SIP trunking lets you add phone lines that bypass the public switched telephone network (PSTN) and use VoIP instead. SIP stands for Session Initiation Protocol, while trunking refers to an aggregation of multiple phone lines. Many businesses are moving to SIP trunking and away from traditional telephony to benefit from advantages such as quick provisioning, low costs, and no equipment to procure or maintain. Zentrunk is Plivo’s SIP trunking service.

You can create and manage outbound and inbound trunks from the Plivo console. The Zentrunk menu is the fifth icon on the console menu. When you click it, you’ll see an overview screen that gives you quick instructions on creating trunks.

Following the Overview submenu are choices for Outbound Trunks and Inbound Trunks. Under each, you can see a list of existing trunks and, as on the overview screen, there’s a button to create new ones.

Clicking on a trunk in the list brings up details about it. Here, for example, is what you might see for an outbound trunk.

You can modify trunk details and settings from this page, or delete a trunk you no longer use. The settings are covered in detail in our documentation.

You can get details about inbound trunks the same way by clicking on an item in the Inbound Trunks list.

If you want to set up a new trunk, our documentation guides you through the process and explains all of the fields and settings.

Moving down, the Other Settings menu brings up a screen that lets you set up geo permissions, which you can enable to help curb fraud.

Another Other Settings menu page lets you consent to Plivo storing and accessing logs and media packet capture files, which we can use to debug call quality and DTMF issues.

The penultimate menu choice, Logs, displays a log of outbound and inbound SIP calls. Clicking on a log entry displays a Message Details popup that gives you information about the call.

Finally, the pricing menu page gives you the costs for calls and phone number rental in every country in which Plivo supports SIP trunking.

Step right up for another tour

That’s a whirlwind tour through the Zentrunk features on the Plivo console. We’ve got similar looks for the Voice, Messaging, Lookup, and Phone Numbers menus.

We began our tour last time with a look at what you can do on the Plivo console to monitor and manage our SMS API. The series continues here with a similar survey for our Voice API.

The Voice menu overview

To get to the Voice menu, visit the Plivo console and click on the second icon.

The console displays the Voice Overview page, which shows some basic usage information.

Advanced Insights

Moving to the next menu item takes you to the Advanced Insights page. It shows information that can help you identify call quality issues so you can fix them quickly.

XML and PHLO applications

The next menu choice brings you to a list of the Plivo XML applications and PHLOs associated with your account.  In Plivo parlance, an application is a set of answer, hangup, and message URLs that you use to control what happens to your incoming calls and messages, while our PHLO visual workflow design tool lets you build applications graphically. Clicking on an application name brings you to a screen of details about the application.

The entries in the Voice section of this page define URLs the application looks at in the event of an incoming call to that number or when the call is hung up. Upon receipt of an incoming call Plivo makes a synchronous HTTP request to your application using the URL specified in the Primary Answer URL field. The API expects an XML document in response. Plivo also sends a few parameters with the HTTP request that your application can act upon before responding.

If there were a URL specified for messaging it would work the same way. You can read more about the process in our documentation.

Endpoints

The next menu choice is Endpoints, which displays a list of SIP endpoints associated with your account. A SIP endpoint can be any IP phone, mobile phone, wireless device, or PC that uses Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) to perform communications operations.

Logs

Click on the Logs submenu to bring up the Voice log: a list of every voice API URL call made, which you can filter a number of ways or export for analysis elsewhere.

When you click on a call entry on the log page, you can see details about the call.

That’s a ton of information about the call itself — and if that doesn’t tell you enough, well, there’s more. A note in the last box on the page directs you to the call debug log entries. The debug log contains details for all callbacks that Plivo sends.

With all the information in the logs you should be able to understand any issues you encounter. (But if you need help, our support team is always here for you.)

In addition to call logs, we give you access to recording and transcription logs.

If you click on an item in the log, you can see details about that item.

Settings

The final group of menu items falls under the category of Settings. The first setting entry determines whether to use Call Insights. Because the feature is still in beta and therefore free to everyone, it’s enabled by default.

