911 Access Portal user guide

Molly Katolas

Updated November 06, 2024 17:05

The 911 Access Portal is designed to provide the customer with an easy-to-use interface to our back-end systems. It is a quick and efficient way to keep track of 911 endpoints, LNP requests, DID requests, emergency, and information services.

Getting acquainted with the 911 Access Portal

The 911 Access Portal provides many options for viewing orders, submitting orders, assigning users, and more. The main menu items represent a Bandwidth product, while sub-menus represent viewable or changeable information within that product.

Account: Displays the customer’s information and includes company summary information, active services with Bandwidth, authorized users, SIP Peers, and batch information.
Emergency: Allows you to add emergency endpoints, details of endpoints, and endpoint batch information. Configuration information for additional services such as the branded website, API, SIP Peers, and PSTN access lines is also available.
CNAM: Shows the active or inactive status of CNAM service and allows filterable reporting of CNAM requests.
Directory Assistance: Shows the active or inactive status of the DA and viewable peer configuration.
N11: Shows active or inactive status of Enhanced N11 services.
Reports: Provides emergency, origination, and termination reporting functionality.

Adding, deleting, and managing users

The Users screen displays all users the customer has authorized to use the 911 Access Portal. The asterisk symbol (*) defines an administrator on the account. Users with a long string of numbers behind their names are deleted users (inactive/unable to log in). To add more users, click Create a new user at the bottom of the page. To edit an existing user, click their username on the list.

When adding a new user, fill in the user’s information in the fields provided. Fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required fields. To assign roles to the users, simply click the box for each role the user will be assigned. The same screen can be used to edit an existing user. All information can be edited for an existing user, except for their username. To change a username, simply delete the user and reassign a new profile with the correct username.

Note: Administrators are the only users who can add/edit users or delete endpoints. All administrators will also receive system messages and alerts, via the email address provided in their user profile.

User roles

Function	Admin	User	Bandwidth	Other / Notes
Adding SIP Peers	X
Removing/Editing SIP Peers			X
Adding/Viewing Emergency Endpoints	X	X
Deleting Emergency Endpoints	X
Submitting Batch Uploads	X	X
Managing Subaccounts	X
Batch Deletions of Emergency Endpoints			X
Submitting Orders	X	X
View CDRs in the 911 Access Portal				Must have a Billing role
Access CDRs on the HTTPs site				Must have a CDR FTP Access role
Viewing / Editing DID information	X	X
Change routing (peer group) per DID	X
Receive Emergency (ECC call) notifications via email	X			Routes to all admins, unless an Emergency Notification role is assigned to any user. Once that role is assigned to someone, the notifications will only go out to those with that role.
Emergency API Access				For any user updating emergency address or endpoint information via the API.

All roles other than User or Administrator are secondary roles. You'll need to select any other function you wish to provide to your user. For example, if you want to create a basic user with functionality to view/pull CDRs in the 911 Access Portal and receive emergency notifications, you would assign that user the User, Billing, and Emergency Notification roles.

Emergency summary

The Emergency Summary screen displays a summary of your emergency services with Bandwidth.

Service Status: Indicates if emergency services are active.
Branded Website: Indicates if the customer subscribes to, and uses a branded website. To activate this feature, please contact your Bandwidth Support Team.
API Access: Indicates if the customer subscribes to the API to update or query endpoint information. Click Stats to pull a .csv file of the different call methods being made. to activate it, please reach out to your Bandwidth Support Team.
Connectivity Type: Indicates if the customer is routing through the PSTN, SIP, or both.
Total Active Endpoints: The number of endpoints entered in the 911 Access Portal.
Total provisioned Endpoints: The number of emergency provisioned (geocoded) DIDs. To pull a list of the unprovisioned emergency DIDs, click the link next to this summary. Please note that if the provisioned DIDs are less than the active DIDs, some endpoints won't be validated and may incur fees if 911 is contacted from that unprovisioned endpoint. An endpoint that has been added to the 911 Access Portal, but has an inactive address will be sent to the Emergency Call Center (ECC). Please see our specific e911 routing guide for more information.
Total Enhanced Endpoints: The number of DIDs provisioned to enhanced 911 services / PSAPs.
Total Advanced Endpoints: The number of DIDs provisioned to advanced emergency call centers. The difference between an advanced and enhanced endpoint is where the call is routed. If the endpoint is provisioned as i1/Advanced, the local PSAP won't be able to receive the information directly from Bandwidth. These calls would be routed to the Emergency Call Center (ECC). If the endpoint is provisioned as i2/Enhanced, it will route directly to the PSAP.

Adding, editing, and viewing emergency endpoints

The Endpoints page is used for creating, viewing, or editing endpoints.

To create a new endpoint, perform the following steps:

Enter the endpoint (TN) in the Telephone Number field.
Enter the caller name in the Caller Name box and click Create.
Click Yes in the dialogue box that follows, indicating that an address needs to be added.
Select Add Address and enter the user’s address information.
Click OK.
A dialogue box will ask you to confirm that you want to add the address and, once the message is accepted, your address will be provisioned (green). If the dialogue box shows that the address can't be added (red or gray), please verify and revise your address. If the issue persists, open a ticket with your Bandwidth Support Team for additional assistance. Please allow a minimum of 5 minutes before making any 911 test calls on a newly provisioned endpoint.

