Twilio Studio has enabled thousands of developers to quickly build and deploy complex communication workflows and scale effortlessly on Twilio Runtime, our Serverless environment. Today Studio has made publishing and deployment of Flows even more powerful.

We are pleased to announce the general availability of Studio REST API v2, providing full support for publishing of Flows via the REST API, Twilio’s helper libraries, and the Twilio CLI.

Studio flows and automated deployments

A Studio flow is created using functional widgets with a drag and drop graphical user interface. Builders and developers alike have used the simple interface to create impressively powerful no-code and low-code workflows based on their specific needs.

As Studio evolved, customers began asking for ways to programmatically create, read, update, and delete flows. Behind the Studio graphical user interface, flows …

Most Twilio.org customers use Flex as a call center. We see all sorts of use-cases, from food-banks, to crisis lines, to disaster response. In late December, a joint team from the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council and the Texas Division of Emergency Management were tasked with assisting COVID-19 vaccine distribution and needed a hybrid of a hotline and phone system.

After vaccines became available in the United States, state and local agencies across the country needed to act fast to ensure that supply chain partners and medical providers had accurate, up to date information. Texas needed to coordinate information like when shipments would arrive, how to request new shipments, and how to safely store vaccines for use are critical pieces of information to ensure that vaccines are distributed effectively.

Within one day we deployed a solution that has since handled several thousand calls about vaccine distribution logistics. In this …

There is a lot of progress being made in the battle against spam and robocallers. But – one of the techniques spammers still abuse is CallerID, known as  CallerID spoofing. CallerID spoofing falsifies where the call originates on the public telephone network allowing the fraudster to impersonate identities – and vulnerable victims like you and me answer the phone.

Currently in beta, Twilio announced Programmable Voice and Elastic SIP Trunking now perform SHAKEN/STIR verification on all  incoming calls in the United States to your Twilio local phone numbers when a SHAKEN/STIR identity header is present. The percentage of calls with the identity header will continue to rise over the coming year. You can read more about the technical implementation details under How to make trusted calls and protect against unlawful spoofing using SHAKEN/STIR. 

As part of a customized interactive IVR experience built on top of Twilio, you often need to fetch data from external APIs. Sometimes, it may take that API more than ten seconds to respond to a request. Ten seconds is the maximum time the Studio HTTP Request Widget and Run Function Widget synchronously waits for a response. What then?

In this post, I’ll show you how you can architect a solution that will extend Studio’s response times beyond 10 seconds. We also use a Twilio conference with music on hold, to avoid extended periods of silence during these requests.

Prerequisites

In order to follow this tutorial, you will need:

• Ngrok, the localhost tunneling tool, to allow you to run Express locally from your laptop for testing and development
• Node.js
• Sample Code
• Express
• A Twilio account and active number. If you don’t have an account, go ahead and create one …

One of the challenges of programmatically connecting parties over the phone is accounting for voice mail. From the perspective of the underlying telephony network, a human answering a call looks identical to an automated answering machine.

Twilio provides Answering Machine Detection (AMD) that can be enabled when placing an outbound-api call via the /Calls resource. However, when connecting to a party using the Studio Connect Call To widget (or TwiML Dial), we must use an alternative approach called "Human Detection".

Human Detection requires the answering party to positively acknowledge the call by pressing any button – something voicemail cannot do. In this post, we will use Human Detection, to make sure voicemail remains on Twilio rather than inadvertently being left on the end-users device.

Where might you need Human Detection?

In my last post, Build Voice Mail with SMS and Email Notifications Using Twilio Studio, Functions, and SendGrid, …

I am a big fan of serverless Twilio Studio and Twilio Functions because of their flexibility.

Studio provides you a canvas, letting you drag and drop communications flows into place – how perfect is that? And Functions lets you run Node.js without worrying about setting up a server or hosting.

