• Twilio Autopilot is now Generally Available.
• Autopilot lets you build, train and deploy AI-powered bots on any communications channel.
• Autopilot bots interface seamlessly with contact center software like Twilio Flex.
• The following features are now available as part of the General Availability of Autopilot:
• Bot Templates: Jump start your development with pre-built bot templates for common use cases and verticals.
• Simulator: Test and troubleshoot bot behavior. The Simulator is available in the console and supports testing over Voice and Chat.
• Custom Channels: Connect Autopilot bots to custom messaging channels like proprietary in-app chat or web chat.
• Event Webhooks: Monitor the performance of your bot in real-time with webhooks for key conversation events.
• Speech Optimization: Improve the accuracy of your IVR by optimizing the speech transcription for the data you’re expecting.
• New task training interface: A set of new training tools in the console to make it easier and …

• Programmable Chat: Autopilot now directly supports Programmable Chat, allowing you to build chatbots for your website or mobile app, or deploy Assistants you’ve already built to Programmable Chat with just a few clicks — existing logic and configuration will work in Chat conversations with zero code changes.
• Autopilot Studio Widget: A new Studio Widget that allows you to directly add Autopilot Assistants to your Studio flows. It also makes handing off messaging interactions from your bot to an agent a lot simpler.

The popularity of chat as a customer support channel has exploded as customers are increasingly interacting with businesses using web and mobile apps and messaging channels like SMS, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The asynchronous and informal nature of chat has a lot of advantages for customers and businesses. It delivers a better experience to customers by making it easy to contact support. It allows businesses to …

• You can now easily build WhatsApp bots with Autopilot
• You can deploy Assistants you’ve already built to WhatsApp with a few clicks
• Build your first WhatsApp bot today using Autopilot and the Twilio Sandbox for WhatsApp

With Autopilot, we want to make it possible to design and program an intelligent assistant once to deploy it instantly on all the channels your customers care about. We announced Autopilot at SIGNAL 2018 with support for Voice, SMS and Amazon Alexa, and have since added Google Assistant and Facebook Messenger. Today, we’re thrilled to announce that you can start building Autopilot Assistants for WhatsApp. You can also easily deploy Assistants you’ve already built to WhatsApp with a few clicks — existing Tasks and Actions will work in WhatsApp conversations with zero code changes.

People increasingly want to talk to businesses on the channels they prefer. In more than 180 countries, and especially …

• Autopilot CLI: Create, edit, export, import and delete Assistants directly from your development environment. Test Assistant behavior directly in the command line and bulk upload new Field Values. Import Dialogflow agents into Autopilot.
• Task Editor: Create and program tasks in the console with built-in templates for Autopilot Actions.
• <Connect><Autopilot>: Directly route live calls to an Assistant using the <Connect><Autopilot> TwiML verb.
• Field validation for Collect Actions: Validate fields collected by your Assistant during the conversation using webhooks.

We’ve been focusing a lot on the Autopilot developer experience since we launched at SIGNAL in October 2018. Since creating great conversational experiences requires continuous iteration and experimentation, we’ve been working on making it easier for developers to design and program Autopilot Assistants. That’s why we’re thrilled to announce four new features to help you build faster with Autopilot!

Autopilot CLI

The Autopilot CLI allows you to create, update, delete, export and import …

• You can now send image, video, text and PDF files up to 5 mb in size over WhatsApp.
• Sending a media message over WhatsApp is similar to sending an MMS — all you have to do is include the MediaUrl parameter in your API requests.
• Media content is currently only supported in Session Messages. If the WhatsApp session with a user expires, you must wait for an inbound message to create a new session before you can send them a media message.

We’re thrilled to announce that you can now send and receive not just images and videos, but also PDFs, text files, and audio files using the Twilio API for WhatsApp. At Twilio, our mission is to enable developers and businesses to engage effectively with their customers on the messaging channels they prefer, and that means being able to use them for rich contextual conversations. Your customers increasingly want …

• WhatsApp announced updated pricing for Template Messages today that will go into effect on March 1, 2019. Explore it in detail here.
• WhatsApp charges a separate rate to deliver messages to each of more than 140 countries today.
• This update greatly simplifies pricing for Template Messages by introducing per-country pricing for the top 24 WhatsApp markets and per-region pricing for other countries. For example, countries in Latin America that are not in the list of top 24 countries will all have the same price.
• It also introduces standard volume tiered pricing that provides progressively increasing discounts for higher volumes.
• It does not affect Session Messages, which will continue to be priced at $0.005 per message.

Simplified Pricing

A Template Message is a pre-approved message template for outbound notifications like delivery alerts and appointment reminders. You must use a WhatsApp Template Message to reach a user if more than 24 …

The Twilio API for WhatsApp gives you a simple and reliable way to reach your users directly in the WhatsApp application.

The same API you use for SMS can now be used to send WhatsApp messages. All you have to do is update two lines of code. The API works seamlessly with TwiML and our helper libraries, allowing you to add WhatsApp to existing workflows or applications in minutes. It is also compatible with Twilio developer tools like Functions, Sync, Debugger, and API Explorer.

Learn more about WhatsApp and Twilio on the product page or read the API docs.

Over the last 10 years, Twilio customers have used Programmable SMS to build innovative messaging experiences for their users, whether that’s sending instant transaction notifications for money transfers, food delivery alerts, or helping millions of people avoid parking tickets.  

Today, we’re helping customers like Deliveroo, Hays, SnapTravel, …

We’re thrilled to announce support for LINE, enabling you to deliver rich, interactive messaging experiences on one of the most popular messaging apps in the world. LINE has native support for interactive message formats like rich cards as well as sharing images, audio and video files.

Over the last 10 years, developers have used Programmable SMS to build incredibly innovative messaging experiences for their users, whether that’s a personal shopping concierge, improving patient care through regular communication or helping millions of people avoid parking tickets.  

With Twilio Channels, developers can use this same API to build these messaging experiences on RCS, Facebook Messenger and starting today, LINE. By using the Rich Messaging Extensions to the Programmable SMS API, they can also leverage the rich capabilities of these channels by simply including additional parameters in the API request.

Twilio Channels also work seamlessly with Twilio Studio …

We’re really excited to announce that Twilio Notify is now generally available. Notify provides one API to make it easy to send bulk notifications to your customers over push, SMS, and Facebook Messenger. It also makes it easy to keep track of their notification preferences, allowing you to make sure they receive critical messages by reaching them on the channels they prefer.

Beta Learnings

Since making Notify available in Beta in April 2017, we’ve seen you use it to power a wide range of innovative use-cases. FallSafety’s workplace safety application uses the accelerometer in a worker’s phone to determine when a fall has occurred, and sends out notifications to the worker’s emergency contacts using Notify. The Texas Department of Transportation uses Notify to send timely alerts to drivers about lane closures, accidents, and construction over SMS, helping them avoid hours of delays.

Over the beta period, we learned about the …