Twilio Autopilot Node.js Quickstart

You can sign up for a free Twilio trial account here.

• When you sign up, you'll be asked to verify your personal phone number. This helps Twilio verify your identity and also allows you to make calls to your phone from your Twilio account while in trial mode.
• Once you verify your number, you'll be asked to create a project. For the sake of this tutorial, you can click on the "Learn and Explore" template. Give your project a name, or just click "skip remaining steps" to continue with the default.
• Once you get through the project creation flow, you'll arrive at your project dashboard in the Twilio Console. This is where you'll be able to access your Account SID, authentication token, find a Twilio phone number, and more.

If you don't currently own a Twilio phone number with Voice functionality, you'll need to purchase one. After navigating to the Buy a Number page, check the "Voice" box and click "Search."

You’ll then see a list of available phone numbers and their capabilities. Find a number that you like and click "Buy" to add it to your account.

Create your bot

Now you can spin up a new bot. You could use a ready-made template that comes with pre-trained samples and already-created tasks, but let's make it from scratch for the purposes of this guide.

A bot is a conversational application that you can deploy across multiple channels, like SMS and Voice. Each bot is independent of other bots you create and has a unique set of tasks that it can do.

In your Autopilot console, select create a new Bot by selecting Start from scratch

You will have to give your bot a unique name, but do not worry! You can change it later. Then click Create a bot. Congratulations! You've just created an Autopilot bot.

Create and train one of your bot's tasks

A Twilio Autopilot bot runs on tasks.

A task is a set of actions your bot needs to carry out when interacting with users. Tasks are modeled on something your end user wants or needs, and the specific things your bot needs to do to help them out.

A bot usually has many tasks that power it. These could be simple tasks like confirm or cancel or more complex tasks like make-a-reservation.

Autopilot Actions

Actions instruct the bot on how to perform a given task.

When a bot executes a task, it will run through all specified actions and then end the interaction. Most bots will have many tasks that each contain multiple actions. You can imagine a bot that says something, listens for input, collects some data, and then hands off the caller to an agent.

Your bot comes with four pre-trained, pre-built tasks. We'll start by modifying the greeting task, which just says a brief introduction including what items the user can buy. We'll then make a slightly more complicated task called buy_clothes that says a brief response and listens for user input.

Make a task with Static JSON

Click the Program button corresponding to the greeting task and replace the JSON in the Action Bin by copying and pasting the JSON code below.

{
    "actions": [
        {
            "say": "Hello, we have over one hundred shirts, shoes, pants, skirts, and dresses you can buy! What can I help you with today?"
        },
        {
            "listen": true
        }
    ]
}

Now click Save edits below and click All Tasks to add your new task to your bot.

Next, we will use static JSON to program the task. After that, we will train the task with a few samples. Once the task is trained, we can test the bot in the chat simulator.

All of this is done through the web console.

Click the blue Add a task button to add a new task, then name it buy_clothes before clicking the blue Add button. Now it's time to program your new task with static JSON.

Press the Program button corresponding to buy_clothes and put in the following JSON:

{
    "actions": [
        {
            "say": "What clothes would you like to order?"
        },
        {
            "listen": true
        }
    ]
}

Click Save edits again and now it's time to move on to training these tasks with different samples.

Train your bot

Now we need to train our bot to listen for key words and phrases that show that our user wants to know what clothes are available to buy or to order different clothes. To do this, we'll add some samples to this new task so that our bot can distinguish it from other tasks, like the buy_clothes task.

A sample is the training data your bot uses to understand user input. Samples define how people might describe a task when speaking or typing, and are necessary for your bot to learn how to interact with your users.

Next, click the Train link next to the buy_clothes task to see the training view.

Here you can add samples which are phrases to trigger your buy_clothes task. Add "I'd like to buy some clothes" and then click Add sample.

Feel free to add a few more similar phrases, like maybe "I need some clothes", "Can I purchase clothing", and more. Have fun and get creative!

The greeting task already has fourteen samples like "hello", "hi", and "how's it going" built-in and pre-trained. You could add some more like "what does this bot do" if you wish.

Now before we can test our bot's new tasks, we have to build the model.

Build the model

Before your bot can update and leverage the samples we just added, you'll need to create a Model Build. You'll see that alert whenever you add new samples, fields, field values, or change the name of a task. Creating a new Model Build will incorporate these changes into the machine learning model that powers your bot. You can do this by clicking on the button that reads Build model, which sits beneath your task list:

Now it's time to test our bot in the chat simulator!

To the right of where you clicked "Build model" there's a link that reads Simulate.

Similarly, you can select Simulator from the left-hand navigation in the console to test out your model and type in a greeting to your bot!

You should also see the task that was triggered by your user input on the right, as shown below.

If the user input triggered the incorrect task, you could then add it as a sample to the correct task right on that same page! Now let's see how Fields work using that same buy_clothes task.

Create Fields

A Field is key information expressed by the end-user, such as a time, date, or number, that is usually essential for the bot to complete its task. Each Task can have a distinct set of Fields associated with it. Fields are then used in Samples to train the model on where to look for the given attributes.

There are Field Values which are the key pieces of data that people say. Field Names are the labels for a type of value. Field Types are the values represented by a field name. For our buy_clothing task, a Field Value could be "pants" or "shirt", a Field Name could be "clothing", and we could make a custom Field Type called "clothing_type."

Autopilot comes with built-in Field Types that let you create fields of a common data type, such as Date, Time, Number, and more so you don't have to define them yourself as a custom Field Type. We recommend you use built-in fields whenever possible because they are optimized to understand this type of data.

Let's now create a custom field type in the console and train it with some values. Click on Field Types on the lefthand side and scroll down to You have no custom field types. Under Custom Field Type type "Clothing" and under A Value For This Type put "pants".

Click the blue Create field type button and add more values like shorts, bottoms, skirts, dresses, shoes, and more!

Build a new model to implement the changes you've just made to your Autopilot bot. Now to add a Field to a Task, go back to Tasks and select your buy_clothes task. Click on Train and then select Fields instead of Samples.

First we'll add a built-in Field to the task. Under Field Name, type in "quantity" and under Field Type select Twilio.NUMBER from the dropdown.Then click the blue Add field button.

To add the Custom Field Clothing to the task, type "clothing" under Field Name and Clothing under Field Type. Tada! You've just created both a custom Field and a built-in Field to one of your Autopilot tasks.

Back under your buy_clothes task, modify the samples to reflect the fields, as shown in the gif below: "I wish to purchase two skirts" would turn into "I wish to purchase {quantity} {clothing}".

If you were to build the model and test your bot in the simulator again but with a message that includes these fields, you'd see the fields get displayed in the simulator like so: