erick's blog

Did you know that Junction Networks has a public web service API available to any of our customers that exposes all of the pieces necessary to manage your own hosted PBX and PSTN gateway services? In fact our admin.onsip.com web administration portal has been built entirely on top of the very same API that is open and available to the public - this means any feature you see in our administration portal is potentially available for you to implement in your very own VoIP product.

What does this mean for your business?

This means that you could build your own web portal to extend your product line to include a VoIP service without having to do the work of building the VoIP side of the service! You would be able to leverage all of the features from our OnSIP Hosted PBX and PSTN gateway products into your own product behind your own custom web portal. For example, let's say that you are a web host looking to augment your product offering in order to differentiate yourself from your competitors. By implementing the various pieces of the Junction Networks web service API you would allow your own customers to create and manage their own hosted PBX. You could even do some more advanced things like host your customers SIP domain in the primary domain that he has registered with your service already. Simply add an SRV record to identify Junction Networks as the domain's SIP service provider and the customer will be able to get their web, email, and voice service all from you - while you don't need to worry about any of the voice end of things. Additionally, you can implement your own pricing structure on top to fit your new VoIP offering to be in line with your current pricing. Since OnSIP never charges for users or extensions you can offer your implementation either with or without such charges - the choice is yours.

The benefits of implementing your new VoIP product offering this way is that you can continue to concentrate on your core business without a need to dedicate permanent valuable resources to building and maintaining your VoIP product. That's why we're here! It is our job to make sure that your VoIP services continue to stay up and working reliably.

Getting Started with the web service API

To get started with the Junction Networks API you can start by trying it out yourself on our API demo page. In order to use the demo you need to be a registered Junction Networks customer with an authentication name and password, you can signup for a free 30 day trial here to obtain these credentials. You can also get started with our VoIP web service API by reading the API documentation. If you happen to be looking for a feature that is not currently documented then please send us a support request and we'll be sure to get the API call documented as soon as possible.

Have fun.

Douglas Crockford¹ of Yahoo! has just published an excellent new book titled Javascript: The Good Parts.

Another Book On Javascript?!

The nice thing about this book is that it is not just another manual on ECMAScript, but rather a terse description of JavaScript that "scrapes away the most horrendous features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable". The book covers more than the obvious topics like syntax and "global variables are evil" (though that is mentioned ad nauseam) - so you can be assured that this one isn't just a kiddy read.

Crockford's major theme of the book (and an excellent one IMHO) is that behind all the crust, fluff, and awkward features of JavaScript there is an elegant subset of truly excellent features in the language. The point being that by strictly adhering to only this subset we can make usable, extensible, manageable software that will have much greater durability than software produced using the ugly parts. I felt Crockford did a very nice job at hammering his points home about his take on the bad parts without sounding preachy in regards to coding style. Only in one of the appendices does he go into detail regarding his preferred style of coding, and even expressing these opinions he does so with sound arguments.

Who's it for?

If terms like "inheritance" and "closure" invoke images of coming to grips with your wealthy aunt Sally's passing, then this probably isn't the book for you. The book's value lies with the seasoned programmer that is experienced mainly in classical OOP or procedural programming. That programmer is the one who will find this book useful in coming to grips with the paradigm shift necessary to work with JavaScript rather than struggle with it. If you're one who finds yourself using JavaScript libraries like jQuery and Prototype but are confused as to what Object.extend and jQuery.extend are actually doing behind the scenes then you'll definitely want to purchase a copy. Plus, unlike those 1100 useless pages of Sams: Teach Yourself J2EE in 21 Days that have been sitting on my bookshelf since mid 2003², this book is sure to be one that you'll actually read. At a mere 100 pages or so (plus 40 pages of appendices), the book is quickly digestible and even more importantly, it's immediately applicable. You will notice your code improving in front of your eyes from the moment you get through the chapters on object literal notation and functions - chapters 3 & 4 respectively. Even if you are one who already know the basics of the language, simple things about JSON, and function scope - then you will still most certainly find use in the Crockford's demystifying coverage of a few of JavaScripts most popular object inheritance patterns.

So if, like my former self, you use JavaScript on a regular basis without a strong notion of how to do it "the JavaScript way", then I highly suggest giving this book a quick read. I promise that it will be time well spent.

1. For those who don't know who Doug Crockford is, he's the guy who wrote JSLint, along with many other invaluable JS tools
2. I should probably consider myself lucky that I never found those 21 days to give to J2EE

Hi Everyone,

It's been a few weeks since our last release but now we're back from the Holidays and we've begun working on new features again. This week we have just a few minor changes for you as most of our development efforts are being focused on a few larger projects to be announced later ;)

Anyway, today we've made a quick fix for a bug we saw pop up on our Groups page in IE 7.0 when users were attempting to create a new group.

The second update we're releasing today is the ability for account administrators to check the all the SIP registration details for registered phones. To do so:

1. navigate to the user's page
2. open the details for a specific user by clicking on that user's name
3. under "Maintenance" you will see the SIP Phone status as either "offline" or the number of currently registered phones for that user. If any phones are registered click "show details" to view the registration details for the user.

You will see registration information similar to the following for each registered device.

We have a new application for you this week!

Meet the Announcement application. Essentially this little guy is for playing a recording to an incoming caller and then forwarding them on to another address in your onSIP PBX. "How would I use this?" I'm glad you asked. Would you like to let your callers hear your hours of operation and then return to the main attendant menu or play a nice welcome message to incoming callers before sending them to a user or a queue, well here's your opportunity. To add an Announcement application, go to the Apps page and click "Create New Application", click on the Announcements image and all the details are explained there.

Being ever vigilant here at Junction Networks, we are always adding new features to our products and services. From now on we will be using our blog as a means of updating you with our latest additions, enhancements, and occasional bug fixes for our products and web portals.

Coming off of Thanksgiving week, we have a modest list of updates which include:

1. onSIP PBX Configuration View - see a complete view of your onSIP setup indexed by extension, phone number or address. Navigate to the "Account" page and click the "View current PBX config" link in order to see your printable report.
2. inhibit double form submission - our DOM guru has rewritten our ajax form handlers to only allow forms to be submitted once. This fixes a minor bug we were seeing where users may have accidentally clicked "save" twice while submitting a form.

Stay tuned for more updates.