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
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.
When my friends text my Twilio bot, Twilio responds from another number which is not even Twilio's and is named "SMSInfo". I expect the bot to respond from the same number. I assure you that I haven't set any logic there that a response should come from another number. Also, note that "SMSInfo" is a number which often sends them verification codes for Fiverr or other things.
I just submitted a ticket to Twilio support and a bot automatically suggested me few articles. One of them solved the issue.
Sender ID change may occur when you send messages from a Twilio number
that is not local to your recipients, for example using a US Twilio
number to send SMS to Polish mobile users. This is often done to
comply with local regulations, or to ensure the highest possible
delivery rate for your messages.
I'm trying to figure out if there is a way to uniquely identify the conversation an SMS is replying to without having to buy a new 'from' phone number each time. I know that one can store whatever you want in cookie or session storage, but those both expire in different ways. What I really want is somehow to pass or use an existing unique id for each separate conversation. So that I can map the messages to the right conversations.
I'm not sure but I wonder if its possible to send a expireless unique identifier to a webhook. So that I know which conversation it should be mapped to?
If not is there some way to use the conversation api to achieve the effect of tracking which sms messages belong to which conversations?
A common challenge, since SMS is a stateless, is to try and match up the specific request with the response. Twilio Studio's Send and Wait for Reply widget does this by only allowing one sent message (to the destination number) until there is a response OR the configurable timeout parameter expires, and then moving to the next widget, so keeping state of the interaction.
As you said, if you are attempting to have multiple simultaneous threads to the same destination phone number, you will need to use a unique From number to separate out the threads - from the received parties perspective, they don't see threading in their SMS client, and cannot pick which question to respond to.
Best Practices for SMS Message Logging
Additional Questions Q: Can a user send a customer identifier for a
message, or is only the Twilio-defined SID available?
A: Only the Twilio-defined SID is available.
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.
If a customer sends STOP to my app's twilio number, twilio will block me sending to that number until the customer texts START. Is there any way around this so that if the customer gave me consent verbally, for example, I can turn the number back on? Or can I configure a long code so that I handle the consent in my app?
Twilio developer evangelist here.
There is no way around this other than having the customer send an SMS saying START, YES or UNSTOP to your number.
Note, when a user opts out of getting messages from one of your Twilio numbers, so you could contact them on a different Twilio number if you had different reason to believe that the user wanted to opt in again without sending one of the above messages.
Let me know if that helps at all.