Twilio Features #part 3#

Twilio API is now-a-days popular for its quick response to request. It provides necessary and beneficial features.  Below descriptions of other features:

1)Voice mail Transcription:
Twilio's speech-to-text transcription API automatically convert a voicemail message to text. The resulting text and a link to the audio of the recording is then emailed to the user. Process is, A user visits a webpage, enters their phone number and clicks the Call button, Twilio initiates an outgoing call to that number, the caller to leaves a recorded message, that messages is transcribed to text, and the text and a link to the audio is emailed to the user.

2)Weather By Phone:
Weather By Phone lets a caller check the weather. Twilio answers the call, the application asks the caller for their country zip code, the application looks up the weather using a remote web service and reads the response to the caller.

3)Audio Recording:
A website user views a web page with a button labelled 'Start Recording' and a status field reading 'Ready to start recording'. Upon clicking the button the status label will read 'On Air' and the user will hear instructions to leave a message after the beep. The recording will begin and the user can talk until they click a 'Stop Recording' button, or the recording will time out after 30 seconds. After the recording is complete, the message will be played back for the user to hear. The recording will then be available for future use via the Twilio REST API.

4)Browser Soft Phone:
A user enters a phone number they want to call and clicks the 'Start Call' button. Twilio will call the specified phone number and setup a call between that phone number and the browser. The call status and a disconnect button are displayed on the page and a browser based dialpad is available for touch tone entry. The parties may talk until one of them disconnects. If an incoming call is detected, the browser will prompt the user to accept the call, and make the connection if confirmed.

5)Browser to Browser Call:
A user enters his name into a form so he may be identified. Next, the user is prompted to enter another user name to call. Upon pressing the 'Start Call' button Twilio will call the browser of the specified user, which will automatically answer and establish a voice chat session. The call status and a disconnect button are displayed on the screen. The parties may talk until one of them disconnects.

6)Click to Call:
A user clicks a 'Start Call' button on a web page. Twilio will call a specified third party phone and setup a call between the user's browser and that party's phone number. A call status and a disconnect button are displayed on the web page during the call. The parties may talk until one of them disconnects.

7)Twilio Client Browser Conference Call:
A user loads a web page and is immediately joined into a conference call. If the user is the first person to join they will hear hold music. The conference begins when a second participant arrives. Status text shows the current state of the call.

8)Twilio Client Conference Call Monitor:
A user loads a web page, which lists all conference rooms with a status of in-progress. Next to each conference room name is a link to 'Listen in'. When clicked, the user will be added to the conference in muted mode, allowing them to hear the call in progress. The 'Listen in' link changes to a 'Leave' link allowing the user to exit the conference and choose another.

9)Text-to-Speech:
A user enters the text to be spoken into a text field and selects a male or female voice. The user clicks a button labelled 'Speak to Me', which will read the text out loud.Twilio Client can be used to offer a spoken version of website content, rss feeds, read important updates, provide live commenting and more.

10)SMS Message Notifications and Alerts:
With Twilio SMS, developers can easily send and receive SMS messages programmatically from Twilio phone numbers. A notification when the message is successfully sent or fails, makes this feature more useful.

11)Send an SMS From a Call:
Sending text messages during a phone call is a useful way to give users content for offline reference, or even confirm an sms subscription. A Caller will dial into a Twilio number and be prompted to confirm their subscription. Once they confirm their sms subscription, a confirmation SMS message will be sent back to them.

These are the feature which make this API a great one to use. I hope the short description of every feature will be useful for the readers.

Twilio Features #part 2#

Twilio offers different services for the technical market according to user's needs. It provides necessary and beneficial features. Below descriptions of other features:

1)IVR: Database Integration:
http://tottho.org/samepage/blog/icteng/245-twilio-ivr-system.html  from this site one can get knowledge about IVR system of Twilio. Process is:
  * Customer dials a Twilio number and Twilio POSTs information to your application.
  * Your server outputs menu TwiML that prompts the customer for input.
  * Twilio reads the prompt and gathers the customer's tracking number.
  * Your server processes the customer input and returns the customer's information.
 Example:
   <Response>
    <Gather action="handle-user-input.php" numDigits="1">
        <Say>Welcome to TPS.</Say>
        <Say>For store hours, press 1.</Say>
        <Say>To speak to an agent, press 2.</Say>
        <Say>To check your package status, press 3.</Say>
    </Gather>
    <!-- If customer doesn't input anything, prompt and try again. -->
    <Say>Sorry, I didn't get your response.</Say>
    <Redirect>handle-incoming-call.xml</Redirect>
   </Response>

2)IVR: Logging and Reporting:
When a call comes into one's Twilio number, Twilio sends the phone call information (caller's phone number,their city, state and zip code) to one's application as an HTTP request. Logging this information is easy to do, and could be  useful for reporting later on.

