at-accountsetup

Setting up your Account with Africa's Talking 😎

Welcome! This will be (hopefully 😅) great experience that will kick-start your API journey or keep your dev psych blazing 🔥.

⭐ Key items of these instructions:

• Step-by-step guide on setting up your account (with pictorial illustrations 💯)
• Key aspects to take note of on the App Dashboard

Step-by-step guide:

1. Visit the Africa's Talking website here and navigate to the top right section to log in as shown in the image below.

2. To create an account, click on the Register link shown on the Log in page as shown in the image below.

3. Sign up with your details on the page shown.
4. Log in to your account. Successful logging in leads you to a page with a pop-up onboarding survey. Kindly fill that in, it takes less than a minute 😊. The survey is one such as the one shown below:

5. After the survey, you land on the account dashboard, similar to that shown in the image below:

On the page, there is a prompt to check your email for a verification email. (This is the point where you switch to your email and verify your account. Don't worry, no rush, I'll wait 😌).

Verified? Awesome! 😁 Time to proceed now...

6. On successful verification, your dashboard unlocks a new feature that enables you to create a team. (This is the starting point for consuming our APIs when creating applications.) Click on the New Team button on the account button as shown in the image below:

NOTE: To learn more about teams, members and apps, find details in the AT-TeamStructure folder.

7. When you click on the New Team button, you get prompted to give your team a name. (Don't worry, any name works fine 😅). After successful creation, you can then view your team on the dashboard as shown in the image below:

Click on your created team's name.

8. After clicking on the team name, you land on the Team dashboard as shown in the image below:

This enables you to add members and apps to your team. (Refer here for details on members and apps) Feel free to add on members, but the apps are what will be key in consumption of APIs. So let us proceed with that...

9. Click on the Create App button to create a new app. The form that pops up is as shown below:

The name can be anything you wish. However, the username should be as unique as possible. Wonder why 💭? (Put a star on this, you'll see it once we get to the App Dashboard)

Once saved, the app is added to your apps list as shown in the image below:

10. Click on your app name to progress to the App Dashboard. The dashboard should look as shown in the image:

NOTE: The dashboard for a new account has some unique elements. These are:

• Pre-topped up account: The account has Ksh. 10.00 (Kenya) already loaded to your account for tests.
• No data on the landing page: This is because the account has not been used to consume any APIs yet, hence, no data to display yet.

On the landing page, the main elements to take note of are:

a. The account balance is visible on your top left.

b. Your username is located right at the top.

c. The left side-bar has dropdowns for all the products for further details and charts.

Key Aspects

1. Accessing your API Key

Navigate to the last item of the sidebar on the left, Settings, and select the API Key option from the dropdown. This leads to a page with a password input field as shown in the image below:

Your API Key is a fundamental part of your code, and is in the form of a long string of letters and numbers. Hence, once generated, store it in a place where you can refer from. The key is generated after you key in your password in the input field and click on the Generate button.

NOTE: Each time you generate a new API Key, all other previously generated API Keys are rendered obsolete and yield Authentication Errors when used in code.

2. Top-up Processes

Navigate to the Billing item of the sidebar on the left, and select the Payment Methods option from the dropdown. This leads to a page with payment method options based on your country as shown in the image below:

Top-up instructions are shown per option, and on top-up it reflects on your account automatically as will be visible on the Balance button on the top left.

3. Accessing Developer Documentation

Navigate to the Docs icon at the top right section of the navbar to access Developer Documentation. This is a very key part of the Africa's Talking website.

Find more details and tips on the Africa's Talking Developers' Portal in this folder.

4. Setting Callback URLs

Navigate to a particular product, e.g. SMS from the sidebar, then navigate to the final item in the dropdown, SMS Callback URLs. Select the callback you would want to set and insert the URL in the text input field then click on Submit to set it. The interface will be displayed as shown below:

NOTE: Further details on how to set up a callback URL using Ngrok and sending and receiving requests via Postman is shown in 📝this article.

With that, you're set up! Ready to consume APIs and build scalable solutions for the win! 💪

Wait, before I forget...

Remember we had a unique username and were to find out why?

1. Your username is used as an authentication element, together with your API Key. Hence, should be unique.
2. When topping-up, your username identifies your account, which is automatically updated with the amount.

That being said (written 😄), happy coding! :)