September 2015 Summaries

Twilio has introduced several changes to its phone numbers management in the Account Portal, aiming to improve usability and reflect the growing importance of phone numbers as identities or brands. The new design makes all phone numbers associated with an account accessible at the highest level, allowing users to purchase new numbers directly from the portal. An overlay window is also introduced for searching and selecting phone numbers when purchasing them within Voice, SMS & MMS services. These changes aim to enhance the user experience and support the growing use of phone numbers in various applications.

The new Twilio blog has been redesigned with a focus on ease of navigation and exploration, featuring a "Build More With" section that recommends related technical posts and a "Explore Posts by Stack or Product" feature to help users find inspiration. The blog is now responsive and can be easily read on mobile devices, making it accessible to a wider audience.

Twilio has introduced request telemetry by exposing two new HTTP headers in API responses, allowing developers to better understand the behavior of their requests, including a unique request ID for tracking individual requests and a duration indicating how long the request was processed in Twilio's cluster. This enables more efficient incident response and investigation of issues, as developers can now log these headers themselves and compare them with perceived latency to identify potential bottlenecks.

CoachUp is a platform that helps coaches and athletes communicate with each other more efficiently by using Twilio-powered text messaging, allowing users to be assigned unique numbers instead of revealing their real phone numbers. The company found a creative solution to handle the issue when popular coaches receive too many messages from athletes, which could exhaust their allocated number pool cap, by "recycling" or reassigning inactive conversation numbers after three months. This feature has seen significant uptake since its launch and has contributed to CoachUp's growth, attracting notable investors like Stephen Curry, who is now a part of the company.

Saul Goodman, Esq., a marketing expert, wants to optimize his advertising budget by tracking calls from his ads. To achieve this, he uses Twilio and Google Analytics to build a call tracking system. The system works by associating unique phone numbers with each ad type, logging incoming calls, and forwarding them to a script that extracts the caller's information and sends it to Google Analytics using the Measurement Protocol API. The script also returns three lines of XML to Twilio to forward the incoming call to Saul's main landline. By following this tutorial, readers can set up a basic call tracking system in under 10 minutes, allowing them to make data-driven decisions about their marketing budget and track the effectiveness of different ad types.

Here's a neutral and interesting summary of the text in one paragraph: Secure Trunking, now generally available on Elastic SIP Trunks from Twilio, enables businesses to encrypt media and signaling using Secure Real-time Protocol (SRTP) and Transport Layer Security (TLS), ensuring secure communications. This feature is particularly important for companies with strict information security practices. With Secure Trunking, encryption allows businesses to use SIP trunks and cloud communications while maintaining the benefits of both, such as cost savings and flexibility in utilization. The service provides robust authentication and encryption, enabling enterprises to deploy SIP Trunking at scale and ensuring secure communication.

The Dreamforce conference has concluded, marking the end of a wild 5-day event where announcements included Twilio giving away equity to Twilio.org and demoing Salesforce integrations. Several Twilio partners, including Velocify, OneReach, Appirio, New Voice Media, and DocuSign, showcased their use of Twilio during the conference. These partners shared their experiences with Twilio at Dreamforce 2015, providing insights into how they utilized its services to enhance their offerings.

Twilio, a software company, enabled Victory 91.5 FM to transition from hardware-powered radio broadcasting to software-powered solutions, allowing the nonprofit Christian radio station to improve its listener engagement and operational efficiency. By leveraging Twilio's Voice service, Austin, a single developer, was able to build a range of custom features, including recording and transmitting audio from listeners calling in, sending SMS updates to missionaries, and creating a dashboard for admin staff to manage calls programmatically. This transition has streamlined Victory 91.5's operations, reduced the workload on staff, and improved overall listener experience.

In this post, Brent Schooley from Twilio explains how to create reusable web components in Ember.js 2.0 using the Custom Elements spec. He uses Firebase and Ember Data to store customer data and creates a component to display trial customers and subscribers with different columns for each group. The component is designed to be reused throughout the application, reducing code duplication and improving maintainability. Schooley also discusses the benefits of using components in Ember applications and provides tips on how to use them effectively.

By Jeff Lawson, Twilio co-founder and CEO` Twilio is empowering non-profit organizations with communications technology to improve lives around the world, and has set aside 1% of its current equity to fund this initiative for ten years and beyond. The objective is to enable non-profit organizations to send a billion messages for good, with the goal of substantially accelerating investment in this area. This effort will have a significant impact on organizations such as Polaris Project, Doctors Without Borders, and the American Red Cross, who are already using Twilio technology to make a difference. By joining Pledge 1%, Twilio aims to sustainably scale its philanthropic efforts and bring out the best in its collective soul.

The Twilio company has added a new REST API for its Elastic SIP Trunking service, allowing customers to provision and configure trunks, URLs/Domain Names, Credential Lists, and IP Access Control Lists programmatically. This development is particularly interesting for resellers and SaaS providers who can use the API to build robust multi-tenant apps with more control over their trunks. ThinkVoice, a reseller of SIP Trunking services, has successfully integrated the Elastic SIP Trunking API into its self-service portal, allowing customers to easily toggle call recordings settings and manage disaster recovery phone numbers. Another example is NewVoiceMedia, a SaaS provider that uses Twilio for PSTN connectivity as part of its call center platform, which can now scale with and integrate into its sign-up process using the new API. The new API also provides tools to help resellers protect their apps from telecom fraud, such as International Permissions and Twilio Monitor.

