Business Solutions

Groundswell Application

sara.pilling@pgi.com — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:51:54 GMT

All -

It goes without saying that PGi is proud of this community and its accomplishments. As such, we are submitting the site for a Forrester Groundswell award. As part of the Forrester process, the following blog post represents our public application for this prestigious recognition.

Regards,

Sara Pilling

Description of entry:

As a global provider of applied, on-demand communication technologies, Premiere Global Services (PGi) allows organizations, businesses and users to connect and collaborate anywhere, anytime.

PGi launched PGiConnect, a software developer community, in October 2008. The community enables employees, customers and partners to collaborate and build applications in near-real time. With capabilities to tag and search for appropriate content, PGiConnect provides it’s registrants quick answers and access to the company’s full API Suite, development materials and code samples to create business applications using audio conferencing, voice, e-mail, fax and SMS messaging technologies.

PGiConnect is geared toward PGi’s enterprise customers, system integrators, resellers and partners worldwide. Sharing knowledge in a virtual workspace allows PGi to embrace ideation and collaboration using Web 2.0 tools.

As an example of how this community supports customers, partners and developers, when a client recently posted a question about sending voice notifications in foreign markets, answers and code samples were available in a matter of hours. This highlights how rapidly a developer went from thinking about a concept to deploying a test application. Not only is this a great example of the speed with which clients can build and deploy custom applications, but also an insight into how PGi streamlines its support resources in one community where sharing information is the standard. PGi’s core team of API support specialists are answering fewer help calls and now able to focus on providing their knowledge and expertise in the online forum.

Embracing Web 2.0 social media technologies has given PGi an advantage and helped the company more closely align with a key audience – software developers. Connecting people and connecting thoughts in the online community allows developers to build and deploy applications in real time.

How PGiConnect helps accomplish business goals:

The ability for PGi to scale support resources for large client integrations and third party development has lead to greater return on productivity and shortened time to market. In this economy of shrinking budgets, the group of PGi FTE’s that work on integrations and development projects are able to instantly reuse and share information across customers and external resources. Additionally, we're beginning to see self-sustaining activities taking place within our community, which is helping us scale further.

PGiConnect has supported over 100 unique apps built compared to half that number in the prior 12 months. Support costs have been reduced by about 20 percent and from Q208 to Q209 apps built on PGiConnect have generated 1.5 times the revenues. With more than 1124 registrants - all building communication-enabled business applications that either improve their customer's experience or increase operational efficiencies – PGiConnect has housed more than 3,000 discussions and created more than 350 documents for community use.

New Community Feature and the Benefits of a Complete Profile

delaine.heasley@premiereglobal.com — Wed, 13 May 2009 15:37:28 GMT

We are pleased to announce a new feature within the community! When you log in you will notice a new profile completeness widget on the home page. When you build your profile by adding information like your company and your level of technical expertise you give other members in the community the opportunity to know you better and enable better communications with you. For example if you are an XML Coding, Object Oriented Java Guru (and I'm sure there are some of you out there!) and you post a question you may be better responded too by letting the community know your level of expertise. And, in return if someone is looking for the advice of said Guru it's nice to know you're there.

We hope you have some fun with this new feature and complete your profile soon. I'm off to complete mine.

Warmest Regards,

Community Strategy/Social Networking Guru, Delaine

PGiConnect on the Web: Programmable Web

delaine.heasley@premiereglobal.com — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 19:37:43 GMT

Hello,

PGiConnect has now been added to the API Directory on Programmable Web. Here's a little about them and the link to our listing in their directory.

ProgrammableWeb is where you can keep-up with what's new and interesting with mashups, Web 2.0 APIs, and the new Web as Platform.

The core of the site is the news blog and the 4 dashboards: Home, Mashups, APIs, and Members. New updates every day, 365 days a year.

Want the latest and most popular mashups? Head over to the Mashup Dashboard.
New to mashups or APIs? Get answers in the FAQ.
Want latest mashup news? Read the ProgrammableWeb Blog.
Developer? Use the Mashup Listings for ideas. Check the API Listings to see what APIs are available. Contribute via the Share page to add a mashup here.
API Provider? See the API Dashboard to see what the competition is up to. Or see the Popular New Mashups to find which have succeeded.
Press? Want to see what's hot try the Mashup Dashboard or All Time Popular Listings. For background see the Press Page to see what others have written.