The Push Credentials screen lets you store the credentials you need if you’re working with Plivo’s iOS SDK or Android SDK. Once you have credentials issued by Apple and Google you can enter them here.

Geo Permissions can help you protect your account from fraud by restricting the set of countries your account can call. Get more information from our documentation.

Finally, Other Settings lets you enable destination number validation (which can give you better delivery rates and cost savings from not sending messages to numbers that are incapable of accepting them), enable HTTP Basic Auth on all GET recording media requests for enhanced security, and providing consent for Plivo to store and have access to logs and media packet capture files.

All about the console

That’s our quick tour of the Voice menus. To dig deeper, visit your console page and see what your data looks like. Also check out our other console tours of the SMS, Zentrunk, Number Lookup, and Phone Numbers menus. If you have any questions, you can find the answers in our documentation or on our support portal.

We’ve never taken our blog readers on a tour of the console. Did we assume that since they could sign up for free they could give themselves a self-guided tour? That’s certainly an option, but we’ll take a moment here and now to be your tour guide. Please keep together.

We’ll start our tour with a look at the SMS features available on the console. We were inspired to call out this section by a comment from Sharita Passariello, who works for Plivo customer Fluent, and who said in a recent customer story, “I love the self-service console and ease of use. It’s critical for us to check the SMS logs and see the messages that were delivered and undelivered, and see why messages were undelivered.”

Passariello shared additional insights about the state of SMS API marketing in a recent webinar.

The SMS menu overview

To get to the SMS menu, visit the Plivo console and click on the third icon.

The console displays the Messaging Overview page.

Below some account information, the overview page shows a quick usage summary, a map (holy Mercator, look at the size of Greenland!) with a table showing usage by location, and a graphical and tabular breakout of messaging by source number type.

SMS and debug logs

That’s all very pretty and good information to pass along to upper management, but the console exposes lots more information. To see it, click on the Logs submenu to bring up the SMS/MMS log: a list of every messaging API URL call made, which you can filter a number of ways or export for analysis elsewhere.

When you click on a message entry on the log page, you can see details about the message.

We won’t make this long post longer by pointing out the information in each section of the page — the point is, you can see all the information you need about a given message, including status, content, and charges.

In addition to the SMS/MMS log, for API calls that include callback URLs, we expose details of our API responses in a debug log; it contains details for all callbacks that Plivo sends. If you click on MessageUUID of an entry in the debug log you can zoom in and see all the details about the message.

10DLC

Since Fluent’s Passariello also complimented us on our 10DLC console capabilities in the company’s customer story, let’s look at those next. From the 10DLC menu choice you can add the 10DLC brand you’ve registered for your business, or register one or more new ones. (Resellers, for instance, register multiple brands.) If you click on a brand, you can see all the campaigns registered for it, register new ones, and deactivate existing ones.

If you click on a campaign, you can see all of the phone numbers registered for it, and link and unlink numbers, as well as see the throughput allocation for the campaign.

XML and PHLO applications

From the SMS menu you can also look at the Plivo applications associated with your account. In Plivo parlance, an application is a set of answer, hangup, and message URLs that you use to control what happens to your incoming calls and messages. This console page shows the mappings.

Here’s an example of an interactive voice response (IVR) XML application; we can tell that by looking at the information about it in the Application Details section. The entries in the Voice section define URLs the application looks at in the event of an incoming call to that number or when the call is hung up. Upon receipt of an incoming call Plivo makes a synchronous HTTP request to your application using the URL specified in the Primary Answer URL field. The API expects an XML document in response. Plivo also sends a few parameters with the HTTP request that your application can act upon before responding.

Messaging works the same way. Plivo makes a synchronous HTTP request to your application using the URL specified in the Message URL field. Your web application should return an XML document that provides instructions to the Plivo API on how the event should be handled. You can read more about the process in our documentation.

In addition to XML applications, you can see information about PHLO applications. Plivo High-Level Objects is a visual design studio that lets you build workflows with little or no code. When you click on a PHLO in the list, you bring up the design page for that PHLO, so you can change the workflow and settings.

