May 2017 Summaries

This is a tutorial on building a simple application using Node.js and Twilio's Voice API that handles over 10,000 calls to senators and representatives in Congress. The application uses the Sunlight Foundation API to look up representatives for a given zip code and dials them in sequence. The app starts by setting up an Express route to handle new inbound communications from Twilio, asking the user for their zip code, receiving the input, looking up representatives, and dialing them. The server is then hosted on port 3000 using LocalTunnel, and a Twilio phone number is configured to forward HTTP requests to the application. Once set up, users can dial the phone number, enter their zip code, and be connected with their representatives in Congress. The project showcases how engineers can apply their skills to important causes and highlights the potential of simple tools for mobilizing large numbers of people.

At Twilio, they believe code is a creative endeavor that allows humans to amplify their intent and potential. The company's SIGNAL conference aims to bring this philosophy to life by providing developers with hackable tools and environments to express themselves creatively. By giving attendees access to hackable swag, such as the Hackpack badge, they encourage experimentation and innovation. The response of the attendees was impressive, as they quickly deciphered how the system worked and pushed its limits, demonstrating that code is indeed a creative tool.

The Twilio platform has announced several new features and updates, including Proxy (a declarative API for creating proxied one-on-one text and voice conversations), Channels (for sending and receiving messages on multiple channels), Phone numbers (beta), New Add-ons for TaskRouter (beta), Speech Recognition (beta), Functions (beta), Frame (coming soon), Voice Insights for Carrier Calls (beta), Programmable Wireless (available to everyone), Runtime (a virtual toolset for developing Twilio apps faster and more easily), Marketplace (with new integrations, including Facebook Messenger, Slack, Twitter, and more), Engagement Cloud (with a declarative API for building custom experiences), Super Network (with local phone numbers in over 70 countries, toll-free numbers, Hosted SMS, Programmable Wireless, and IoT Authentication Tools coming soon), and more. These updates aim to provide developers with the tools they need to build innovative communication solutions.

Coming soon to the Twilio ecosystem, Twilio Frame is a set of UI components and tools that enable developers to quickly embed chat, voice, and video in their web and mobile apps. It provides frameworks, libraries, and UI elements to create tailored communication experiences, allowing users to interact with each other within the app context. With Twilio Frame, developers can focus on user experience and iterate based on customer feedback, while also shaving weeks or months off design and development effort.

Twilio Functions is a serverless environment that allows developers to write and run Twilio code without dealing with servers, providing a seamless communications experience. To address the challenges of building and scaling Twilio applications, such as setting up web servers and handling authentication, Twilio Functions provides a simplified solution by executing Node.js code on behalf of the developer. With 10k free invocations per month and pricing starting at $0.0001 per invocation after that, Twilio Functions is now available to everyone in public beta, offering developers the ability to prototype and build production-ready Twilio applications quickly and efficiently.

Twilio has introduced two significant enhancements to its Programmable Wireless service: global SIM connectivity and IoT authentication tools. The new feature enables global device deployments with a single SIM SKU, allowing developers to connect devices in almost 200 countries. This is achieved through Twilio's Super Network, which aims to provide first-class performance and capabilities globally via a single SIM and API. Additionally, the company has introduced X.509 certificates on-board its SIMs, enabling IoT authentication and secure device provisioning. The feature will start as a Developer Preview and will be available on every SIM with over-the-air updates at a later date.

Twilio.org has launched the Twilio.org Impact Fund, a program that provides funding to nonprofits and social enterprises using communications tools to deliver impact. The fund aims to maximize the impact of these organizations by giving them access to the necessary tools to serve their communities effectively. This initiative is supported by various partners, including Omidyar Network, Kapor Capital, Village Capital, Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation, Fast Forward Accelerator, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The fund will support eight nonprofits in their first year, with a focus on scaling impact across these organizations. Some of the featured recipients include CareMessage, OpenGov Foundation, Mission Asset Fund, Fast Forward, Democracy Works, Trek Medics, Lesbians Who Tech, and #YesWeCode, which will use the funding to expand their services, accelerate training programs, and increase representation in the tech community.

The SIGNAL 2017 conference has featured a major theme of "code is creative", which was demonstrated through interactive ways on the giant LED wall in the Hack Lounge powered by Particle and DeepLocal. Attendees were equipped with resources to hack their Twilio hackpack v3 firmware, including custom animations and tools to help them customize it. Pre-built animations, such as a scrolling rainbow or Golden State Warriors logo, were also provided, along with a tool to generate code for text display on the Hackpack. The conference encouraged attendees to make their own personal mark on the hackpack wall, sharing their work and code with the Twilio community.