3)Moderated Conference:
Conferencing is common and useful voice application. A conference allows the audio of two or more callers to be joined. Twilio's API lets one build simple conferences that just bridge audio or complex large moderated multiuser conference bridges. example: an application that presents a caller with a menu and allows them to pick if they are a listener, speaker, or moderator.

4)Phone Menu:
Twilio makes it easy to create automated phone menus. A user calls and is greeted with a list of choices. For example, "For location, press 1". The user enters his/her choice on the telephone keypad, and the next list of choices or information is read.

5)Phone Poll:
Phone polls are a simple way to gather lots of information in a short manner using Twilio. Process is:
   * Places an outgoing call using the Twilio REST API.
   * Outputs phone poll TwiML and options are read.
   * User picks an option and Twilio uses GET to send Digits back to /poll.
   * Users selection is inserted into a MySQL database.
   * Outputs Thank You TwiML and phone call is disconnected.

6)Reject an Incoming Call:
Twilio allows to make a phone call busy or reject a call from blacklisted numbers. With <Reject> verb user can implement a simple blacklist with just a few lines of code.

7)Simple Conferencing:
There will be a dedicated common conference room functionality by default where users will be connected.
    <Response>
      <Say>Joining a conference room</Say>
      <Dial>
        <Conference>MyRoom</Conference>
      </Dial>
   </Response>
This code causes the first participant to join a conference room called "MyRoom". By default, the first participant will be muted and hear the default hold music while they wait for more people to join the conference.

8)Voice Broadcast:
A user signs up for the service, specifying his/her phone number and a set of phone numbers that will receive his/her broadcast messages. When the user calls the service, he/she is prompted to record a message. On completion, Twilio broadcasts this message to that user's specified contacts.

9)Voicemail:
A voicemail system consists of two applications. One application allows people to record messages and leave them in a mailbox. The other application allows the owner of the mailbox to listen to and manage the messages he has received.

Above exciting features are also able to make one's application useful and beneficial.

Twilio IVR system

Say goodbye to busy signals -- with this motto Twilio has brought a great feature which is called "IVR" (Interative voice response).
In telecommunications, customers interact with company's host system via a telephone keypad or by speech recognition by the help of IVR. Customers proceed by getting information over phone with prerecorded or dynamically generated audio. IVR applications are useful when there is need to break down an interface into a series of simple interactions.

I have an experience to work with similar application built with IVR. Twilio API feature, IVR has been used there to break down the series of interactions.

IVR system is linked with my project, atkirei.com . This project is about Barber shop where customer can book for date time for consuming service of that barber shop. Customer can choose date time from web portal and press call button then barber will get a call and hear about booking information in automated voice. Then barber can press 1 for making the requst "accepted", press 2 for making the requst "rejected" or press other number/nothing for making the booking request "pending". After pressing system will get the pressed digit info and system will update database or proceed according to that. If there is no IVR system then barber needs to login in web portal and accept/reject  from there. This could be a time consuming for barber and also sometimes irritating if there are lots of requests then he/she has to login again and again for accepting/rejecting. IVR system makes this project time consuming and quick reply from barber to customer as barber accepts/rejects customer will get reply for his/her request quickly.

IVR in a few lines of code. One can create IVR using any web language and seamlessly merge it with existing applications or databases. I have built up my system  with JAVA and Mysql.

JAVA class where phone function is initiated,

String callText="ユーザーXより 2012-12-10 10:00:00にて予約リクエストが入っております";
String twiml = "<Response><Say voice='woman' language='ja-jp'>" + callText + "</Say>"+
  "<Gather action='url/User_Profile/makeRequestServlet.do' method='GET' numDigits='1'><Say voice='woman' language='ja-jp'>受け入れるために1を押してください</Say>"+
  "<Pause length='2'/>"+"<Say voice='woman' language='ja-jp'>拒絶する2を押してください</Say>"+"<Pause length='2'/>"+
  "<Say voice='woman' language='ja-jp'>要求を保留中のため、プレス3</Say><Pause length='2'/></Gather>"+
  "<Say voice='woman' language='ja-jp'>申し訳ありませんが、応答はまだしませんでした</Say>" +
  "<Pause length='2'/><Say voice='woman' language='ja-jp'>申し訳ありませんが、応答はまだしませんでした</Say></Response>";

Obstacles:
1) For developing this system, i got idea from Twilio site. However, i was facing problem for this process because i have linked one parameter with say verb named speed='0.5'. For this i was getting "Application error" and i was not getting this problem. So, i sent email to Twilio support desk and they have immediatly replied to me within that day and i got that problem was for speed.

2) For this process, i need to use urlencode for link and foreign language(Japan).

With some obstacles also, i could successfully completed this system and got call with IVR system.