Use SkypeLauncher with Voicent

We have the Voicent Gateway, and we’re trying to use Skype to make our calls.

We setup the Gateway with all the default options to start when Windows Starts and to manage Skype, and we added out Skype Accounts (19) to the Gateway for it to manage. This mostly worked fine – when the computer rebooted itself in the morning, the Gateway would launch and start loading Skypes, and when it was done, it would start calling on all of them.

The first problem we noticed is that if a Skype account had run out of calls for the day (thanks to the “Fair Usage Poilicy”), the Gateway just keeps trying to call on that account anyway, and some calls would run out of attempts before the Gateway would give up on them – someone would need to notice that the account is showing an error, and then manually close it to get it to keep going.

Then we noticed that every once in a while when the Gateway was opening Skypes, some of the accounts would ‘lose’ the password, even though “Sign me in automattically” was checked, and someone would have to manually log into those accounts before the Gateway timed out and canceled it’s start routine. It got to the point where someone would have to log into almost all 19 Skype accounts more than twice a week, and we eventually discovered a program called “SkypeLauncher” which seems to solve that problem and launches all of our Skypes without asking for the password.

While setting this up, we changed the Gateway to say “let us manually open Skype”, and set SkypeLauncher to run at startup.

The problem we’ve run into now is that the Gateway needs to be restarted AFTER SkypeLauncher has finished opening all the Skypes.
So, the Gateway opens when windows starts, then says that it can’t start because there are no phone lines.
SkypeLauncher runs and opens all of the Skypes.

I added a command to do NET STOP VoicentGateway and NET START VoicentGateway after SkypeLauncher is done, but that seems to mess up the Gateway – it closes the program, removes it from the systray and it never returns.

I’ve tried a couple of different things – removed vgate.exe from Startup in MSConfig, set the VoicentGateway Service to “Manual”, etc.

The *best* solution I was able to achieve was to get SkypeLauncher to run, open Skypes, then NET START the service, and it seems like the Gateway is running, but I can’t see it, but then it seems like the Gateway only ‘sees’ one Skype, and just keeps calling on that account, instead of 4 at a time. And then, when that account runs out of calls and someone closes it, the Gateway does not seem to even try to make any calls after that…

Can you give me any help on this? I have downloaded and installed the new gateway (released on Aug 1st), but I didn not know it would require me to setup a new license, so I sent in the request for the license, and I’m waiting on the email to return with that information… we’re hoping that SIP might potentially solve our problem (so we can get rid of Skype), but we need to keep making calls while we learn more about our options with SIP…

First of all, it would be so much easier if you use SIP based VOIP service. You do not have to deal with all the limitations, both technical and usage, imposed by Skype program. But anyway, the best way to use Voicent with SkypeLauncher:

1. Set Voicent Gateway windows service to Manual start
2. Run SkypeLauncher to start all Skype instances
3. Use NET START VOICENTGATEWAY to start Voicent Gateway service
4. Run C:\Program Files\Voicent\Gateway\bin\vgate.exe to launch the Gateway client (the gateway icon and gui program)

If you have started all the Skype instances, Voicent Gateway should link to all of the Skype.exe processes running on the system.