Obtaining production app credentials

If you have gotten this far, it is safe to assume that you have successfully built an application and used that application to call the RingCentral API. In order for this app to be used in our production environment, it must first go through a process we call "graduation." Upon graduation, your application will be granted a client ID and client secret that can be used to access the production environment.

Why do we have a graduation process?

The RingCentral app graduation process is a proving ground where apps demonstrate their reliability and quality prior to being allowed to operate in our production environment and given access to live customer data (with proper authorization from customers of course). By requiring apps to go through this process, we:

• elevate the quality of all apps on the platform
• heighten customer trust in the apps they use
• reduce risk to the platform as a whole

What can I do to ensure a smooth graduation process?

The app graduation process is a requirement for all apps. Developers wrapping up their development work can be anxious to deploy to production. However, haste can lead to frustration, especially for developers who have not properly prepared for the process.

Therefore, before you embark on the graduation process, take a moment to prepare your application in the following ways if you can to help expedite the graduation process.

• Create unit tests. Perhaps the single best thing you can do for your application is the creation of a set of automated tests that will collectively call each of the API endpoints used by your application. This will guarantee that each of the scopes used by your app will be properly utilized.

• Consider waiting a day or two before starting. When evaluating an app for graduation, we look back to the last 48 hours of API activity. If you have just completed the development process and were recently actively debugging your app, there is a high likelihood that a large number of errors may have been triggered in the last 48 hours. If your error to success ratio is too high, your app will not be permitted to gradute. Waiting a day or two to initiate the graduation process will allow many of those errors to be naturally excluded from our evaluation.

• Complete a full round of QA prior to graduation. In order to successfully graduate an app, that application needs to make a minimum number of API calls. Doing a full round of QA just prior to graduation should in most circumstances result in the requisite number of API calls being made. Furthermore, it should also decrease the error to success ratio, further demonstrating the reliability of your application.

How does graduation work?

Graduation requirements

All apps must meet the following graduation criteria prior to obtaining production credentials.

1. All apps must successfully make more than 20 non-authentication related API calls in the last 48 hours.
2. All apps must successfully call each API endpoint used by their application at last 5 times in the last 48 hours.
3. All apps must utilize every app scope declared by their application in the last 48 hours.
4. Authentication errors must account for less than 5% of overall API traffic.

Once you meet the above criteria, you should start the graduation process.

Step 1: Apply for Production

Click the 'Apply for production' button as soon as your app meets all graduation requirements which cover the last two days (UTC timezone) — yesterday and today. You can see what requirements you currently satisfy by consulting the Status & Review section:

Step 2: Review and approval by a RingCentral staff member

Upon clicking the "Apply for Production" button, your app will be queued for review by our team. A RingCentral staff member will then review your application. Reviews are conducted Monday-Friday, for each prior business day's production application requests. Weekend and holiday requests will be reviewed the next available business day.

Step 3. Update your app's settings and deploy to production

Once your app is approved for production, you will receive an email. After that, make sure to change API server URLs and credentials you have been using for sandbox development to production ones (see Credentials section), and you are all ready to go!

Troubleshooting app graduation issues

The analytics for my app do not appear to be updating and I can't graduate.

Developers have reported that API call history is sometimes not updated according to the schedule reported. This is a known issue for which a solution is being made. Eventually however, API call history will be updated. In the meantime, be patient and plan for app graduation to take 2-3 days to complete.

How do I meet the API minimum call volume requirement?

Your app is required to make at least 20 successful API calls AND it must call each endpoint 5 times. Here is an example of how this is calculated.

Suppose your app uses only two endpoints:

• .../extension/{extensionId}/call-log
• .../extension/{extensionId}/presence

You will need to make 5+ successful requests to each of these endpoints within the last two days, and the total number of requests within these two days should be at least 20. Let's say yesterday you have made 3 requests to the call-log endpoint, and 3 requests to presence endpoint. Then today you can make 2 requests to the call-log endpoint (to make it 5) and 12 requests to presence endpoint (to make it 20 in total) to pass.

How do I satisfy my app permission requirements?

We require your app to make API calls that collectively utilize all of the permissions (or app scopes) you have configured for your app. This means that your app must make at least one API call to each endpoint that exercises any given permission, while also satisfying all other API call requirments.

If you find that you have inadvertently configured more permissions than your app requires, please remove the unused permissions from your app by editing its settings. Let's take a look at an example.

You have requested three permissions when you created your app: ReadCallLog, SMS and ReadMessages. After you have completed development, you realized that your app uses SMS and ReadMessages permissions, but you are not going to be using ReadCallLog permission in the first version of your app. To graduate your app, you should remove the ReadCallLog permission from your app and make at least one API call per each of the permissions you need (within the last two days).

Final step: promote your app in the RingCentral App Gallery

For some developers graduating their app to production is the last step of their development process. However, for developers and partners who are building an application that is intended to be used by all RingCentral customers, you have one more step: to add your application to the RingCentral App Gallery so that it can be promoted to the RingCentral customer base.

Promote your application in the App Gallery