Twilio's declarative APIs provide a new way of building applications by focusing on the desired outcome rather than the implementation details. These APIs encapsulate common design patterns and best practices, allowing developers to focus on creative problems and competitive differentiation. By providing a self-contained solution for specific business problems, Twilio's declarative APIs aim to free developers from reinventing the wheel, improving productivity and reducing complexity in their applications. The new generation of Twilio products, including Notify, Authy, and Proxy, demonstrate this approach, enabling developers to build innovative applications with ease.

Twilio has introduced a public beta version of its Speech Recognition feature for Programmable Voice, allowing developers to convert speech to text and analyze intent during voice calls. The feature supports 89 languages and dialects, and is available now in public beta with a simple, pay-as-you-go pricing structure. It can be easily integrated into existing applications using Twilio's Gather verb, and provides real-time speech recognition capabilities. This allows developers to build more responsive applications that can understand and respond to customer communications in a nuanced and expressive way.

Twilio has announced the addition of 45 new phone number types in 70 countries, including Programmable SMS numbers in 5 new countries, Voice / SIP Trunking numbers in 13 new countries, and toll-free numbers in 27 new countries. The company is also introducing transparent toll-free pricing and hosted SMS capabilities, allowing users to add SMS to their existing US and Canada phone numbers without changing voice providers. These updates aim to provide a more localized experience for customers and increase the effectiveness of outbound calls and toll-free numbers.

Twilio has announced new add-ons for its TaskRouter platform, expanding its capabilities to include analytics and workforce management. The new add-ons are available in developer preview and partner with companies such as Keen IO, Ytica, Verint, Teleopti, and others. These add-ons aim to provide faster time-to-market, contact center specific insights, and real-time monitoring for operational visibility. They offer pre-built reports and dashboards tailored to contact center reporting and workforce management, eliminating the need for heavy lifting in fetching, analyzing, and transforming data from TaskRouter. The launch partners include Keen IO and Ytica for analytics add-ons, while Teleopti and Verint are launching workforce management add-ons with features such as forecasting, schedule optimization, and intraday monitoring.

The 2017 SIGNAL Livestream is scheduled to take place at 1o:00 am PST / 1:00 pm EST / 5:o0pm GMT on May 24th, with Jeff Lawson expected to hit the stage. The event will be livestreamed at twilio.com and attendees can follow along on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn for real-time updates. If unable to attend in person, the livestream provides an alternative opportunity to participate.

Twilio has announced the addition of eight new integrations to its Twilio Channels platform, which allows developers to send and receive messages on multiple channels using the same APIs. The new integrations include Facebook Messenger, LINE, WhatsApp Business, Notify, Programmable SMS, Proxy, RCS Business Messaging, and Channels in Public Beta for Facebook Messenger and LINE, while others are available in Developer Preview. With Twilio Channels, developers can support a wide range of messaging platforms with one API, reducing the complexity and cost associated with supporting multiple channels. This allows developers to provide customers with better end-to-end experiences using their preferred messaging services. The platform now supports integrations with various tools such as Notify, Programmable SMS, and Proxy, enabling developers to create new experiences like sending notifications on the right device at the right time or anonymously connecting buyers and sellers into one messaging thread.

The Programmable Wireless team has successfully completed their Developer Preview period and is now launching into Beta. This milestone marks a commitment to service reliability and uptime for customers. The transition to Beta also signifies that any future API changes will be shipped in a backwards compatible manner, ensuring minimal disruption to existing use cases. The team has been actively listening to customer feedback and continues to improve the product daily, with frequent updates and new feature announcements planned for the mailing list.

Twilio has announced Voice Insights for Carrier Calls, a new feature that enables end-to-end call quality monitoring for carrier calls. With this feature, developers can now monitor the quality of calls on carrier networks around the world in real-time, providing insights into network metrics, telephony events, and end-users' carrier information. This allows for faster diagnosis of obscure issues affecting call quality and provides visibility into telephony events and network metrics, including jitter, packet loss, and packets sent and received. The feature also offers aggregate dashboards to show call quality metrics grouped by mobile operators, and will provide call quality by specific phone numbers, countries, and area codes in an upcoming release. Pricing starts at $0.0025/min for volume discounts available.

