Automating Team Productivity with Glip!
Team Productivity and Instant Messaging products are all the rage now. But poll your development team and ask if all team productivity and messaging products on the market are equal (or if they are even sophisticated enough for them to be able to build custom, automated conversational communications with today).
What is Glip? Here is what users are saying about Glip…
Today we released new Glip API resources as part of the RingCentral Connect Platform API.
Developers building applications and integrations on the RingCentral Platform implementing these new Glip API resources will have the ability to automate conversational communications, easily synchronize notifications into a single location (greatly reduces email), programmatically generate Glip message post content, and you can even couple the new Glip API resources to operate with AI or Machine Learning to solve advanced use cases.
First, if you aren’t already using Glip. Get your free Glip account now and you can see for yourself how awesome Glip really is.
About This Beta API Release*
This beta release of the Glip API for developers is intentionally conservative. We want to see how you use this new API resource, we want to hear about your challenges or successes, and most importantly we would love to learn from you how we can best improve this new Glip API resource to help solve your advanced team productivity and collaboration use cases moving forward.
How to Access Glip Sandbox for Developing
At first, you might think you can just log into https://glip.com (or download the desktop/mobile Glip application) to access and administrate your new Glip account for use with the Glip API, and Glip Application settings with actions like:
- Creating new Glip Teams and adding Users to those teams
- Creating new Glip Users, Tasks, Notes, Files, etc…
- Configuring new Glip Integrations
Hold the phone Buckaroo! The new Beta Glip API resources are only available in Glip Sandbox (https://glip.devtest.com). You must authenticate to Glip Sandbox begin developing with the new Glip API resources.
Here is a list of RingCentral’s Sandbox URIs for developers, bookmark these so you have them handy in the future:
- RingCentral API: https://platform.devtest.ringcentral.com
- RingCentral Glip: https://glip.devtest.com
- RingCentral Account Portal: https://service.devtest.ringcentral.com
- Configuring your RingCentral Desktop Soft Phone for development
Caveat to RingCentral Customers with Existing Glip Accounts in Use:
We are aware of, and working on resolving, a known issue for customers who have existing RingCentral and Glip accounts in production (either paid or free developer accounts). The issue is caused by a conflict with TLDs in the email addresses for private label organizations (private label domains must be unique in Glip). If this describes your situation, please create a new Free RingCentral Developer Account and new Glip account using a public label email address which is not the same domain and TLD as your RingCentral/Glip accounts. I recommend using a @gmail.com, @hotmail.com, or @outlook.com based email address for this workaround registration.
What resources are available in the Beta Glip API Release?
- Persons (people registered to use Glip)
- GET /glip/persons/{personId} - Companies (information about your organization)
- GET /glip/companies/{companyId} - Groups (these are teams, and the Persons who compose them)
- GET /glip/groups (to fetch the list of groups)
- GET /glip/groups/{groupId} (to fetch a specific group) - Posts (the messages sent and received in Groups within Glip by Persons)
- GET /glip/posts (fetch the list of posts, requires groupId query param)
- GET /glip/posts/{postId} (to fetch a specific post)
- POST /glip/posts (create posts to specific Glip groupId)
The Glip API documentation is available as part of the RingCentral API Reference.
The Glip API is also included in the RingCentral API Explorer.
Preparing your RingCentral app to develop with the new Beta Glip API
- Login to the RingCentral Developer Portal
- Create a new Application
- Start making API requests!
Quick Beta Glip API Testing with Postman
Developers using Postman will be happy to learn I have created a RingCentral Glip API — Postman Collection which you can easily import into Postman by link.
To help you quickly create a new Postman Environment accurately, I created this Postman RingCentral Environment Template file. Just download this Postman Environment Template file to your local machine. Then, open the “Manage Environments” dialog, and import the Postman Environment template file. When you see the import environment success notification in Postman, locate your new Postman Environment named, “RingCentral Sandbox Account User” and click the name. Populate each of the fields which are empty, and click the Update button to save your changes. Storing this in Postman will greatly simplify obtaining new, valid RingCentral API access_token in the future.
If you encounter any problems getting started, discover any incorrect API documentation, or identify any other programming problems with the new Beta Glip API resources, please post your question on StackOverflow using the ‘ringcentral’ tag. Here are questions other developers have been asking on StackOverflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/ringcentral
We look forward to seeing what you develop using Glip, send us an email with your use case and demo your work with us and we will share the demo video on our YouTube channel for RingCentral Developers.
