I understand that I should be able to utilize 24 Skype instances in conjunction with my 4 line broadcast software but I can not seem to figure our EXACTLY how to (1) create 24 Skype ‘unlimited’ accounts and (2) access them through the gateway. I am aware that I need to create several windows user accounts to access these Skype accounts but I cannot figure out how. Evertime I think I have it fifured out, I find that I am only extending my existing account. I assume I still need to use Skype 3.8 as the newest version 4 flames your software, right? Skype has a business feature that allows for easy expansion of accounts I think but I’ll bet it requires version 4… do you know? PLEASE help. Also, do I need to set the gateway to ‘rotate’ among the Skype accounts or is it pre-set to do so? I would appreciate all the specific detail you can provide. Thanks
First, make sure you have Enterprise Edition for your broadcast software.
1). To create 24 skype account, it is better to use Skype’s business control panel. It should allow you to use one credit card to purchase skype credit, and distribute it among different account.
2). Once the 24 Skype account is set, you need to create 24 Windows user account. For each user account, login to that account, run Skype instance at least once and sign in using one of the Skype account you created.
3). Once the 24 Skype account is created, try to manually start all of them first. If you cannot use right click to start “run as…”, try to use the “runas” command directly. For details of the command, please see Skype FAQ.
Let’s assume you have skype account s1, s2, … , s24, and windows user account w1, w2, … w24. Run as w1 to start skype instance, sign in as s1, and set automatic signin when skype starts. Do the same for w2, and s2, and so on.
4). Open Voicent Gateway, select Setup > Options > Skype, choose manual mode. Restart the gateway. The gateway should try to connect to each of the running Skype instances. The first time you try to connect, each skype instance will prompt you to “allow access from vxengine.exe” program. Make sure you allow that. The gateway should start with 24 lines.
5). If you use Windows XP, you can set the Skype start mode to auto. Enter the Windows user accounts (w1,…w24) in the Skype tab of the gateway. Restart the gateway.
Regarding the other questions, we currently do not support Skype 4. Skype acutally never has a well defined interface for multiple lines, Skype 4 makes it worse. However, Skype seems to move toward the SIP standard and the Skype for SIP program is currently in beta. Since Voicent already supports SIP, we have not decided whether to support Skype 4. Depends on how well its Skype for SIP program, we may ask our customer to use Skype’s SIP interface instread. Using the SIP interface should be much easier to setup and run the gateway.
