October 2021 Summaries

In this tutorial, we learn how to use Twilio's Programmable Messaging API and the Google Sheets API to send payment reminders to customers listed in a Google Sheet. We create a custom menu in the Google Sheet that allows users to input their Twilio credentials securely. The script then uses these credentials to programmatically send SMS reminders when a customer's payment is past due or coming up. Users can also choose to send notifications based on a date range, ensuring customers receive timely payment reminders.

This tutorial introduces the Twilio Runtime, a serverless hosting platform that can be used with the Twilio Serverless Toolkit for deploying React applications. The process involves installing necessary tools and plugins, connecting the CLI to your Twilio account, creating a Twilio Serverless project, and defining a yarn deploy command in the package.json file. The deployment includes building the React project and using the Twilio Serverless Toolkit's deploy command with specific options. The tutorial also covers handling default index pages and upgrading deployments. Limitations of the Twilio Runtime platform are discussed, including lack of custom domain support and issues with client-side routing.

In this tutorial, learn how to build a ghost writing application in Java using OpenAI's GPT-3 engine. The project requires the Java Development Kit (JDK) version 8 or newer, IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition for convenient and fast Java project development work, and an OpenAI API key. The tutorial guides you through setting up a new Java project in IntelliJ IDEA, adding necessary dependencies, creating a Java class for the ghost writer app, setting the OpenAI API key in IntelliJ IDEA, establishing a connection to the GPT-3 engine, teaching the ghost writer app how to write, and running the ghost writer Java app. The final result is an application that generates spooky stories written for kids just in time for Halloween.

Twilio has released a new CodeExchange app designed to assist Healthcare and Life Sciences organizations with patient outreach and engagement through SMS-based communication. The Patient Outreach blueprint includes core components of a prototype application, along with technical guides for successful implementation and customization. This solution blueprint is intended for prototyping and testing purposes only and not for use in production environments. Twilio's HLS team aims to provide partnership and enablement to help organizations connect their business challenges with the buildable solutions that Twilio can offer, ultimately leading to a successful, widespread adoption of custom innovations.

Effective communication technologies are essential tools for identifying, addressing, and continuously improving health inequities in the healthcare industry. Organizations can deploy accessible solutions that reach people where they are by using channels like SMS, phone calls, video, and more, which provide invaluable data to personalize individual engagement and virtual care journeys based on users' own feedback and behaviors. Communication technologies can help bridge language, border, and community gaps, enabling organizations to reach a wider audience and drive equitable outcomes through direct communication. By leveraging digital engagement, organizations can learn about the challenges their users are facing and adjust their approach to deliver better, more accessible care solutions.

This article explains how to use SendGrid's Event Webhook and Twilio Function Service to share global unsubscribe data with multiple subusers. It provides a step-by-step guide on creating a Twilio Function Service, adding SendGrid API key as an environment variable, deploying the function service, connecting SendGrid Subusers to the service, and testing the setup. The author also suggests exploring other ways to leverage email data and recommends checking out their guide on 15 Ways You Can Use Data to Engage Your Customers at every step of their journey.

In this tutorial, we learn how to create an application with Python and FFmpeg that turns voice recordings into shareable videos for social media. The requirements include one or more voice recordings stored in a Twilio account, Python 3.6+ installed, and FFmpeg version 4.3.1 or newer installed. We create the project structure with directories for images, fonts, videos, and recordings. We then use Python's subprocess module to call FFmpeg commands that generate a video from an audio file, obtain the duration of a recording, convert audio to video, add a spinning record on top of the background, and add text to the video. The final result is a shareable video with sound waves, a spinning record, and a title.

This article provides a tutorial on how to use Twilio Programmable SMS and Google Sheets to create a journal of special moments. The author suggests that it's easy to forget small but memorable events, especially when life is busy with children. To combat this, they recommend recording a memory every day in an Excel sheet or leather-bound journal. However, the author found this solution too time-consuming and instead opted for Twilio Programmable SMS, which allows users to set up a dedicated phone number that can record text messages to a Google sheet. The tutorial requires a free or paid Twilio account and a free Google account. It involves setting up a Google Sheet with columns for date, sender's phone number, and message content, then using the Script Editor to create a function that appends new rows to the spreadsheet when it receives POST requests from Twilio. The author also provides an optional security feature that allows only pre-approved phone numbers to add to the spreadsheet.