The Twilio Verification SDK for Android simplifies phone number verification by leveraging a new Google API that allows developers to automatically read and validate SMS messages without requiring long-term access. This approach addresses security concerns related to excessive app permissions, particularly in the context of online banking and other business apps using SMS-based two-factor authentication. The SDK provides an out-of-the-box integration with Google Play Services, automates phone number verification, reduces developer time, and offers a better end-user experience by allowing users to register and identify accounts using just their phone numbers. Twilio's partnership with Google enables the delivery of more timely and reliable SMS messages.

Twilio has announced the public beta launch of Twilio Sync, a real-time state management system in the cloud. With Sync, developers can now synchronize web and mobile apps with a single authoritative state in the cloud, without having to build websocket connectivity infrastructure. This allows developers to focus on building features for their customers instead of managing complex connections. Sync is designed to work with Twilio Programmable Voice, Video, Chat, or other Twilio products to provide context-rich real-time communications. The service provides a simple pay-as-you-go pricing model, with prices starting at $0.0025 per hour connected and $10 for every 1M actions. Customers like CarFinance 24/7 are already using Sync to coordinate their call center agents and give them real-time visibility of customer data.

The Twilio Add-on Management API is designed to help developers install and configure Twilio Add-ons programmatically, enabling features that require minimal manual intervention, thus enhancing the customer experience. The API allows users to associate specific phone numbers or messaging add-ons with Twilio phone numbers, limiting their invocation to only incoming calls or messages on those numbers. With the API, developers can build custom applications that leverage pre-integrated capabilities from Twilio partners, reducing time to market for new features and improving user engagement.

The Programmable Video Group Rooms are now available in Public Beta, enabling video and audio recording and increasing the number of users that can participate in a Room to 50. To get started with Group Rooms and Recording, users need to download and setup one of the quickstart apps from GitHub, login to the Console, enable Recording, and set a webhook URL for their server. The Programmable Video Rooms API makes it simple to embed real-time, multi-party voice and video into any application, allowing users to create two types of Rooms: Group or Peer-to-Peer. With the update, each audio and video track is recorded as a separate file, supporting flexible post-processing workflows, and on-demand pricing has been introduced with rates starting at $0.004 per minute per Participant for Small Group Rooms and Recording.

The Twilio Client JavaScript SDK 1.4 has been released, offering several new features and APIs designed to improve browser-based voice calling, including catch pre-flight problems with volume indicators and audio input/output selection, provide users an early warning system for network conditions, and support enterprise requirements with robust security and performance capabilities through Twilio Interconnect connections.

Teaching a developer to fish...kind of`, is about software engineers, Malika Nikhmonova and Kyle Woumn, who are trying to solve the problem that new developers face when getting started with coding, by providing them with a clear path to build an app and shipping it. They focus on tailoring user experience around a specific use case, such as appointment reminders, which helps users stay focused and reach their goal. To achieve this, they emphasize the importance of having a village of tutorials, testing, and data to build and ensure user success. Malika and Kyle will share what they've learned from improving the onboarding experience for SMS customers at SIGNAL, providing valuable insights for new developers looking to improve their coding skills.

The FallSafety app leverages an accelerometer to detect when a worker falls on a job site, triggering notifications sent through Twilio Notify to emergency contacts. The use of Twilio Notify enabled the team to send multi-channel notifications instantly from one platform, allowing them to focus on enhancing their product and expanding internationally. By using a physical "dummy" to test their code's functionality, FallSafety ensures response time matters in critical situations. With a goal of improving prevention as well as response, the company hopes to reduce human falls in the future.

The Twilio team has released their next-generation Node helper library, which offers new functionality and takes advantage of modern language features. The library was rebuilt from the ground up based on developer feedback and provides a consistent foundation across languages for faster iteration and improved libraries. The release includes several new features, such as simplified import, accessing resources, use of promises, listing resources, paging, and a configurable HTTP client. To get started with the new library, users can refer to various guides, tutorials, and documentation available on the Twilio website. The old library will remain supported until August 31st, 2017, after which time bug fixes and support may be discontinued. The team is now seeking feedback on their upcoming Ruby release candidate, which is currently available on GitHub.

