Updates are Coming – Memorandum

Recently we posted about MeloTel Version 4 paving the way for WebRTC.

Another notice we would like to release to our existing and prospect customers in the following;

In VoIP Panel v4 and newer versions the email address of a VoIP Panel User Accounts will be forced to be unique.

This will impact users in the following ways;

• Each user under an organization will be required to use a unique email address.
• You will only be able to create accounts using a unique email address.
• Any existing users sharing the same email
• You won’t be able to make any changes under the “Edit User” section until you set a unique email address.

This actually fixes a design mistake that created a lot of inconveniences and makes many features wanted to implement impossible.

Email has evolved in the past years to become the de-facto standard for online identity. Virtually all platforms use email to identify users. Unfortunately for the VoIP Panel, it could not do the same, because email was not unique. Users in the VoIP Panel organizations could have the same email, leading to identity confusions and making impossible many future developments.

For example:

1. Users could not use the email in forgot password, but username. Username is also very easy to forget.
2. Integration with many platforms is impossible since they use email in registration flows and rely on it, because it was unique (they identify the user).
3. Login to the VoIP Panel by using your email address was impossible.
4. Account invitations (allow customers to self grown their organization) was impossible since invitations should be sent by email. In fact, it was virtually impossible to create modern sign-up methods.
5. User accounts on multiple organizations (federation) is also impossible without an unique identity.
6. The list can continue…

We postponed this change for many years due to its impact and effort and we’re sorry for not have pushed it earlier. We tried to make the change as easy-to-digest as possible:

• Provisioning requests *do not require email* – email should be filled only by the user at the first login. This was made in order not to break billing/provisioning integration.
• Notifications can be served to alternate email as well, so basically it’s possible to configure the system to gather notifications for multiple accounts on the same email address even if the primary email is not the same.

As of 2016, it is hard to believe that users in an organization do not have an individual email. The email is not actually system unique, but organization unique.

We will push another feature this year where a service provider can assign to each organization a service domain, like (voip.mycompany.com). The email will be unique at service domain level (which is identified by an organization). This has many benefits at the HTTP services and telephony level – for example you can trace and isolate attacks against a customer much easily. This functionality will be enabled only if you want to. Additionally it leads to account federation – have someone member of multiple organizations (for example a consultant).

Big moves like this are part of our quest to continue to be the most feature rich and functional telecommunications provider in Canada.

If you have further inquiries about this topic, please speak with your account manager.