Here's the link -

http://www.programmableweb.com/api/pgiconnect

-Delaine

eMarketing and the Marketing API

david.vytlacil@premiereglobal.com — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 18:53:27 GMT

This is an updated version of what was originally published in October 2008. Revised as of May 2009.

In the PGiMarket world of Premiere Global, we have developed a new API in conjunction with a new email delivery platform.This new API uses:

both SOAP and REST style submissions,
Freemarker as a scripting languages to control message personalization and rendering, and
an archive-style folder construct for organizing complex content

SOAP & REST

Most everyone is familiar with SOAP: including data with the submission using XML as the data format. REST on the other hand lends itself to accepting data in formats other than XML and allows for the data to be retreived asynchronously rather than within the submission itself. This is done using a "pointer" to identify the location of the data and any credentials required to access it.

Why REST? Well, when you get into high volume email applications, passing tons of recipient data in an XML format just isn't practical. The same is true of retrieving campaign results. Or, if your content is highly dynamic to deliver very targeted messages, passing all of that coding with an XML submission can be rather clumsy. Not familiar with REST, here's some information about it as well as SOAP that gives a good overview.

Scripting Languages

There are a few languages that are being used by various email services to create highly personalized or dynamic content:

In reviewing scripting languages, Freemarker is simpler in terms of snytax and covers most of the scripting needs we see, so that is what we choosen as a scripting language

PEAR Files

Many developers are familiar with archive files, so we have created one of our own specific to complex email content. Dynamic or conditional content, as it is known in the email industry, can have several specific pieces of content, each targeted to a specific recipient characteristics. Our Premiere Emessaging ARchive (PEAR) file structure gives developers a means of organizing this content for an email campaign.

Availability of the Marketing API

The Marketing API has been in use since early January by our Accelerator Professional product. The application uses the API to submit campaigns and to retrieve reporting / tracking data. The performance of the platform and the API have been excellent and we are moving rapidly to make it ready for direct use by customers.

In late June 2009, we anticipate making the Marketing API available as an infrastructure alternative -- starting at a capacity to send up to one gigabyte of email per hour with schedulable 4x burstability (4 gigabytes for an hour) at a flat monthly rate. Larger capacity offerings will also be available. Pricing and other details will be published later in May 2009.

Later this year, late Q3 / early Q4, we intend to make the Marketing API generally available to a wide range of applications and for lower volume, less capacity driven applications with more traditional CPM-style pricing as well as some flat-rate subscription pricing.

Stayed tuned for more new about the Marketing API!

MyPortal and Messaging API

david.vytlacil@premiereglobal.com — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 21:17:51 GMT

Looking for an example of what you can do with the Messaging API... have someone give you a tour of MyPortal. This web-based user interface for Premiere Global's messaging services using the Messaging API to talk to our delivery platforms.

Specifically, MyPortal uses the API to:

display campaign (job) summary and detail information
submit campaigns (jobs) of any type: email, fax, SMS or voice
list management: creating, updating, deleting
managing messaging templates
updating user profile settings

Currently, MyPortal is the biggest "user" of the Messaging API, making 10's of thousands of calls to the API per day, and it is in use globally: North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia.

Hello World, Welcome to PGiConnect!

delaine.heasley@premiereglobal.com — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:46:59 GMT

Welcome to PGiConnect. This is your location to access Premiere Global's full API Suite, development materials, and code samples to create applications and business solutions using audio conferencing, Web conferencing, voice, email, fax, and SMS messaging technologies.

From anywhere in the world, whether you are a prospect, existing customer, independent developer, system integrator, reseller, or partner we welcome you and invite you to take advantage of this online resource.

We also want to talk with you and allow you to talk to your peers. PGiConnect is enabled with social networking so please connect with us and with each other using comments, blogs, wikis, documents, video, and discussion forums.

Have a question? Simply type a keyword into the search bar. All content is tagged to get you to your answers quickly.

Like rewards and recognition? When you post to the community you are awarded with points that identify you as a top participant.

Sound good? We think so too. The first step is to register. We'll see you in the community

-Delaine