As an API Support Engineer, I am constantly amazed by the ingenuity and innovation of our customers, who are pushing technology and our APIs and SDKs to the limits of their capabilities. Since its early beta, I have been looking at ways we can leverage the features of the Vonage Cloud Runtime platform to help us support these customer innovations.
Vonage Cloud Runtime allows you to create, run, debug, and deploy components or full applications directly within the Vonage Cloud. On top of this runs the Cloud Runtime Code Hub, a library of application templates that can be used to create and deploy implementations of any Vonage API rapidly. Add to this a fully featured IDE and command-line access to your server instance, and you have a powerful solution for development.
Code Hub Library Examples
How does this help the Support Team?
Regardless of the Vonage APIs in use, the support team can create, customize, and deploy a fully functional app that emulates a customer configuration or implementation. We can troubleshoot and debug in real-time within a few minutes, allowing us to focus on resolving issues rather than setting up test environments.
The development environment runs Visual Studio Code, with which much of the team is familiar. It is possible to test some scenarios from a local machine, but with Vonage Cloud Runtime, we can deploy a full stack with the Vonage APIs running in the cloud and Node/Express serving client-side SDKs over the web. The server can be set up to receive callback requests, run server-side processes, and persist data.
Faster turnaround for support tickets is an obvious answer. However, we can also save workspaces where bugs have been reproduced so that engineering can review them. Additionally, the solutions can be shared with customers directly. Sharing a working solution with customers or a reproduced issue with Engineering is a huge benefit.
To get started, we can use an existing repository with our GitHub accounts. Alternatively, you can create your own or use a template.
Visit the Vonage Cloud Runtime dashboard by logging in with your Vonage API Account.
Click "Create a Workspace"
Click "Login to GitHub.com" (You will need to provide authorisation with your GitHub credentials)
Once logged in, you will be able to select from a list of repositories in your account. If you recently created a new one, it should be near the top of the list.
Click on the "Import" button next to your chosen repository, give your workspace a name, and a new workspace will be created for you.
Create a Workspace from GitHub
You have terminal access in the workspace to download and install NPM components and tools. You also have access to the Vonage Cloud Runtime command-line tools, which can help you manage your API account and configuration from within the workspace.
Run:
npm install
vcr debug
A debug server will be run that you can use to test your application.
Vonage Cloud Runtime Terminal Debugger
Your application is now running, and you can access it in your browser by clicking the Application Host URL.
When you are ready, you can run "vcr deploy" to push your application to production in the Vonage Cloud Runtime environment.
Code Hub Main Page
Code Hub has a number of pre-built solutions across the Vonage Platform. We can use these tools internally to rapidly build test environments, and our customers can use pre-built templates to create and host production applications.
Vonage Cloud Runtime has been a hugely effective tool for the Support Team. We can now reproduce problems faster, debug them in real-time, and find and share solutions. We always welcome community involvement. Please feel free to join us on GitHub and the Vonage Community Slack.
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