Note: Adding the address may return multiple addresses. When this happens it doesn't mean that your original address is unable to be provisioned/geocoded. It means that Bandwidth was able to find similar addresses to what was sent. The addresses will be in an order of highest to lowest confidence, with the highest being first. Select the correct address to continue. If none of the addresses are correct for what you are entering, select None of the above and continue with your provisioning. Again, if you're still unable to successfully provision your address, please reach out to your Bandwidth Support Team.

Bandwidth allows up to three addresses for each endpoint on file, although only one address can be provisioned (green) at a time. This is best used for mobile customers so that 911 service can "follow" the customer. To add another address, access the endpoint, click Add address, and follow the steps outlined above. To toggle between the address you wish to have active at the time, click the Activate address icon. The new address will become active while the other(s) will be dormant.

Entered Address: This is the address entered and associated with the phone number. For best results, the entered address should be the postal address associated with the user's location.
Validated Address: Bandwidth takes the entered address and performs several operations on the address including standardization and geocoding. For instance, an entered address of “East Elm Street” is standardized and validated to “E Elm St”.
911 Response (MSAG) Address: The Bandwidth system MSAG-validates the address using the addressing standards of the local emergency authority. The local emergency authorities decide what the MSAG-valid city/community name is, what abbreviations they want to use for street types, etc. The MSAG-valid address is the address that is delivered to the PSAP along with the 911 call.

Endpoint searches and exports

The 911 Access Portal provides a variety of search options to suit your needs:

All Endpoint Search: Search for all endpoints on file for your specific account. Leave the search box empty and click Search. This will automatically pull up a list of all endpoints, provisioned or unprovisioned. Any unprovisioned addresses are denoted by the red line that indicates ‘No provisioned address on file’.
Endpoint: To search for a specific endpoint, simply enter the endpoint and click Search. The Endpoint field also supports partial phone number searches. For example, enter the area code of a phone number to return all the numbers with that area code.
Caller Name: Enter the name associated with the phone number and click Search to see what phone number is associated with that caller name.
Address Line 1: Enter the address, or any part of the address, and click on the ‘Search’ button to return a list of phone numbers that have that address associated with them.
City: Enter the city name and click Search to see a list of all phone numbers in that city.
State: Enter the state name and click Search to see a list of all phone numbers in that state.
Zip: Enter the zip code and click Search to see a list of all phone numbers with that zip code.

Once your specified search pulls up on the screen, you can click on any endpoint in the list to view or edit. Any search performed is exportable by clicking the link or Excel icon at the bottom of the page. You must have the user role assigned to you for the link to work properly. The results will be exported into a CSV file for easy reporting or filtering.

Viewing endpoint history

You may view the history of any active endpoint in two ways:

Access the endpoint itself and click the link Endpoint History next to the phone number.
Click the sub-menu link Endpoint History. This will show you a history of any provisioned address for that endpoint, including the date and time of each change.

Submitting emergency endpoint batches

Endpoints can be entered into the 911 Access Portal one at a time, or via a batch upload. To upload a batch, utilize the sample CSV file to ensure the formatting is correct. Improper formatting will result in a failed batch upload.

Note: A failed batch upload may still give you a batch ID. If the results of the batch ID show that no provisioning information is found, rather than the expected result shown above. If a similar result is not seen, please open a ticket with your Bandwidth Support Team for assistance or check your file for formatting errors. The most common formatting errors seen are copy/paste errors when additional information (such as HTML) is pulled into the file without knowing; moving or changing the information in the headers in the CSV file; the country listed as USA rather than US.

Once the CSV file has been filled out and saved onto your PC, browse for it on your computer and click Import Data. A successful file upload will result in a message that contains the batch number/ID. A successful upload only indicates the file was submitted properly. The batch ID must be checked to ensure the addresses are properly loaded and provisioned into the 911 Access Portal.

To check the status of a batch, enter the batch ID into the Batch ID box in the Import Status or Find Batch section. A list will appear that will show all addresses the 911 Access Portal accepted, and what the status is of each endpoint. You must check the status of each batch to ensure the endpoints and addresses were all provisioned correctly.

Results of a batch upload for emergency endpoints will look similar to this, if successful.

The Results section shows the status of each uploaded TN in a color-coded fashion. Addresses in green are active/provisioned, while addresses in red need manual intervention by the customer or the Bandwidth Support Team.

The Additional Notes section provides general notes and information about the upload.

Address validation

The 911 Access Portal provides the ability to verify if an address can be provisioned. To do that:

In the top navigation bar, select Emergency and click Address Validation.
Enter the Street Address, City, State, and Zip.
Click Validate.

If the address can be provisioned, a green banner will be displayed. This indicates that the address was successfully validated.

If the address can't be provisioned, a red banner will be displayed. This indicates that the system was unable to validate the address.