Twilio has announced a series of updates at its SIGNAL conference aimed at improving business messaging capabilities. The company revealed Twilio MessagingX, a platform designed for the next decade of business messaging, and added new features to enhance messaging in a trusted ecosystem. These include simplified onboarding through the Twilio Trust Hub, advanced throughput management, granular reporting within Messaging Insights, and support for emerging rich messaging app channels like WhatsApp Business API and Google Business Messages. The company also introduced the Twilio Content API to create consistent rich messaging experiences across channels.

Twilio has introduced Twilio Engage, the first growth automation platform built on top of a customer data platform (CDP). The platform combines Twilio Segment's world-class CDP with Twilio's robust communication APIs. Twilio Engage aims to provide businesses with hyper-personalized communications at every step of the customer journey by empowering developers and marketers to build faster, enabling real-time, unified customer profiles, and offering a single platform for designing engagement strategies across all channels and integrations. The company is currently accepting requests for limited access private beta.

Twilio has launched its next-generation messaging platform, Twilio MessagingX, designed to power the next decade of business messaging by building deeper relationships through trusted, high-quality messaging that gives consumers choice. The platform includes features like message body redaction and Advanced Opt-out, accessing trusted ecosystems through the Twilio Trust Hub and APIs, and support for new channel choices such as Google Business Messages. Twilio continues to invest in quality with its acquisitions and partnerships, aiming to deliver every message as expected. The company is committed to partnering with developers and customers for the next decade of business messaging, focusing on trust, quality, and choice.

Building a livestreaming application with Twilio Live and Express involves creating a server-side application that handles both the streamer's and audience members' experiences. The application uses Node.js and Express for the server side and vanilla JavaScript on the client side. The streamer experience includes creating a Twilio Video Room, capturing audio and video streams, and sending them to an audience member through a PlayerStreamer. The audience experience involves connecting to a livestream using the Twilio Live Player SDK, playing the content in the browser, and displaying it in real-time. A temporary public URL is generated using ngrok for testing purposes, allowing users to share links with others to view or participate in the livestream.

The Twilio coding gloves were first introduced on the stage at SIGNAL 2019, where they made their grand entrance as part of a coding challenge between Twilio's developer-CEO Jeff Lawson and other attendees. The original design was inspired by cycling gloves due to a tight deadline, but later evolved into compression gloves with features such as wrist support, breathable material, and fingerless design. After 20 months of development, the team overcame supply chain challenges caused by COVID-19 to produce a full run of coding gloves in seven different styles, which will be given away at this year's SIGNAL conference. The gloves are designed to provide comfort, dexterity, and tactile feedback for developers during long coding sessions.

Twilio is helping more than 300 million people access COVID-19 vaccines and trusted information through its technology, funding, and partnerships with organizations such as UNICEF, Save the Children, and Civic Nation. The company has committed $18 million in vaccine equity grants to support global vaccination efforts, including $10 million to Gavi's COVAX program, which aims to provide COVID-19 vaccines to low-income countries. Twilio is also working with its customers and grantees to build digital engagement across the vaccine lifecycle, from sourcing to distributing shots, and helping people schedule appointments and drive interest in getting vaccinated. The company believes that focusing on vaccine distribution is a crucial way to make an impact during the pandemic, as every vaccination not only protects individual lives but also reduces community spread and tames the evolution of variants.

Twilio.org has launched the CodeExchange for Good, a curated open-source library of social impact applications that aim to help organizations quickly respond with effective digital engagement programs. The library offers pre-built templates for various use cases, including virtual medical visits and disaster response systems, which can be deployed in minutes with zero coding required. These applications are designed for nonprofits and social impact organizations and prioritize solutions built with the intention of creating social impact. The library is open-source, allowing developers to contribute and extend existing apps or submit their own. Twilio.org invites developers passionate about social impact to participate and contribute to the growing repository of open-source vaccine hesitancy chatbots, which aims to increase vaccine uptake globally.