One common telephony requirement we see is the need to build out voicemail, should a dialed party be unable to answer the call. Often, you can improve the system by forwarding any recordings over email or SMS. So, let’s get our Bob Ross on and walk through building a solution!

Prerequisites

In order to follow this tutorial, you will need:

• A Twilio account and active number. If you don’t have an account, go ahead and create one now.
• If you want transcribed voicemails sent to you via email, you’ll also need a Twilio SendGrid account, with a verified sender …

As a developer, you are constantly learning and looking for new tools and ways to develop faster. With the pace of new technology and features being released, sometimes it is hard to keep up. We are excited to announce Twilio Releases, a new way for you to:

• Stay abreast of the latest APIs and features every quarter
• Get a sneak peak into upcoming beta programs
• Download free code samples from Twilio CodeExchange

Twilio Releases is where you come to take your Twilio game to the next-level. 🚀

What is “Twilio Releases”? 🤔

Twilio Releases is a new program designed to make it easy for you to learn all about the latest APIs, features, and best practices, on the Twilio Customer Engagement Platform. Our first Twilio Releases: Summer 2020 webinar was on July 21st, where we shared the latest and greatest features of the season with our ever-growing developer community.

If …

In a recent blog post, about building a dial-in podcast service, I looked at accessibility; specifically, at how the trusty telephone brings us all closer, and can even make podcasts available to all, without expecting everyone to embrace computers and the internet.

Now, it's great to cater for a non-technical audience or those who don’t have internet access, but what if the person providing the dial-in service is a bit of a techno-phobe too or is simply busy with other things (e.g. local business owners)? Or: what if you can see the potential of Twilio phone numbers for your business or club or charity, but can't afford to employ a programmer to put your ideas into practice?

Fortunately, thanks to Twilio Runtime, you don’t need to. You really can do it all yourself, without learning how to write a webapp and maintain a server!

In this blog …

Twilio Studioは電話着信や、SMSの受信に対する処理（フロー）を設定できるビジュアルデザインツールです。このツールを用いることでプログラミングの知識を必要とせずにフローの設定を行えます。

多くの場合、電話着信・SMS受信に用いられますが、別のシステム（Webなど）で入力した予約の確認や、宅配便の再配達の案内など、決まったテンプレートをもとに外部に発信を行う場合にも利用することができます。今回はTwilio Studioで設定したフローを用いて宅配の再配達依頼の確認メッセージを発信する方法をご紹介します。

前提条件

• Twilioアカウントを持っていること（無料トライアルのサインアップ方法）
• SMSを利用できる電話番号を購入していること

また、今回作成するサンプルはあらかじめ下記の情報をユーザーが提供していることを想定しています。

• 連絡可能（SMSが受信可能）な電話番号
• 再配達の日時(yyyy/MM/dd hh:mm:ss)

Twilio Studioフローのインポート

TwilioコンソールからStudioダッシュボードを開きます。これまでにStudioフローを作成したことがない場合は下記のスクリーンショットに表示されている赤色の Create a flow ボタンをクリックし、新しいFlowの作成を開始します。

フローをこれまでに作成している場合は、既存のフローの一覧画面に表示されている新規追加ボタン（赤丸に白十字が表記されているもの）をクリックします。

Flowの名前は Confirmation Flow としました。

用意されているテンプレートか …

Using a Twilio number to forward calls to your personal phone is a common and well documented use-case, but many Twilio customers have started asking if they can use only their cell phone to place outgoing calls with their Twilio number.

This guide shows how to build a Studio Flow that will allow you to use your Twilio number as a full capable proxy, so you can place outgoing calls and receive incoming calls using only your personal phone.

Things you'll need

In order to follow this tutorial, you will need:

• A Twilio account and a Twilio phone number that can receive calls.
• Your personal phone.

The Build - Outgoing Calls

Typically, outgoing calls are created from an application with an outbound-api call request. But what if you only have your cell phone and don’t have or want to deal with an application? Well, then you would have …