Subaccount management

If you're an administrator of an account with child accounts, you can find and manage 911 phone numbers across all the accounts without logging in to each child account. In the 911 Access Portal, go to Accounts > Subaccounts. The Subaccounts page will list all of your accounts, including the parent account.

Click on one of the account names, and you will be viewing information for that particular account. Note how the Viewing as banner displays the account you are working with:

Now you can search for phone numbers, update addresses, and run batch jobs and reports as though you were a user in that particular account.

When viewing a child account, you are limited to the behavior allowed for an administrator of that child account. For example, as an administrator of a child account, you won’t be able to view the subaccounts of the parent account.

When you want to manage other accounts click the exit icon at the right of the Viewing as banner.

Searching for endpoints

Administrators for the parent account can search for endpoints across all accounts or a particular subaccount. To do this, go to Emergency > Endpoints. The endpoint search form provides a list of accounts, including the main account and all child accounts.

Select a specific account to limit the search to, or choose All to search across the parent and all child accounts. A list of endpoints will be returned, with the name of the account that each endpoint belongs to.

Updating endpoints

If you click the row for an endpoint that belongs to a child account, you will see the View as banner, telling you that you are now acting on behalf of that child account. You can edit the phone number and its associated address.

Importing endpoints as a batch

If you are acting on behalf of a child account and start a batch import of endpoints, those endpoints will be added to the inventory of the child account, not to the inventory of your own account.

Reports

If you have the billing role for a parent account, you have the option of searching for emergency CDRs across all of your accounts. We also added a new Endpoint Service History report which shows you the service history (activation and deactivation history) of a particular endpoint.

Batch jobs

Some larger reports will start batch jobs for background processing while you continue using the 911 Access Portal. If you start a batch job while viewing a subaccount, any documents that the batch job creates will be available under the Documents tab for that subaccount.

Emergency configuration

The configuration page is used to provide information regarding authorized SIP peers for emergency service, branded website information, API, and PSTN information.

Branded Website: The Bandwidth branded website is a branded user portal where your end users may update their own 911 address information, onto an interface that looks like your own. Please open a ticket with your Bandwidth Support Team for specific branded website documentation to assist with setup.
API: Here you'll find the Bandwidth WSDLs for ReST and SOAP used to point to the Bandwidth API. Please reach out to your Bandwidth Support Team for documentation on this product.
PSTN Access Lines: If you use/require PSTN access, your account-specific PSTNs will be listed here.
SIP Peers: Shows a list of any SIP Peers you're currently allowing/authorizing 911 traffic to be accepted from.

Viewing and editing orders

To view orders that have been submitted to Bandwidth, first select the order type you wish to search for. This will reformat the search menu to allow additional options for finding your order. Enter any/all appropriate information needed to find the order and click Update.

Orders that have been submitted will be displayed based on the search criteria used. The current status of the order can be viewed on the screen. If more detail on the order is needed, or if any additional files need to be uploaded at any time during the ordering process, click on the order in the list.

Note: You can add notes to your order at any time during its processing cycle.

N11 summary

The N11 summary indicates whether your N11 services are active or inactive. This is a read-only section. If you believe this service should be active for your account, please contact your Account Manager for assistance. Not sure who your Account Manager is? Please reach out to your Bandwidth Support Team or hit us up at (855) 864-7776!

911 Access Portal CDRs and reports

Although Bandwidth has CDR reporting and access on the 911 Access Portal, the best results will be provided via the HTTPs site. There you'll be prompted for your login and password, which is the same information you would use to log into the 911 Access Portal. To have access to the HTTPs site, your login must have the Origination CDR FTP role assigned. Please contact your Bandwidth Support Team for the CDR header information, if needed, or reach out to your account administrator for the FTP access/role to be added to your login.

Note: You can also use a curl command to download your files directly from the site. For example, curl -u "your_username:your_password" -X GET "https://cdrs.evs.bandwidth.com/2020-10-21.tab".

Pulling emergency CDRs

Emergency CDRs can be pulled on the 911 Access Portal by accessing the reports menu. Using any or all of the filtering options available, specific information will be provided which is exportable into a .csv file. Access to the current month and 2 previous calendar months is provided.

ANI Hier Part: The TN that called 911. Entered in 1+10-digit format.
DNIS Hier Part: Either 911 specifically, or if using a PSTN it would be the PSTN number. Billing Month: Bandwidth billing months are the 26th through the 25th of each month.
Show Provisioned Records: Select Yes to show all provisioned emergency calls, or select No to show all unprovisioned emergency calls.
Show Test Calls: Test calls are made to Bandwidth’s 933 service and can be found in the general search. This function will be removed at a later date.

Exporting Bandwidth 911 CDRs

Bandwidth 911 CDRs can be easily downloaded. To do that, select the billing month and click Search. The CDR Report may take some time to generate, based on the current system load and the number of records there are. If the CDR never display, it may be too and the CDRs should then be pulled from the FTP site.

Once the records are displayed, they can be easily exported by clicking on the Export results to CVS link below the CDR Report table.

Questions? Please open a ticket with your Bandwidth Support Team or hit us up at (855) 864-7776!

Bandwidth EVS dashboard User Guide May2018.pdf

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