Sender IDs, MMS media upload, and Powerpack

Many countries — but not the US or Canada — support sender IDs, which are like caller IDs but for messaging. From this menu page you can see what sender IDs you’ve registered and register new ones.

If you’re planning on sending MMS messages with image, audio, or video attachments, you can specify your own URL or you can use the MMS Media Upload screen to upload the multimedia files to Plivo. then use the media ID associated with the file in the SMS API to include the attachment. Hosting it with us gives you lower latency and eliminates the need for you to manage attachments elsewhere.

Plivo also offers Powerpack, which lets companies manage messaging at scale. With the introduction of 10DLC, which offers higher throughput on long code numbers than was formerly available, Plivo no longer recommends using Powerpack for US customers, but it’s a great tool for other countries.

Settings

The final SMS menu choice lets you tailor certain settings. For example, under Alerts, you can choose whether to notified when

• the delivery rate for outbound messages drops significantly
• delivery failures for inbound messages rise significantly
• SMS volumes display unusual surges

Another screen lets you set geo permissions as a way to help curb SMS fraud. You can select a list of destination countries to which outbound messaging from your account is allowed. We’ll block (and not charge for) any messages sent to countries not in this list. You can also define a list of countries to which outbound SMS traffic is allowed at a subaccount level.

The third and final settings submenu lets you tailor a few miscellaneous settings.

All about the console

The console is the nerve center for administering the Plivo platform in action. This post touched on some highlights; to dig deeper, visit your own console and see what your data looks like. Also check out our other console tours of the Voice, Zentrunk, Number Lookup, and Phone Numbers menus. If you have any questions, you can find the answers in our documentation or on our support portal.

From our product design to our documentation, everything we do is designed to help you simplify your business communications, including the way you get set up, how rapidly you deploy, and how you manage day-to-day operations. That driving force applies to the Plivo console as well.

That’s why we’re launching an update to the Plivo console that includes changes to both the information architecture and UI. With this update:

• All product applications appear in a left navigation menu
• All components such as endpoints, call logs, alerts, and geo permissions nest within the left menu
• Links to documentation and support pages and billing and account information is consolidated at the bottom of the panel

In addition, we’ve standardized the interface across our products, creating a unified system that gives users a more comfortable workspace that’s faster and easier to navigate.

• Streamlined navigation panel: We’ve moved the navigation to a collapsible side-panel format. This new layout makes it easy to move between product workspaces and creates more room for working on your applications.

• More intuitive billing and account sections: The new format cleans up the billing and account sections and creates two separate areas: one for all things related to finance, including payments and invoices, and one for all things related to account security, such as users, subaccounts, team, and user credentials.

• Optimized view of application configuration: Now you can see at a glance all the details of your application configuration — phone numbers, all associated URLs for both voice and SMS, and SIP endpoints — without having to click through multiple layers to verify or modify the application configuration.
• URLs for quick editing: We’ve taken a couple of steps out of item editing. Instead of going to an entity list (Applications, Endpoints, Phone Numbers) and scrolling through a list of items, now you can navigate directly to an entity URL and edit.
• Easier UI for configuring phone numbers: We’ve eliminated multiple steps so that you can see the phone number configuration in the same panel where you see Your Numbers, and you can modify or attach a number to an application from the same screen.

• Simpler phone number identity documentation: Some countries require address and identity documentation before you can use a specific phone number. We’ve added two new features in the console that simplify the documentation process. First, we’ll tell you upfront about whether the documentation is required. Second, when you buy the number, you’ll have the option to attach the documentation.
• Product overview featuring analytics: We’re updating the analytics dashboard to give every product an overview page that will present a snapshot of product-specific analytics.

As always, we look forward to hearing your feedback about these changes.

Our goal at Plivo is to simplify business communications, and that philosophy applies not only to building and deploying software but also to tracking and debugging. We aim to give our developers best-in-class debugging tools so they can spot and fix bugs faster. We just rolled out a major update that includes feature updates to help developers debug applications.