This tutorial demonstrates how to build a serverless livestreaming solution using Twilio Live, a relatively new addition to the Twilio family of communication services. The solution allows users to share their computer screen and microphone audio with an audience in real-time, without installing any software locally. The application consists of two main components: a host application that manages the live stream, and an audience application that connects to and plays back the livestream. The project is built using Node.js, Twilio Functions, and the Twilio Live API. The host application uses the Twilio Video library to create a video room, obtain an access token, and start sending media tracks to the room. The audience application uses the Twilio Live Player SDK to connect to the stream and play back the video. The project is fully functional and can be deployed to Twilio Functions for use in production.

With growing concerns over data privacy, first-party data has become essential for companies aiming to create personalized and trustworthy customer experiences, in compliance with regulations like GDPR and CCPA. First-party data, collected directly from customers, offers more accuracy and privacy compared to third-party data, which is often acquired without explicit consent and can degrade over time. Companies can leverage first-party data to show attentiveness to customer preferences and maintain trust. Successful activation of first-party data requires alignment among stakeholders, standardization, validation, and consistency across all tools used for engagement. A robust data strategy enables businesses to utilize this data effectively, enhancing customer interactions and boosting brand reputation.

SIGNAL Developer Mode is an augmentation to the SIGNAL conference experience that runs inside a terminal, providing access to schedules, demos, resources, and tools like checkout and chat functionality. It's available to all SIGNAL ticket holders with a Twilio CLI plugin installation. The mode includes new features such as automatic demo setup, helpful resources, and the ability to code alongside speakers during sessions. Developers can use hotkeys and keyboard navigation to navigate the interface, with options to resize or hide the sidebar for better terminal size compatibility. If issues arise, developers can check the GitHub repository for known issues or reach out to SIGNAL Concierge for support using a paid ticket. The mode is built in JavaScript using React.js and open-source projects, and its source code is available on GitHub.

SIGNAL, Twilio's virtual customer & developer conference, is an event not to miss for 50,000 developers, product leaders, and visionaries who will discuss the future of customer engagement and explore what it means to be a digital-first company. The conference features keynotes from industry-leading brands, best-selling authors, and luminaries in anti-racism, including CEO Jeff Lawson, Heather McGhee, General Stan McChrystal, and Simu Liu, as well as Michelle Obama. SIGNAL also offers product announcements, cutting-edge demos, live coding experiences, a "Developer Mode" for developers to interact with the content, supersized Superclass workshops, 75+ content sessions, live and on-demand streaming, avatar building, and opportunities to connect with Twilio product experts and build for good.

Twilio is a global company with over 4,000 employees working remotely, where the author found her purpose by volunteering for various initiatives and joining employee resource groups that helped her understand the vulnerabilities of other minorities. The company's culture values diversity and encourages its employees to be authentic and bring their unique perspectives to work. In the sales team, Jill Barrientos found a supportive environment where she could share her own experiences and learn from others, including being selected as a Bar Raiser to assess cultural affinity with potential candidates. She also participated in mentorship programs that focused on personal development and connections, which resonated with her as a single mom from a diverse background. Ultimately, Jill's experience at Twilio showed her that finding purpose is a personal journey, and the company provides opportunities for employees to discover their passions and make a positive impact.

Environment variables are an effective way to configure PHP applications by keeping settings outside of the code, making it easier to prevent secure credentials from being exposed and maintain applications across multiple environments. In this tutorial, you can learn how to access and set environment variables in PHP using Superglobals, getenv(), apache_getenv(), putenv(), and other methods, as well as how to use .env files for a more convenient approach. It's essential to remember that environment variables should be filtered and validated like any external data to ensure security and maintainability.

The launch of Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) has caused a shift in the way email tracking is measured, with many senders experiencing an increase in anonymous open activity triggered by Apple machines. To combat this, Twilio SendGrid has introduced the Apple Machine Open Indicator, a boolean field included with all open events to identify MPP-enabled user opens that are not from human engagement. This indicator empowers senders to distinguish between real human engagement and anonymized data, allowing them to respect recipient privacy while still harnessing the power of human email engagement data when available.

