App unpublished.

Today is the final blow from Vonage Kudos to you. They enabled captcha for avoiding people making international calls using forwarding means. Guys no more struggling with Vonage. I already moved to AllVoi, I completed the basic work to support AllVoi and going to publish the app soon with support for AllVoi and other calling cards. Anyway Vonage is providing something extra for their customer by enabling one mobile phone to use along with the account. I assume app developers like me would be a part of the reason for their support and happy about it.

-Suriya.

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Now seems Vonage had disabled the instant forwarding. So instead of instantly forwarding to destination, home phone will ring once before forwarding to destination. With this change I republished the app.

Also I am pursuing to support more providers in the app.

Thanks
Suriya.
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The app used to work fine with Vonage, but now it is not. I dont know what Vonage is thinking about the app but Vonage is making every change not to let the forwarding means of calling International destination using Mobile phone. Few weeks back I received a notice from Vonage legal to change the app name etc. Now with the Vonage extension is announced, Vonage seems to deliberately delay applying Callforwarding setting in call processing, What used to work consistently with 5 secs delay doesn't work few days back, then I made some experiment and found 45 secs delay works, but once I delivered app update lot of users reported the app is working again, then from yesterday 45 secs delay and even 60 secs delay is not working. Basically Vonage now have a story for the mobile users and doesnt need the app from me.
I will check for few more days regarding the delay in applying forwarding settings, if that doesnt work the unpublished would be permanent or I will post an update with extension means of calling alone. I dont want to waste time for Vonage and getting bad reviews from users.

I would like to thank all the users for trying the app and placed app in good ranking even better than the Vonage apps :-)

Thanks
Suriya.

Extending the app to other Service providers and calling cards.

Dear Users,

I am planning to extend the app to a general purpose call routing application, that can manage various service providers, calling cards instead of just Vonage. So user can configure multiple means and the app can choose based the provider based on the calling country. e.g. choose Vonage for India calling and Some calling card for Australia calling.

Please let me know, the providers you wish to support sooner.

-Suriya.

Upcoming changes.

Country exclusive and inclusive list changes I am planning on the next build.

Hi All,

I posted an update to the app to include
1) Recent call history
2) Frequent Call history
3) Bug fixes
4) Contact lookup view modifications.

Please update your app to the latest.

Thanks
Suriya.

Following changes are planned based on the users feedback.

1) Call history with in App for the recently dialed numbers using Vonage.
2) Countries Exclusive and Inclusive list.
    Some users wants to dial directly to canada or use GV for Canada where as they want to use Vonage for rest.
    Similarly some users want to use this app for calling India alone.
3) Update to contact lookup view.

Please let me know by posting comments on the changes you are looking for.

-Suriya.

On Problem "App calling home and not the destination"

There were time when user reports the issue of "App calling home and not the intended destination". When the forwarding is set on the Vonage server, Vonage server took time to enforce the change on their call processing. In the call using Vonage app I provided a delay of 5 secs after forward setting is set and before initiating the call. Some busy day and rare cases 5 secs may not be sufficient, in such cases the issue noted like before could cause. To provide users an option I made the delay a configurable item under menu->settings.

Google voice interaction.

** UPDATE **
With the latest version of App, I provided an option to disable the call intercept and Contact lookup for selecting the number to dial. Using these options user can continue to use Google voice for their main day to day use and for placing call using Vonage user can use the dial destination from the app.
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Call using Vonage(CV) and Google voice(GV) application are similar that both intercept the outgoing call and do some internal operation and call some other number than the originally dialed one. If the user is using Google voice along with the Call using Vonage, user should configure both the app such that both dont process the same call automatically. E.g if GV is set to use for all calls and CV is set to use for International calls, then Dialing the international number would result in two calls and would confuse the user and phone. So what I would suggest is to set "Ask every time I make call" option in the GV (Menu->Settings->Making calls" and Uncheck "Always use Vonage for making international call" in CV. This will result in both the app prompting user how to proceed with the call.

If GV provides an option to let user not to use GV for international calls then user can configure GV for local calls and CV for international calls, unfortunately that option is not available in GV and hence the only option for proper calling is to set on GV to "Ask every time I make call"

Another option:

User can set the GV whatever setting as per their wish and uncheck the "Always use Vonage for making international call" in CV. With these setting use can use the phone dialer to dial out the calls using GV. And for the calls using Vonage, user can get into the CV application and use "Menu->Make Vonage Call" and enter the international number e.g. 0119144xxxxxx .

The first option would be for users who are using GV and CV equally and second option is for users who use more GV calls and few CV calls.

I plan to add soon contact lookup in the CV app to ease the dialing.

Forwarding unset.

There are few comments made by users on why I am not rollbacking the forward as soon as the call is originated.

The answer is, the app is trying to rollback the forward few secs after the call is made, but that attempt would be successful only for the GSM users and Wifi connected users. CDMA users would get the failure, because CDMA technology used by Verizon or Sprint doesnt allow data connection when the Call is in progress. (Remember the ATT advertisement where they quote users can browse while on call that is not possible with Verizon). Since data connection is not available for Verizon and Sprint users while on call the app cant make a web request to Vonage server to unset the forward. If the rollback failed, in the App I have another logic to wait for call to be done and try to rollback the forward. For Verizon and Sprint users this will be triggered few secs after the call is dropped.

-Suriya.

Why Contact listing is missing

When I designed the Call using Vonage app, I had two choices either to create a standalone app or to create an integrated app. I thought and decided to have an integrated app, as this app is going to supplement a service to the dialer (i.e identify the international call and route through Vonage).

Based on that decision, I dont want user to launch the app by clicking the icon and dial a number from the app. What I want is user goes to their phone dialer app or phone contact app and dial a number or dial a contact. Once dialed Call using Vonage intercept and route the call automatically. So user dont have to learn how to dial using another app. Use the same dialer you are familier with and use the same contact app to manage your contacts and dialing.

Adding a contact lookup in the app is not a big deal, I want user to go to the Phones dialer/contact to dial. I discourage user to launch the "Call using Vonage" app to dial a number. Since most of the users used with iPhone, tends to go to the app to do some thing. Android is different where integration is possible. I love the powerfulness of the integrated platform.

If someone post me a valid scenario they cant be done with the phone's dialer/contact app and that can be done by having contact lookup within the app, next day there will be an update with Contact lookup in the app.

Some users mailed me about the missing contact lookup in the app, once I told them to use the dialer/Contact they loved to have that.

-Suriya.