Twilio claims they support group MMS conversations: https://www.twilio.com/blog/group-mms-texting-for-businesses
However, the documentation links they provide goes to a 404 page: https://www.twilio.com/docs/conversations/group-texting
I'm trying to figure out of Twilio can support a group MMS conversation among several people on their mobile phones having a conversation with a Twilio number in a group conversation.
If you're on your mobile phone's texting app, and you send a text to multiple people at once, it's converted to MMS and is a group conversation among multiple people. It is not sending separate SMS messages to each person, but rather an actual group conversation.
I've been looking at Twilio's API docs for their Conversations (https://www.twilio.com/docs/conversations), but it doesn't look like they actually support group MMS, or at least I cannot get it working.
The closest I could get was creating a Twilio number participant with 3 other participants, but on each person's mobile texting app, they saw the messages from everyone else come across as just the Twilio number. Effectively it was a "2-way" conversation with the person and Twilio's number, but multiple people could be the Twilio number behind the scenes.
Bandwidth texting service provides actual group MMS, where I can send a message to an array of phone numbers via the to and it works just as expected. The issue is they are expensive with minimum monthly costs I was hoping to reduce.
It's a little frustrating, because Twilio announced in 2021 they supported group MMS, but none of their docs or examples seem to actually implement this.
Am I missing the docs somewhere or need to configure some setting for group MMS?
Group MMS has been put on hold. The ecosystem migration to 10DLC routes introduced compatibility issues at the carrier level, so this issue impacts all CPaaS providers, when using Group MMS over 10DLC routes (which is a requirement for A2P traffic).
Limitation to Group MMS
https://www.twilio.com/changelog/limitation-to-group-mms
A workaround is to use Twilio Conversations which will allow a one:many distribution of messages. The only difference is the parties that art part of that conversation won't appear in the mobile devices message client address bar.
If you have activated group texting before march 2022, you can still use twilio's group APIs as they are kind of deprecated only for newer uesrs.
Try using the twilio docs after signing in, if you are older user you'll not get 404.
Related
I have had a couple of customers wondering if they can use their own phone numbers to send out SMS using Twilio.
I am wondering if this is possible?
What are the carrier charges in this case and do I need to verify this number before enabling this functionality for an individual user?
The number you want to send messages from (or to) needs to be controlled by Twilio. However, it is possible to port your number from your current provider over to Twilio and thus give Twilio control over that number. This is possible, at least in some countries.
This support article here describes how this can be done for US numbers.
So I'm using Zapier to send text messages to people added to a MailChimp mailing list. A lot of the subscribers are from other countries so I'm just wondering how the interaction works with Twilio.
Will I need a separate number for each country?
Twilio developer evangelist here.
You don't necessarily need another number, Twilio numbers can send internationally (mostly, check the individual settings on the number to be sure, UK landline numbers, for example, can't send internationally).
However, receiving a message from an international number may not be a good experience for your users as they might expect a local number. Good news is that it is easy to build this.
You can create yourself an SMS messaging service. Messaging services are a combination of a number pool along with smart uses of the number pool. You can start your messaging service with one number and add others later. When you add more than one number the messaging service will geomatch between the people you are sending to and the numbers available in the pool, picking the best number for the user.
I'm not entirely sure how this works with Zapier, whether you can set a messaging service ID for your Zap. If that's not possible, you could use Zapier to send a webhook to something like a Twilio Function which you could set up to send the message.
Let me know if that helps at all.
We want Caller ID to display our company name on outbound calls.
According to Twilio, numbers purchased from them cannot have Caller ID/CNAM added.
If we transfer numbers from another service that can add the numbers, will the CallerID/CNAM be maintained.
Should we Port the Number or have Twilio host the number? What is the difference?
Tried to purchase numbers on Twilio and have CNAM added.
Have purchased numbers from another vendor and they were able to add CallerID
Based on my experience recently migrating several numbers to Twilio:
If we transfer numbers from another service that can add the numbers, will the CallerID/CNAM be maintained?
Supposedly yes, mine did not. I had three Spectrum landlines, with working outbound caller ID. At some point after porting them to Twilio, the caller ID disappeared. What's worse is that some cellphones will try and "guess," and show random people's names instead of my business name (or at least, nothing).
What is the difference between porting and hosted numbers?
Hosted SMS provides a method for customers to use Twilio’s Programmable Messaging, Functions and Studio products to send and receive messages on voice-enabled numbers they already own as part of an established voice application.
(from https://www.twilio.com/docs/phone-numbers/hosted-numbers)
So porting is moving the number entirely to Twilio as the carrier for the number - voice, SMS, possibly fax (although Twilio's fax support is minimal). A hosted number would just enable SMS through Twilio for a non-Twilio landline number.
I have been looking for a way to get my numbers listed back in the CNAM database(s), today I tried a company called TrueCNAM (https://www.truecnam.com/) who will let you list up to five numbers for free. I went ahead and listed mine, I'll update my answer if I verify that it's working. Currently the CNAM lookup for my numbers is blank, so we'll see what happens.
Edit: I also tried verifying my number at https://listyourself.net, but I'm still not seeing the number in a couple searches I've done on it. It looks like the changes may take a while to propagate to the downstream third-party CNAM databases, based on this: https://www.dslreports.com/forum/r26461709-
We have a C# MVC app that sends and receives texts utilizing the Twilio API effortlessly.
We have a button that sends a text to one or multiple people FROM a certain department (HR) / Twilio phone number.
Our problem is- When a user responds to the HR text, how do we craft a conversation between the HR department workers personal phone number, and the original recipient. (So they can communicate right in the SMS chat)
We tried:
To create a 'Group MMS Chat' but that doesn't seem to be supported by Twilio (yet)
To store the senders personal number, and the Twilio registered number - to make our server act as a 'switchboard', but that wont work if two different HR workers send a text to the same person.
I have read the questions / docs here: But cookies don't feel like the proper answer.
Twilio: How to map an SMS reply to an original SMS
Send Group Message with Twilio
https://www.twilio.com/docs/sms/tutorials/employee-directory-csharp-mvc#handle-multiple-or-no-results
https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223136287-How-do-Twilio-cookies-work-
Please let me know if this is too broad / a bad question, and i'll try my best to fix it. I don't want to go to SO jail :)
Any help is greatly appreciated!
You might think about using twilio proxy service , the flow for that would look like this
Pre select which HR person number or numbers will be responsible for that communication.
provision a new twilio number (not the same one already used by the HR department) this number will be used for the duration on the conversation
Initiate a proxy session https://www.twilio.com/proxy
** This is a more expansive approach , because you will need a twilio number per each individual conversation
I'm working on a project that uses the Twilio API to send and receive text messages, but I'd like to be able to show the location of those cellular users in a table on my customer's dashboard.
In short, I'm looking for the data that shows up when you're shopping for a phone number on Twilio and it tells you it's from Newport Beach, California, etc.
Is there any way to retrieve that information from Twilio for a number besides one that is available for purchase?
Twilio Evangelist here. When Twilio makes a request to your server using a web hook, the SMS and voice will sometimes have geographical information.
FromCity
FromState
FromZip
FromCountry
But this information is not always available. There is no facility in the API to allow you to look up these outside of this context.
Hope this helps!