Voice posts
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According to the CDC, contact tracing is a critical part of a multi-pronged approach to fight COVID-19. Contact tracing requires public health departments to:
- Educate COVID-19 patients on the virus and interview them to identify close contacts
- Notify these contacts that they may have been exposed and should start isolating
- Monitor the ongoing symptoms and isolation measures of patients and their contacts
When implemented effectively, contact tracing can lessen the impact of COVID-19 by lowering mortality rates and allowing people to safely return to work. That’s why most city and state leaders have identified scalable contact tracing programs as key milestones to reopen their economies.
We’re here to help.
Twilio is working with public health departments and their tech partners around the globe, including New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications and GovTech in Singapore, to launch and scale communications for contact tracing. Reach out to us …
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In a previous tutorial you learned how to build an IVR system with Python, Django and Twilio. In that project you created an IVR system that provides users with information about movie show times over the phone.
In this article you are going to add automated tests for the IVR system using Pytest.
Why You Should Test Your System
Maintaining good and comprehensive tests is crucial for your project's success. First, as a developer, writing tests gives you an opportunity to experience what it's like to be a customer of your own system. Whether you are developing an API, a website, a dashboard or an IVR system, writing tests is like using your own system. If there is something wrong, or something that can be improved, you are going to notice it when you try to test it.
Good tests are tests you can trust. If once all the …
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Like millions of others, my wife recently found herself unemployed. In my efforts to help her, I offered to call the unemployment office for her, fully expecting a day’s worth of hold music before I finally connected and could hand it off to her.
I sat down at my desk, full of optimism and joy in being able to help my wife in whatever ways I could. This was quickly tempered as my first dialing attempt was met with a busy signal. Had I dialed the wrong number? A subsequent call was met the same way. While I didn’t mind listening to on-hold music all day, I wasn’t going to be able to endlessly dial, wait for a busy signal, end the call, redial, wait for a busy signal… The system was so overloaded, I couldn’t even connect to be placed on hold! Not about to walk back my offering …
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You can protect your conference call with a static passcode, and while that offers more security than nothing at all, passcodes can be guessed or leaked -- especially if they're reused over time. You can also verify the caller ID of the person calling in, but spoofing phone numbers is still easy and prevalent.
One time passcodes (OTP) offer additional security by ensuring that a user has access to the phone and number they claim to own. By sending an OTP to the user's number or email you can have confidence the person joining your call is who they say they are.
The code in this post will secure your conference line in two ways:
- Check that the person calling is a known participant
- Prevent anyone from spoofing a phone number in order to join the call with an OTP
Follow the tutorial below or check out the completed …
Voice-to-Text (VTT) or Speech Recognition is a relatively new feature of many different software systems in business today. It allows spoken words to be automatically transcribed and entered into a given system, changing raw words into data. This data can then be acted upon by the business for any number of uses: storage and analysis, automatic responses, or even having the messages transcribed and sent out via SMS like we’re going to do.
In this tutorial we’ll set up a voicemail phone line, where each incoming call is recorded and transcribed. The transcriptions will be sent by SMS to the number of your choice.
By the end of this tutorial you’ll be able to:
- Set up a free Twilio Account
- Set up a phone number linked to a Python application that records voicemails and sends their transcriptions by SMS
- Start working with TwiML markup and the Twilio suite of APIs …
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Balancing privacy and convenience can be tricky. Today I’ll show you how to forward messages and phone calls with Twilio so that you can give out a phone number where people can reach you, while keeping your real phone number a secret.
There are lots of reasons you might want to hide your real phone number. For example:
- Transacting with internet strangers such as buying/selling on Craigslist
- Giving delivery folks a number to reach you
- Putting a phone number on your business card
Prerequisites to create a forwarding number
- A Twilio account - sign up for a free one here
- A Twilio phone number with SMS and voice capabilities
- A phone number you want to forward calls and messages to. For the rest of this post, we’ll call it your cell phone number to simplify things but it can be any number with SMS and voice capabilities.
- A friend …
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In these unprecedented times, getting quick answers to common COVID-19 questions can help people navigate uncertainty. Twilio is partnering with Google Cloud to provide connectivity over PSTN or SIP with the ability to program call flows for Contact Center AI’s Rapid Response Virtual Agent program.
Google Cloud is making Contact Center AI’s Rapid Response Virtual Agent program available to government agencies, healthcare and public health organizations, and nonprofits, as well as businesses impacted by COVID-19, including travel, financial services, and retail.
How it works
Twilio Media Streams provides the ability to access the audio in real-time from your active phone calls. Using Media Streams in your applications allows you to integrate seamlessly with first or third party services. Media Streams powers the integration between Twilio and Google Cloud’s Contact Center AI via Dialogflow. The Contact Center AI receives the stream, processes the request for intent, and responds with audio. …
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When you need to get a bunch of remote people to talk together, a conference call is the simplest way to do so. Everyone dials a number and in seconds they are talking to each other. In this post we'll build a conference line that anyone can join using Twilio and Ruby on Rails.
What you'll need
In order to build this conference line you will need:
- Ruby and Bundler installed
- A Twilio account (if you don't have one yet,sign up for a new Twilio account here and receive $10 credit when you upgrade)
- A Twilio phone number that can receive incoming calls
- ngrok for testing webhooks with our local application
With those tools gathered, we can get started.
Getting started with a Rails application
For this post we will create a new Rails app. If you want to add this capability to an existing application, you …
The modern workplace requires extensive infrastructure, tools, and support to enable remote work and tele-commuting. Individuals across the globe need to be able to communicate with each other through every medium in order to be productive and stay connected. One of the most common means of communication is a simple conference call with relevant members of your team to get information quickly or share updates.
In this tutorial, you will be setting up a Django project using virtual environments, creating a free Twilio account, provisioning a phone number, and finally, creating a conference line that allows users to call your Twilio number, enter a PIN, and join a conference call.
By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to:
- Set up a free Twilio account
- Set up a conference line that accepts callers that enter a valid PIN
- Control the settings of your conference line and change configurations, …
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Twilioが提供するProgrammable Voiceを利用すると、電話の自動応答や発信をアプリケーションから制御することができます。 着信に応答する場合は、Twimlと呼ばれるマークアップ言語を用いることで、応答する言語や音声を設定することができます。 またこのProgrammable Voiceでは、2018年から標準の音声合成エンジン以外にもAmazon Pollyが使えるようになりました。
Amazon Pollyの合成音声は標準の合成音声に比べてとても滑らかなのですが、他の音声をリアルタイムで利用したいという声もよくいただきます。今回は株式会社エーアイ様が提供する日本語に特化した音声合成サービス、AITalk® Web API（以下 AITalk Web API）と連携してみました。
AITalk Web APIは 感情表現や自然な音声、豊富な話者ラインナップを提供する音声合成エンジンAITalkをSaaS型で利用できるサービスです。サーバーを自前で構築する必要がないため、他のSaaSやクラウドサービスと素早く連携できます。これまでは評価版の申し込みから利用開始まで少し時間がかかっていましたが、最近、Webから評価用アカウントを即時取得し利用できるようになりました。
必要なもの
- Node.jsおよびnpm
- AITalk Web API評価アカウント
- TwilioアカウントとTwilio電話番号
今回の記事で解説するサンプルプロジェクトはこちらのGitHubリポジトリから取得できます。