The past few posts I’ve written have been on a single topic: the new “RingCentral Game Changers” platform and its related challenges. There’s a reason for that. I really want to be able to level up and claim a couple of very specific prizes linked to the challenge.
To that end, I’m going to focus very intently over the month of October to intentionally complete as many challenges – recurring or otherwise – as possible. Once upon a time I managed to publish a blog post every day for a year; my goal now is to publish a new post on part of the RingCentral API or my experience using it every single day in October. That’s right. Thirty-one posts in total. In depth tutorial about the API’s integration with AI to perform sentiment analysis on voicemails. Building a chatbot I can leverage on this site and through other projects. Integrating a live, WebRTC-based “office hours” system to provide real-time support. Automating a conference call line I can use with friends for low-tech (i.e. not Google video or Zoom) discussions.
I’m going to work through each of these APIs in turn throughout the month. Every lesson I learn along the way will be available here on the site, and anything technical will be syndicated[ref]Well, I’m trying to syndicate some content now and running into serious lags with moderator approval. So my fingers are crossed, but I’m not holding my breath.[/ref] across D-Zone as well for further reach and engagement.
The last time I engaged in a deep, watch-me-code-an-API walkthrough I live blogged it on a temporary WordPress.com site for a week. It was a fun way to compare Scala and PHP and learn the ins and outs of RabbitMQ. That said, this time I’ll be diving deep into a specific set of APIs and will be working to further level up and refine my Python skills. If you come to the site for PHP, hold tight until November and I’ll post a handful of followups.
First Projects
The very first project I plan to engage on is an automated, virtual assistant linked to my voicemail[ref]Whether or not I transfer my current Twilio number over to RingCentral remains to be seen. I currently use it both for work with my private consulting firm, Displace Technologies, but also list it on my business cards for my day job. RingCentral will either give me a reason to spin up two separate numbers, or leverage my voicemail assistant to categorize and properly bucket incoming calls.[/ref]. The first thing I plan to do is follow the tutorial as-is. Once that’s in place, I’ll re-train my virtual assistant to categorize incoming legitimate calls into those I need to follow up on directly versus those that warrant a canned response.
Ultimately, my goal is to leverage the RingCentral APIs to build Displace Technologies into something a bit more scalable. I want to solicit new consulting business. To offer customer support. To enable inquiries to farm potential content for a “security office hours” podcast I’ve been working on for the past few months. This virtual assistant will (potentially) enable me to do all of that.
And you get to watch every step of the way as I build it. Starting next week.