This summary provides a concise overview of the tutorial on sending emails in Laravel 8 using Gmail's SMTP server. The tutorial covers setting up the necessary configuration, creating a model and database migration, generating a Mailable class, and setting up routes for API endpoints. It also discusses the benefits of using Gmail's SMTP server, including stability and consistent performance. Additionally, it highlights the importance of configuring Google account settings to allow less secure apps to access your Gmail account. The tutorial concludes by providing instructions on testing the application using Postman or cURL. Overall, this summary provides a comprehensive overview of the steps required to send emails in Laravel 8 using Gmail's SMTP server.

The tutorial covers 5 popular ways to make HTTP requests using Python, including `requests`, `urllib3`, `httplib2`, `httpx`, and the built-in `urllib` module. The author uses NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day API to demonstrate how to send GET requests with each method, storing the API key securely in a `.env` file. The tutorial provides code examples for each method and offers suggestions for further exploration and experimentation.

Twilio, a global cloud communication platform company, has made corporate philanthropy and employee giving a core part of its corporate ethos. The company's Global Impact Day initiative brings together Twilions (employees) to participate in volunteer opportunities that support local and regional causes, charities, and organizations. This event fosters deep engagement with the public and strengthens internal culture, fostering employee happiness and building a more motivated workforce. By giving back to their communities, Twilio employees not only make a positive impact but also contribute to the company's brand advocacy, customer loyalty, and attracting like-minded talent.

This project enables users to sign up for SMS notifications with a verified sign-up page, using Twilio's Verify API to prevent fraud and ensure that only those who want to receive messages are sent. The application allows users to select topics or tags to be notified about, segmenting the messages to different groups of people. Users can modify the subscription options, add new ones, or remove them altogether, making it a customizable tool for businesses and organizations to keep their customers engaged with important updates.

Working with environment variables in Java allows for the configuration of Java applications without explicitly storing settings in code, providing several advantages such as avoiding updates to code when settings change, preventing exposure of sensitive credentials, and enabling deployment of the same code in multiple environments. The most common way to access environment variables is through the `System.getenv()` method, which can be used to retrieve values or a default value if no matching key is found. Environment variables can also be set using various methods including setting them via the operating system's shell, command prompt or PowerShell console, and using .env files that store key-value pairs defining environment variables required for an application to work. Reading .env files can be achieved using packages such as dotenv-java or dotenv-kotlin, and it is essential to exclude sensitive data from version control when storing it in .env files.

"Twilio Programmable Voice allows developers to build better user experiences by handling no-answer scenarios with voicemail and callback functionality. The tutorial demonstrates how to use Twilio's Programmable Voice capabilities to create a web application that can handle incoming calls, detect when the caller is not available, and prompt them to leave a message or request a callback."

To send an SMS with Java and the Spark framework, you need to set up a Twilio account and install ngrok. Then, create a new Java project in IntelliJ IDEA, add the necessary dependencies, and write a Java class that responds to incoming SMS messages with a text message. After running the application, set up a webhook with Twilio using ngrok's public URL and configure it to send incoming message notifications to your Java application. Finally, test the application by sending a text message to your Twilio phone number on your mobile device.

The next generation of customer engagement is expected to be shaped by five key trends: tackling data volume, investing in flexible and customizable systems, creating an omnichannel tech stack, leveraging AI-powered chatbots, and prioritizing employee experience. To navigate these changes, businesses need to invest in developer-first solutions that provide the building blocks to create systems that meet every business need, rather than forcing them on form and functionality. This will enable companies to build high-quality, personalized experiences that engage customers at exactly the right time in their journey.

In this article, you learned how to build a Single Page Application in PHP using Yii 2.0 and Vue.js. You started by creating a new application named vue_library_app and setting up the database for the library app. Then, you created an API helper to interact with the backend API. Next, you built several components such as BooksList, BookForm, and BookItem to display and manage books in the library. Finally, you set up a router to handle client-side routing and integrated it with the Vue application.

The introduction of 5G with 6G already being discussed means that older networks like 2G and 3G are being phased out, leaving IoT devices scrambling to upgrade their equipment. To future-proof your IoT fleet, consider upgrading your devices' IoT SIM cards to a Multi-IMSI architecture and eSIM hardware at the same time. This will help you navigate the fragmented landscape of cellular innovation and minimize the need for physical SIM swaps in the future. The main advantages of 5G are ultra-low latency and high bandwidth, but for most IoT use cases, these are not needed, making a bet on a 4G-LTE modem a safe bet for any IoT device builder today. eSIMs can hold multiple SIM profiles at once, eliminating the need to physically swap SIMs, but true independence comes with Consumer Profiles that have switching code either on the SIM itself or the device, and Multi-IMSI SIM profiles are ideal for larger global deployments, providing access to dozens or hundreds of networks with a single SIM profile.

