Tropo provides all applications with a special phone number that can be called from Skype without needing a SkypeOut account or any payment to Skype. It’s intended for testing applications, since the connection on Skype’s side that’s used for this isn’t maintained by Skype as a production offering.

Your Tropo application gets a number like 990009369991428935 that can be called from any Skype client. People often ask if they can replace this number with a name to make it easier to remember. It’s not something you can add directly to Tropo, but there is a way to do this from inside Skype.

Sign into Skype using the account you wish to attach to a Tropo application. You should create a new Skype account instead of using the one you use normally. The 990009369991428935 number I’m using here is for our Local Search demo so I’ve created a new Skype account called “TropoLocal” and will be connecting it to the Local Search demo.

Open up your Skype preferences and go to the Calls preferences. Set up call forwarding for unanswered calls with a very short timeout. Forwarding after 1 or 2 seconds works well. For the forwarding number, use the Skype number Tropo gave you.

Here’s what it looks like in the OSX version of Skype:

Sign out of Skype and sign back in as your regular Skype user. Then try calling your Tropo app’s new Skype name. Skype stores your forwarding preferences on their side, so there’s no need to have a running Skype client for the forwarding to work.

That’s it. 30 seconds to attach a Skype name to your Tropo application. Give it a try by calling TropoLocal.

Originally from Voxeo Blogs