New information on SMS logs

Based on input from our customers and an internal system audit, we’ve added information on SMS logs to unify data related to your text messages. Here are some of the most noticeable changes:

Destination country: We’ve added a new field that displays a two-character country code for each message destination. When you hover on the two-character code, the complete country name is displayed. This helps you quickly identify potential text misroutes that may be caused by missing country codes or incorrect destination number formatting.  

SMS error reason: We’ve added an Error Reason column that lets you quickly identify the cause of failed incoming or outgoing SMS messages, whether it’s from carrier errors or message callback errors. You can also filter logs based on destination or message state, giving you a telescopic view that helps you detect issues.

Carrier surcharge: Carriers in certain countries charge a passthrough fee to receive MT (Mobile Terminated) and MO (Mobile Originated) messages. Now you can hover on the information icon next to the SMS charge to display this information.

Subaccount filter: You can now filter the SMS logs in your account by subaccount to help pinpoint issues that affect a particular end user segment.

Downloadable information: New information on message detail records (MDR) joins all the existing information downloaded in the form of CSV files in your account.

More visibility on each text message

This upgrade includes an all-new SMS detail page. Click on the timestamp for a text message under SMS logs and you’re transported to a detailed information window that’s specific to the text message. Here are the highlights from the page.

Message text body: The fully formatted message body is now clearly displayed in the debug UI. You no longer need to dig through server logs to retrieve the message.

Note: If you’ve redacted the message content, it will not be visible on this UI. Learn more about message content redaction.

Number-based filter: Click on the source number or destination number related to a text message to be redirected to SMS logs with that number set as a filter. You can filter all messages that originated from or terminated to the number in question.

SMS callback attempts: All HTTP callback requests made by Plivo to your endpoint in relation to the SMS are now listed in the Debug UI.

Message state transition visualizer

We’ve added an image that visually represents message state transitions, along with the time delay between states. It helps you get complete visibility into the lifecycle of a message. Metrics such as time spent in the queue help identify bottlenecks in your SMS traffic pipeline.

In this example we can see that the message was in the queue for 497 milliseconds and was delivered to the recipient two seconds after leaving the Plivo system.

Accessing the new UI

To access the new features, go to the Messages > Logs page of the Plivo console.

You can now protect your Plivo user credentials using two-factor authentication. 2FA provides an additional level of security by asking for a unique verification code that Plivo sends to your mobile device when you log in into your account. Using 2FA to secure your account is optional, but we recommend doing so to better protecting your customer and transaction information.

We support text messaging (SMS) as the primary method for 2FA, and plan to add support for voice calls and mobile app-based one-time passwords (OTP) going forward.

How 2FA works on the Plivo console

2FA applies every time a user logs in to their account. After the user enters a username and password, they are requested to enter a verification code if 2FA is enabled for the user. A six-digit verification code is sent to the user’s verified phone number via an SMS message, and this verification code should be entered in the appropriate console screen.

Enabling 2FA for your account

You can enable two-factor authentication from the Security page of the console, under Settings. The account must have a verified phone number on the user’s profile to use 2FA.

A verification process is triggered if a verified phone number is not available. To verify the phone number, we send an OTP to your phone number to be entered in the appropriate screen.

Enable 2FA to keep your accounts secure.

Today we’re unveiling a new, redesigned Plivo console. The main objectives for the redesign were to organize account information better and make it easier to manage it, and to create a scalable user interface to accommodate future products and features.

We achieved these goals by introducing sections for products, accounts, and billing.

Product sections

The new console has a section for each product. Features and items relevant to a product are available in the menu sidebars on the left of each console page.

Accounts and billing sections

You can access accounts and billing pages from the settings menu in the top right corner.

The accounts section provides controls on account settings and subaccounts, and the billing section allows you to manage recharges, recharge options, usage bills, and payment receipts.

You can use the new Plivo console to perform all the tasks and actions available on the existing Plivo dashboard. Log in and let us know what you think.