Background

Voyant Admin is a tool for enterprise and wholesale telecom administrators to manage their account with Voyant. Admins can use the tool to set up SIP Trunking voice service, or build their own telecom solution using our public APIs. Users of this platform are highly trained in the world of telecom and expect features that allow to them design a system based on their needs.

Problem

Under-delivered product launch

Voyant admin launched as the modern interface for a new SIP trunking platform. While the company had many years of experience selling SIP Trunking as a product it made a series of mistakes with the launch of the new product.

  • Product strategy decisions changed too frequently. The platform began as the administrative tool for only enterprise SIP trunking, but grew to be the platform for all products and customer types.
  • Access to existing tools was revoked before feature parity could be built into Voyant Admin. Wholesale and resale partners lost vital tools to run their business.
  • The company lacked any internal product documentation from previous platforms, nor were product requirements written before beginning development.
  • The development teams lacked direction from product managers. Each dev team dictacted their own priorities and product requirements.
Leaning on customer operations to take up the slack

To bypass the shortcomings of Voyant Admin, we leaned on the customer operations team to do manual tasks. Customers were directed to contact the operations team instead of attempting to use the interface.

Personas

...
Name
James Franco
Job Title
IT Admin
Employer
Merrill Lynch
Goals
  • Purchasing phone numbers as the company expands
  • Managing the extension dialing setup for their office
  • Creating IVR (Interactive Voice Response) menus for departments
  • Managing outbound caller names
  • Managing emergency registrations
Motivations

A company's telecom system is just one of many responsiblities that an IT department has. Managing SIP trunking services happens in multiple places, most which is on the interface for their PBX (Private Branch Exchange). In general, they don't need to be in Voyant Admin very often, so they're not going to learn to be experts at it.

Frustrations
Management of a telecom system happens on many different platforms and there's no central tool to sync them.
...
Name
James Franco
Job Title
IT Admin
Employer
Merrill Lynch
Goals
  • Purchasing phone numbers as the company expands
  • Managing the extension dialing setup for their office
  • Creating IVR (Interactive Voice Response) menus for departments
  • Managing outbound caller names
  • Managing emergency registrations
Motivations

A company's telecom system is just one of many responsiblities that an IT department has. Managing SIP trunking services happens in multiple places, most which is on the interface for their PBX (Private Branch Exchange). In general, they don't need to be in Voyant Admin very often, so they're not going to learn to be experts at it.

Frustrations
Management of a telecom system happens on many different platforms and there's no central tool to sync them.
...

Research

Customer Interviews

Since the existing iteration was built without customer input, we began a listening campaign by reaching out to customers for feedback.

In our conversations we learned that our customers have very specific needs when purchasing numbers. At the scale of reselling that they do, free local calling does not exist. Therefore they are always looking to purchase numbers to connect calls as cheaply as possible.

Gathering User Stories
User Story 1

As a customer administrator, I need to search for numbers in my city, so I can find local numbers in a large city independent of rate center or area code.

Acceptance Criteria
  • City & State or Postal Code must be entered to perform search
  • Postal Code overrides City & State if both are entered
  • City suggestions should appear on the third input character
User Story 2

As a customer administrator, I need to search for numbers in a rate center, so I can make local calls within a specified geographic area.

Acceptance Criteria
  • User can optionally use a state selector
  • Rate Center suggestions should appear on the third input character
User Story 3

As a customer administrator, I need to purchase numbers that match the NPA-NXX-Block of my current inventory, so I can add to my single location extension dialing plan and avoid creating a new dial based off a new NPA-NXX-Block

Acceptance Criteria
  • Users must be able to initiate a search with the first 5 to 7 digits entered
User Story 4

As a customer administrator, I need to purchase compatible numbers for our extension dialing set-up across offices in multiple geographic areas, so I can avoid having to assign an extension override that differs from the last (3-5) digits of the number.

Acceptance Criteria
  • Users must be able to initiate a number search with empty digits in the middle of the number

Reference Material

Inteliquent API Guide

Our number inventory was sourced entirely from our parent company, Inteliquent. By referencing it, we found that the requested functionality was already available.

Search Telephone Number Inventory

Now we can perform search in multiple ways like rate center, city/zip and postal code search along with radius or sequential or local area option.

We can perform search as mentioned below

  • Addition of the “City/State” and “City/State with Radius” searches
  • Addition of the “Postal Code” and “Postal Code with Radius” searches
  • Addition of the local option within a subset of the searches like “Rate Center” or “City/State” or “Postal Code”
  • Addition of an option to toggle between Wireless or Wireline search
Telephone Number Search Rules
  • tnMask or tnWildcard are required (even if searching for all TNs). tnMask takes priority if both are specified.
  • rateCenter, city, and postalCode are mutually exclusive.
  • If city is specified, the province must be specified.
  • radius is only valid if city and province or postalCode are specified.
  • radius, localCallingArea, and sequential are mutually exclusive.
  • In case of localCallingArea, NPA-NXX takes priority if city or province or rateCenter specified.
  • If localCallingArea is specified, one of the following must be true:
    • tnMask or tnWildcard specify the NPA-NXX (first six digits)
    • rateCenter is specified
    • city and province are specified (without a radius)
    • postalCode is specified (without a radius)
  • If wireless is specified, the customer must be configured to allow ordering wireless TNs.
Parameter Required Description
tnMask Yes* Telephone number, Must be exactly 10 characters.
Accepts numbers 0 through 9 . Enter x or X or space as wildcard. (e.g. 312xxxxxxx , xxx4xxxxx1 , xxxxxxxxxx )
tnWildcard Yes* Telephone number. Accepts 0-9, Aa-Zz, *, or ? (e.g. *Hello* or 312?Hi*7 )
lata No Three-digit local access and transport area code
rateCenter No Rate center abbreviation (e.g. WSHNGTNZN1 )
province No Two-letter state or province abbreviation (e.g. IL , CA )
city No Name of the City to search for numbers
postalCode No Postal Code to search for numbers
radius No Radius to search for numbers within specified limit. Maximum acceptable value: 50 (miles)
quantity No Maximum number of results to return; partial quantity may be returned based on inventory
sequential No Enter true to return sequential numbers (up to 99)
wireless No Enter Y or N to retrieve wireless or wireline numbers.
localCallingArea No Enter Y or N to retrieve local calling area numbers.
searchOnNetOnly No Enter Y or N to include or exclude offnet numbers from search results.
* Either tnMask or tnWildcard are required
tnWildcard interpretations
Character Interpretation
0 - 9 No translation
Aa - Cc Translated to 2
Dd - Ff Translated to 3
Gg - Ii Translated to 4
Jj - Ll Translated to 5
Mm - Oo Translated to 6
Pp - Ss Translated to 7
Tt - Vv Translated to 8
Ww - Zz Translated to 9
* Any character sequence
? Any single character

UX Solutions

Existing Number Search Fields

Problems
Does not address all identified user stories
Customers need to search by rateCenter. This functionality is completely missing
Unsupported functionality
The design appears to allow users to search by address. A parameter not supported by the API
Unsurfaced functionality
Users could perform a tnMask or tnWildcard search by entering them in the area code field. However users didn't know about it.

Updated Number Search Fields

Search Return Methods

Standard
This is the standard return method that was previously used for all types of searches.
Sequential
Instead of returning individual numbers, entire blocks are returned.
Users can open a block to look at the numbers individually.
Vanity
The vanity search is time is highlighted inside the number.