Twilio Conversations for Salesforce

Twilio Conversations is the backbone of text-based communication across Twilio Frontline and Twilio Flex. While both of these products provide a user interface for managers to view agent conversations, it's valuable to extend this visibility to other employees in many cases.

Twilio’s Solution Engineering Organization has created a lightweight Salesforce Lightning Component that allows Salesforce users to view the conversations between your customers and agents – with proper security controls, of course – directly from the Salesforce Contact record.

In this article, we will walk you through how to install and configure this package, as well as how to customize it for your organization’s needs.

Getting started

Twilio Conversations for Salesforce is an open source project and an unmanaged Salesforce AppExchange app. It's ready to be used out of the box but also allows you to customize as much as you'd like.

You can find the source code to the app in this Github repository.

Prerequisites

To get started you will need:

• Salesforce Developer or Sandbox with System Administrator access
• Salesforce SFDX CLI installed on your local machine
• A Twilio account - sign up for a free developer account here

Furthermore, this application is designed to work with Twilio Frontline out of the box. If you have not implemented Frontline, you can find tutorials and quickstarts here: Get started with Twilio Frontline

Step 1: Log in to your Salesforce Environment

Log into your Salesforce environment by visiting https://login.salesforce.com/

Step 2: Copy and paste this link into your browser

Copy the next line and paste it into a browser tab:

Step 3: Install the Package

Choose the installation option that makes sense for your use-case. Install for All Users is best for testing.

Check the Yes, grant access to these third-party web sites option and then hit Continue:

Step 4: Create a Twilio API Key

Log into the Twilio Console, then click the Account menu. Navigate to API keys & tokens.

On the next page, click the Create API key button and create a key by filling out the fields. Save the credentials – we’ll use them in the next step.

Step 5: Add Twilio Credentials to your Salesforce environment

Log into your Salesforce environment and create a new Twilio Account record using the API key. Go to Twilio Accounts:

You’ll want to enter a Twilio Account name, your Account SID, plus the API Key SID and secret from the key you created in the previous step.

Step 6: Add the Lightning component to the Contact Record page layout

Scroll down to the bottom of the lightning widgets then drag and drop the Conversations widget onto the page.

Excellent! And with that, you’re now ready to test the integration.

Test it out

Now, let’s test to make sure everything is working properly.

Step 1: Create a test Salesforce contact with your phone number

The component references the MobilePhone field on the Contact record. Essentially, it queries Twilio Conversations for a list of every conversation associated with that phone number.

By creating a contact with your mobile phone number, we will be able to see all of the conversations you have had with a Frontline user.

Step 2: Log into Frontline

Log into your Frontline account using either the Frontline mobile app or the web user interface (https://frontline.twilio.com/login)

Step 3: Start a Conversation with the Test Contact

Navigate to the Contact List page in Frontline, select your test contact, and send a message.

Step 4: Refresh the Salesforce Contact Record

Go back to the Salesforce Contact Record page, refresh the page, and you should see the conversation!

Integrating Twilio Frontline and Conversations with Salesforce

And with that, you have a Salesforce integration which lets you quickly view conversations inside Twilio Frontline. We can’t wait to see how you use it!

Supporting Assets/ Documentation/ Links

• Twilio Conversations documentation
• Twilio Frontline documentation
• Frontline Serverless quickstart 

Phil Bredeson is a Solutions Architect at Twilio.

Al Kiramoto is a Solutions Architect at Twilio. He lives in Dallas - TX and enjoys working with customers and solving business problems - besides a good barbecue and TexMex food. He can be reached at akiramoto [at] twilio.com

Natalie Huynh is a Solutions Engineer at Twilio. She is always looking for new ways to improve the customer experience through digital communication. She can be reached at nhuynh [at] twilio.com