Call progress events are a useful tool for tracking the state of phone calls made with the Twilio Voice API. By setting up an Express server in Node.js to receive HTTP requests from Twilio whenever the status of a phone call changes, developers can build a dashboard or application to monitor and manage these calls in real-time. This is achieved by installing the necessary dependencies, including the Twilio Node module, Express, and BodyParser middleware, and then setting up routes for handling incoming requests and generating TwiML responses. To test this functionality, ngrok can be used to expose the server to the internet, allowing Twilio to send HTTP requests to the `/events` route when a call's state changes. The code provided demonstrates how to make outgoing calls using the Twilio REST API, specify which events to listen for, and authenticate with Twilio. With this setup, developers can build a range of applications, from simple dashboards to more complex systems that utilize real-time data from call progress events.

ngrok is a free tool that allows developers to tunnel from a public URL to an application running locally, making it easier to test webhooks. It's easy to install and use, has a dashboard that displays the status of tunnels and requests, allows users to replay requests for debugging, secures tunnels with HTTP auth, offers custom subdomains for paid customers, and can be configured to start automatically using a configuration file.

Code For America has developed a new application process for California's food stamp program, CalFresh, which significantly reduces the time it takes for applicants to apply from hours to just 11 minutes. The team used Twilio SMS and Front to power the new system, allowing applicants to submit their information via text message or picture of required documents, such as IDs or utility bills. This change has resulted in higher response rates to applicant questions, with people more likely to reply directly if they have queries, rather than waiting for a response through email. The new process is designed to be user-friendly and accessible, leveraging the device applicants already use, their mobile phones, to make the application process more efficient and effective.

Domain reputation is a critical factor in determining whether emails are delivered to the inbox or the spam folder, and it is increasingly important for senders to manage this alongside IP reputation. Sending marketing and transactional emails from the same domain can lead to deliverability issues if negative feedback affects the domain's reputation. To mitigate this, it is recommended to use separate domains for different types of emails, ensuring that message headers like ReturnPath and DKIM are correctly configured. Tools like SendGrid's domain authentication can simplify this process by allowing senders to authenticate and validate distinct sending domains, which helps protect transactional emails from being affected by the reputation of marketing emails. Proper domain segmentation aids mailbox providers in resolving deliverability issues more efficiently, preserving the integrity of crucial transactional communications while maintaining the effectiveness of marketing efforts.

i360, a leading data and technology resource for the free-market political and advocacy community, scaled up its operations while cutting voter data collection costs by 30% with the help of Twilio Voice. To achieve this, i360 built a user-friendly and scalable grassroots platform that made its data accessible to all members of a campaign team. The company focused on usability, targeting, and scalability in building its volunteer predictive dialer system, ultimately partnering with Twilio Voice to handle the dialing and telephony requirements. With Twilio Voice, i360 gained direct access to call data, decreased costs, and increased efficiency, allowing it to cater to high-volume customers while providing a high-quality experience regardless of size. The partnership enabled i360 to quickly scale its system to meet the demands of its clients, from small nonprofits to large political organizations.

The author, Eddie Zaneski, aims to show that it's easy to build a cool web app using Java with the Spark Framework. The author starts by creating a new Gradle project and configuring it to use the Spark Framework and Twilio SDK for SMS and voice calls. With 7 simple lines of code, the author is able to spin up a serving totally rad caffeinated HTTP request. The author then tweaks the code to receive an SMS with the name of a song, respond with a phone call, and play a snippet of the song using the Spotify API. The completed code creates a complete web app that demonstrates how easy it can be to build a web app in Java using Spark and other libraries.

Find Team Twilio At Dreamforce 2015 is an article about the upcoming event, highlighting various activities such as partner talks, keynotes, technical talks, and special events. The team will be present at the Expo floor alongside over 22 Twilio-powered partners and customers, where they will showcase their products and services. They have a packed schedule of events, including a talk by Robert Fenstermacher on adding text messaging to customer service experience, giving away Narrative Clips, hosting a musical event, and participating in the StartUp Summit and the 1% Pledge initiative.

Ember Data is a library used by Ember.js to access and manipulate data, providing ORM functionality that works with any backend using adapters. The adapter for Firebase makes it easy to use the library with the NoSQL database. By installing the EmberFire addon, developers can easily integrate their Ember application with Firebase, allowing for real-time updates and automatic persistence of data. With Ember Inspector, developers can debug their applications in real-time, making it easier to create complex Ember Data models and persist them to Firebase.

The City of Chicago offers food stamps for economically disadvantaged individuals, but accessing eligibility can be a logistical burden. mRelief has developed a Twilio-powered SMS service to help people check their eligibility on demand, reducing the need for travel and wait times. This innovative approach leverages text messaging as a tool for social change, particularly among those who are underserved and have limited access to smartphones or digital resources. By providing an accessible way to apply for food stamps, mRelief aims to increase participation rates and make public assistance more effective.

The inaugural Signal Conference took place at Fort Mason in San Francisco, CA, where attendees were greeted by a coffee cart that served as an emergency refueling station and a place to meet fellow conference-goers. The event was designed to facilitate conversations among developers, which is the core focus of Signal. The conference will be held again on May 24-25th, 2016, at Pier 27 in San Francisco, CA, and three free tickets are being offered to attendees who complete a survey. A recap of last year's conference is also available for those interested in seeing what was discussed previously.