Hello, and welcome back to 5 more tips for using the Vonage API Dashboard. In part one, we covered:
Platform Status
Account Notifications
Adding Team Members
Analytics Information
Getting Started with Your First API Call
Pricing
Today, we’ll cover Search, Fraud Activity, Billing and Payments, and Managing your applications through the Vonage API Dashboard.
Before we begin, you might ask yourself, “What is the Vonage API Dashboard?”
It is a web application that allows you to do such things as:
Manage your account - Set up and configure your Vonage account.
Manage payments - Top up your account balance, configure notifications, and generate invoices.
Manage numbers - View and buy virtual numbers and shortcodes.
Analyze your API use - Each product has a dedicated page where you can search for and interpret the results of your API requests.
Manage your team - You can create team members with controlled access to your primary account or subaccounts.
While we are covering tips and tricks for the Vonage API Dashboard, there are many ways to manage your Vonage developer account without a user interface if you are so inclined, such as the CLI (command-line interface) tool, calling the API directly, or using one of the Vonage Server SDKs for your preferred technology stack. Let’s focus on the Vonage API Dashboard for this blog post and get started!
Once you log into the Vonage API Dashboard, you can search for help on any topic anytime by clicking in the search box and pressing enter. The search bar remains at the portal's top, making it easy to search within.
Suppose you have a question about “Billing”. Simply type your search term into the search bar, and you’ll see results that span our documentation and help articles. Common questions like “Billing Inquiries and Disputes” appear at the top. 
Once you load the Vonage API Dashboard page, look to the right, and you'll see an option to “Set up account notifications,” as shown below.
Click on “Set up account notifications” to see the “Settings” page below. Look for “Subscription Configuration,” whereyou can toggle which fraud activities you want to monitor in your account.
By default, several are enabled automatically. You can edit, delete, or disable any of your fraud subscriptions here. Once you have it configured to your liking, press the Save button. Note that the default channel that it communicates with is via email. You can also configure this.
If you click on your balance in the top left-hand corner of the Vonage API Dashboard, you’ll be brought to our “Billing and Payments” screen, where you’ll see a handy breakdown of your product and service usage.
From the “Billing and Payments” screen, if you click “Download usage,” you can request a CSV file of your product usage to help you better understand your bill. This is great if you want to import the CSV into a custom system or report you built. You can also filter it by month, product, and direction.
It’s just another way that we give you control over your billing and product usage.
From the same screen, if you click “Low Balance Alerts,” you’ll see the following.
From this point, you can toggle the “Switch on low balance alerts” option to set a threshold. When your balance drops below the specified amount, an email will automatically be sent once the criteria are met. You can send the alert to 1 or more email addresses, but it defaults to sending it to the same email used for invoicing.
It’s super easy to manage the applications you create with Vonage APIs. Go to “Build &Manage” from the left-hand panel and select “Applications.”
You’ll be presented with a list of applications you’ve already built with the option to “Create a new application.”
Depending on the application type, you’ll see a place to “Generate public and private keys,” toggle privacy, and multiple capabilities you can turn on.
It’s a great one-stop shop for everything about your application!
As you can see, the Vonage API Dashboard is a powerful way for developers to work with our APIs, enhance productivity, and get work accomplished! If you don't have an account, I'd encourage you to sign up for one, and you’ll get free credit to start!
We’d also love to have you join us on the Vonage Community Slack or tag us in a Post on X with any questions. Thanks again for reading, and I will catch up with you on the next one!
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Michael Crump works at Vonage on the Developer Experiences team and is a coder, YouTuber, and frequent speaker of various .NET and cloud/communication development topics. He’s passionate about helping developers understand the benefits of each in a no-nonsense way.
