Roaming Partners

A Roaming Partner is a Service Provider (ESP) that has entered into a commercial agreement with you engaging you to accept calls made by its users and to forward them back the roaming partner. These roaming sessions are received into your system as local calls from unknown users. Your public virtual assistant service asks for the User ID and PIN but accepts STAR (*) as a command to go into a roaming session where the caller enters the roaming partner identification number (usually its full international phone number). The roaming partner ID is checked before forwarding callers to their remote roaming ESP partner. You may decide to forward all roaming calls without prior verification. The list of roaming partners enables you to control the costs associated with carrying outbound calls to remote locations (other ESPs).

To access the Roaming Partners page, click on the Roaming Partners  button in the Web Portal toolbar. The Roaming Partners page opens listing the registered roaming partners on the system. In this section, you can perform functions such as add new roaming partners, view and edit the properties of existing roaming partners, and remove roaming partners.

The Roaming Partners page provides the following information organized in columns for each roaming partner:

• Name: name of the roaming partner.
• SIP Address: the SIP address used to forward outgoing SIP calls to the roaming partner. These calls are made by your system on behalf of traveling users to their home ESP system (roaming partner).
• SIP Host Name: resolved name of the roaming partner SIP address.
• Phone Numbers: The list of pre-authorized telephone numbers that can be forwarded to this roaming partner. These numbers serve as IDs of the roaming partner.
• Remove: the Remove link to remove the roaming partner from the list of registered roaming partners.

Click on Next or Previous to browse  through the list of roaming partners.

You can sort the list of roaming partners by Name, SIP Address, SIP Host Name or Phone Numbers as follows:

• Click on the column title Name to display the list of roaming partners sorted by name.
• Click on the column title SIP Address or SIP Host Name to sort the list of roaming partners by SIP Address or SIP Host Name.

Click on the column title again to reverse the sorting order. Click on Next or Previous to browse through the list of roaming partners.

As a system administrator, you can add new roaming partners as follows:

• From the Roaming Partners  page, click the Add New Roaming Partner button.  A Roaming Partner information window opens displaying a form to fill for the new roaming partner.
• Fill in Roaming Access Information as follows:
  • Select the name of the provider in the Telephony Provider field if the partner is also a known Telephony Provider. Otherwise, select "None" to enter a new name.
  • If you selected "None" in the first field, enter the name and the SIP address in the fields Name and SIP Address of the new provider.
  • In the Phone Numbers field, enter the first telephone number associated to this roaming partner. Use the international number format starting with the country code, then the area code followed by the local number.
  • To associate other numbers to this roaming partner, click the Add button and enter the telephone number in the new field. Repeat this operation for each number to authorize. These telephone numbers can be for the virtual assistant, Virtual Receptionist, or other services that the roaming partner wants its users to access while traveling.
• Click Submit to add the new roaming partner as a known one, or Cancel to close the window without adding the roaming partner.

You can modify the information about any registered roaming partner from the Roaming Partners  view as follows:

• Click on the Name of the roaming partner to modify. A Roaming Partner information window opens.
• Make the desired changes simply by overwriting the existing information.
• Click Submit to save the modifications, or Cancel to close the window without saving the changes.

To stop routing calls to a roaming partner, remove its name from the list of registered roaming partners. Click the Remove link corresponding to the roaming partner you want to delete. Click OK to confirm the removal of the partner from the system, or Cancel to close the window without removing the partner.