more than one) with the X-Tenant header now.
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Of note the process to send the header is easy, but global. I'm still tinkering with ways to make it more specific.
Then I will post instructions for FreePBX.
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Well, the month rolled, and so I now have a report.
The tenant report is awesomely detailed for those that actually care about sending something on to a client.
In my use case, the client just needed location specific break out, so I only care about the totals. But OMFG the awesomeness of the numbers....
Great work on this part @Skyetel
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Since @JaredBusch has been kind enough to teach everyone about our Tenant feature, I figured I'd give you guys a preview of this before anyone else - but here's a pre-alpha version of the Tenant Portal. Its still getting love by our front end team, but this is what the dashboard will more or less look like:
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@JaredBusch said in Skyetel tenant functionality:
Well, the month rolled, and so I now have a report.
The tenant report is awesomely detailed for those that actually care about sending something on to a client.
In my use case, the client just needed location specific break out, so I only care about the totals. But OMFG the awesomeness of the numbers....
Great work on this part @Skyetel
Thanks @JaredBusch We're really proud of this!