The Zac Brown Band used Twilio to create a unique fan engagement experience where fans could leave messages for the band by calling a dedicated phone number and recording their thoughts, memories or favorite songs. The prototype app was built using Python and ran on approximately 60 lines of code. The goal was to greet the caller, allow them to record a message, tell Twilio when they were done, and bid adieu, with a maximum message length of 30 seconds to ensure efficient use of time. The app utilized Flask for routing and Twilio's TwiML framework for handling voice calls and gathering user input.

Twilio's Programmable SMS API is not a complete solution, but rather a building block that customers can integrate into their software applications to send text messages. The platform does not automatically generate numbers for recipients or store contact information; instead, it relies on the customer's application to provide these details. Twilio's APIs require separate instructions for each text message, and the platform is agnostic about how customers design their applications and determine telephone numbers. While Twilio offers additional products like Notify and Messaging Copilot that can assist with compliance and automation, its primary focus is on providing a platform for developers to integrate communications capabilities into their software applications. The company does not provide legal advice or write software applications; however, it can offer guidance on how to build a compliant messaging program using its products.

Here's a neutral and interesting summary of the text in one paragraph: This article demonstrates how to use Kotlin to build a simple SMS application with Twilio. The author starts by creating a new Gradle project in IntelliJ, adds Spring Boot and the Twilio Java library as dependencies, and sets up a basic web application. They then create a route that returns a string response when requested, followed by a route that sends an SMS message using the Twilio Java library. Finally, they add a route to reply to incoming text messages sent to their Twilio phone number, which returns a TwiML response in XML format. The author uses ngrok to expose their local web application to the public internet, allowing Twilio to make HTTP requests to it and enabling two-way SMS communication. Throughout the article, the author provides step-by-step instructions and code examples, making it easy for Java developers to learn Kotlin and build their own SMS applications.

Twilio is a platform that enables developers to integrate various communication capabilities into their software applications. The Programmable SMS API allows users to send text messages en masse, but it does not generate or store phone numbers for messaging campaigns. Twilio's role is to transmit text messages based on instructions from the user's application. It is crucial for users to ensure TCPA compliance when using Twilio's services, as penalties can be severe for non-compliance.

Twilio has announced the release of Smart Encoding for Copilot, a new feature that automatically translates Unicode characters into GSM7/ASCII characters to prevent message concatenation. This feature is now enabled by default for all new Messaging Services and can be enabled for existing services with a simple console navigation. The goal of this feature is to simplify the development lifecycle by eliminating the need to manually check for Unicode characters in messages, reducing the risk of unnecessary segmentation and associated costs.

With Facebook's ad platform, capturing new leads can be a challenge as they need to be exported from the form and manually imported into communication tools. However, with Zapier's integration, companies can automate this process, connecting new contacts to CRM systems like Pipedrive or Twilio for timely follow-up. By using Zapier and Twilio, businesses can save time, improve data quality, and close deals faster, as seen in the examples of Club Dental and Yuge Marketing, which have reduced their admin time by 10+ hours per week and increased the quality of their customer data.

AWS Lambda is a serverless service that can run Python 3.6 code in response to developer-defined events, such as uploading a new JPEG file to AWS S3. To send SMS text messages via Twilio, developers can create an AWS Lambda function with a manual test event trigger and use the Twilio SMS REST API. The process involves creating a Lambda function, writing Python code to handle the SMS request, setting environment variables for Twilio credentials, and configuring the Lambda function handler and role. Once configured, the Lambda function can be tested by simulating an event, which will send an SMS message to a specified recipient phone number.

This is not a drill`: the SIGNAL conference is approaching, with only a month left until it takes place in San Francisco's Pier 27. The organizing team has been busy preparing for the event, which will feature a range of Twilio products and a futuristic experience. Meanwhile, the speakers have been identified, who will share their expertise in breakout sessions on May 24-25. These speakers are not only knowledgeable professionals but also interesting individuals with unique backgrounds and accomplishments, including being curators of museums and having worked as motion capture artists for video games. The SIGNAL conference aims to provide a platform for networking and learning, and attendees can look forward to engaging conversations with the speakers during and after the event.

A Magic: The Gathering player created a SMS price checker for card prices using Twilio and .NET Core, allowing users to send a text message with the name of a card to receive its current prices in USD, Euros, and Tix. The application queries the Scryfall API, which provides pricing information without requiring authentication, but with rate limits. The application uses TwiML to generate an SMS response with the card's prices. After building the application locally, it was deployed using ngrok and configured to respond to incoming texts from a Twilio phone number.