Twilio Flex Insights currently supports only one reporting timezone per account, which limits its functionality for multi-location businesses. To overcome this limitation, users can create a custom metric to display conversation and activity times in the local timezone of each location. This is achieved by creating a new variable that stores numeric values representing timezones and then using it to calculate the local time. The custom metric is created using a formula that takes into account the time in seconds and the timezone value, allowing for accurate representation of time in different zones. While this solution does not enable filtering or segmentation by date attribute in different timezones, it provides a convenient way to display local times without requiring external tools like Excel or API exports.

The system uses Twilio's Answering Machine Detection (AMD) feature to determine whether an incoming call is answered by a human or an answering machine. If the call is answered by a human, it plays a delivery reminder message. Otherwise, it leaves a delivery reminder message on the answering machine and sends a reminder message via SMS. The system uses Node.js to make outgoing calls and Twilio's APIs to interact with the phone number and send SMS messages.

Jeff Lawson, CEO of Twilio, is a developer and executive with an addiction to converting intangible concepts into real and accessible solutions. He reminisces about coding projects he worked on as a child, such as building a computerized address book and a scanner-based wishlist experience for his extreme sporting goods shop. Jeff's weekend project, the Zoom Cube, was designed not for himself but for friends and family using Zoom, with features like Bluetooth connectivity and a user-friendly interface. He emphasizes the importance of lowering barriers to entry and making technology accessible to users. Jeff also shares his approach to learning and improvement, stating that "you're always going to have things you want to improve" and that it's essential to recognize progress and learn from mistakes. His projects with his children, such as a simile machine and an electronic dice roller, showcase the value of collaboration and creative problem-solving in software development.

Twilio Programmable Voice allows employees to work from home by creating a solution that enables remote working with Twilio, SIP softphone software or an SIP IP Phone. To start, create a TwiML bin to allow the remote worker to place outbound calls and associate it with a purchased Twilio number. Next, configure a SIP domain for your account, which is similar to a phone number in the PSTN. This allows you to register your softphone to your Twilio account. Connect a softphone to your Twilio SIP endpoint using Zoiper's softphone or another softphone application like X-Lite. Alternatively, connect an IP Phone like OBi2162 from Obihai to your Twilio SIP endpoint. The setup involves navigating to the Configuration Dashboard and selecting "Service Provider Set-up" -> OBiTALK Compatible Service Providers -> Twilio, where you can enter your Domain, Username, and Password. Once set up, your softphone or IP Phone should be able to place calls from home and receive incoming calls.

Mel Feuerman's chatbot app, HALTwilio, was inspired by Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey and Joseph Weizenbaum's natural language chatbot ELIZA. The original version of the app used Twilio's messaging API to have "conversations" with users, encouraging them to share how they were feeling. Since then, the app has evolved into a more complex tool that helps users learn to express themselves in multiple languages, including English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, and Chinese. The app uses Twilio for messaging on WhatsApp and provides interactive lessons to teach users the spelling and pronunciation of greetings in their chosen language. Feuerman's passion for learning languages is tied to his life experiences, including taking Chinese classes to learn basic phrases to greet his neighbors. At 81 years old, Feuerman has spent over 50 years learning programming and has found Twilio to be an ideal platform for developing iOS apps. He continues to refine the app and explore new technologies like Google's Dialogflow.

The Repository pattern is a design pattern that provides an abstraction layer between the domain and data mapping layers, allowing for decoupling of code from concrete implementations. In the context of Laravel, this means using interfaces to define methods that must be implemented by repository classes, which encapsulate database-related logic. By doing so, the application becomes more maintainable and scalable, as changes can be made to the interface without affecting the controller or other parts of the application. The code in the provided article demonstrates how to implement the Repository pattern in a Laravel application, including creating an interface for the Order model, implementing the repository class, and binding it to the interface using a Service Provider.