The primary goal of the reseller program beta is to help us identify bugs and problem areas before launch. It's also to help us see and assess needs to get ideas for things that could be added to enhance the offering or automate regular support requests.
So far, we've operated with a pretty free-form structure and encouraged people to look around, play with what's there, and provide any feedback they've had. If we would have used a more structured approach, only specific things would be tested and we'd likely only get feedback within our views/approaches since we would control the context of testing. This free-form approach has helped us get a pretty good idea of what people want/need and where some of the major problems/support requests are going to be. We appreciate all the ideas and feedback so far.
We're now ready to move into a new more focused phase to wrap remaining development and prepare for a soft launch of the initial reseller service in 30-45 days. During this initial phase, we need to focus on system-wide issues and bugs with the reseller functionality that is being added on top of our existing core service infrastructure. Since the service itself uses our existing proven infrastructure, there is no need for us to do extensive beta testing for the service itself. The core of the system is working extremely well powering our residential service which is continuing to grow very very rapidly with less than 2% of customers ever needing to support.
When VOIPo first launched, we had to do a much more extensive testing because we were building everything from the ground up. With the reseller program, we're simply adding multiple levels of accounts (reseller/resold), reseller account management functionality, and the new billing components. The majority of what's being added is just involving changing templates and it is all just a GUI that manipulates the same databases and passes information to our core systems. This is stuff that can be changed pretty rapidly and have any bugs resolved easily without it being service impacting.
Timeline
We expect to wrap up any existing develop, resolve any bugs and be ready for a soft launch with the basics in 30-45 days. From there, we will determine how well things are going and establish a timeline for full launch where we actually start promoting it.
Support
We are seeing a lot of support requests that are not really related to the BETA or any of the new functionality and are day-to-day requests like troubleshooting NAT/router configurations.
During this phase of the BETA, we will only be addressing system-wide bugs and development issues. We will not be addressing individual account issues or providing any real-time support during the BETA.
Bug Reporting
When you find something not working right that you think may be a bug, please report it in a ticket. You can also post in the forums if you feel others might have more feedback to add to confirm it or discuss it.
When an issue is reported and we confirm it as a bug in the system, we will record that internally in our project management system. We’ll prioritize the reported issues and address them as we go. In many cases, multiple users report the same issue so it makes sense to handle it this way so we are only resolving one core issue (as tracked in our project management system) vs addressing 10 tickets individually for the same issue.
We will also be batching issues up where it makes sense. As an example if we have 3 issues all related to one area, it makes sense to make all those changes at once rather than fixing one thing and having another one be caused by the fix. So some issues will take a while to get resolved because we are waiting on something else for them.
When reporting bugs, please be as specific as possible and explain what you did to get to the error/problem in a way that would allow us to repeat it and see the same problem. If you just send something vague like “This does not work” it’s not helpful since we can’t reproduce the same problem to see why it’s occurring. The more detailed information and examples, the better.
Again, the purpose of the BETA is to find and address bugs before launch. Your feeback helps greatly with this process. We will NOT be providing general technical support or resolving individual issues though since this will slow things down and it’s not the purpose of the BETA.
We will begin offering reseller support at soft launch.
Ideas/Suggestions
We are very open to ideas and suggestions and hope that everyone will continue to share them and post about them. With that being said, we are focusing only on the basics right now. Once the reseller program is launched with the essential basic items needed, we'll be able to add more. If we continue to add suggested enhancements, it's only delaying the launch and it makes more sense to launch with basics and then build on it.
When suggestions and feedback come in, we'll add them to our internal idea lists. Over time as it makes sense after the basics are up, we'll use these ideas and integrate them when the time is right if
it's something that would make sense for us to do.
Please do NOT send in tickets with suggestions…post those in the forum so they can be discussed and debated. Even if we don’t respond to all posts, we do read them.
Again, we want everyone to continue to discuss ideas and suggestions, but just be aware that we're focusing on the basics first before acting on them.
Hardware
We will no longer be offering hardware until the soft launch. At launch, we will be offering the same device that we currently offer so there is no need for extensive BETA testing. Since no money is being collected during the BETA, this is causing substantial confusion. For the time being, we recommend resellers use X-Lite from counterpath.com to test service.
Billing During BETA
You will see billing using your “virtual money” that we credited you at the beginning of the BETA. In order to prevent abuse, we credited everyone $100 and have added more as needed. If you are running low on BETA funds and have been actively helping with feedback, just open a ticket requesting more and we can add more. This is just designed to prevent abuse and users from taking advantage of it. You will not be paying with real funds.
If you have added real funds to your BETA account, just open a ticket and those will be refunded. The add funds feature is “live” and will charge your card. So please do not use it.
Moving Forward
We plan to post regular progress updates and specific information as to what we need help with testing most. Please continue to use and test the service as you have been with the outline above in mind.
Bugs - Please continue to report bugs and we will deal with them as outlined in this post.
Ideas - Please post ideas in the forum for discussion. Do not send in tickets for these.
Support - We will be addressing bugs only and will not provide real-time support during the beta.
Overall, this structure will allow us to get the most accomplished in the shortest amount of time and ultimately help all of you begin your reseller business faster rather than having a lot of delays.
