Twilio Service

Please text your questions to our +1.805.438.2782 number so we can provide more information in the walkthrough specific to your question.

Summary

In the beginning we were able to send messages without a third party like Twilio for free. Eventually when text message costs reached unlimited the industry started to charge senders.

We started using a telecommunication service provider called Twilio a year or more ago, who seems to be the best funded and adept at satisfying mobile carrier needs. Their documentation is clearly written and we have found them to be -- adequate.

Costs

So far in our experience the costs have been much lower then anticpated. There's a cost per phone number per month, cost for registration for each mobile provider, costs per portion of a text message depending on the carrier receiving the message, and probably some other miscellaneous costs like taxes.

Account Registration

The owner of the agency needs to take charge of registering this very important account, to protect access to data that can quickly become expensive if abused. This is the link to register for your Twilio account, a Free Trial will be very temporary and soon you'll need to upgrade in a following step.

https://www.twilio.com/try-twilio

Please be sensitive to the password requirement, you'll want to save that somewhere.

Verify your email address after registration by following their Verify Your Email link from your mailbox.

Verify your phone number after email verification by entering your phone number submitting it, then entering a verification code sent to that number.

Ahoy Survey!

We chose the following values for the survey that might make your Twilio account configuration start differently depending on how you enter the following information.

• Which Twilio product are you here to use? -- SMS
• What do you plan to build with Twilio? -- Alerts & Notifications
• Do you represent a nonprofit or public sector organization? -- No
• Which best describes how you will use Twilio? -- To communicate directly with my customers
• How do you want to build with Twilio? -- With code
• What is your preferred coding language? -- Other
• Would you like Twilio to host your code? -- No, I want to use my own hosting service

Completing Your Registration

Please find the upgrade link next to Trial: $15.50, the top left seafoam bubble in the following image.

Main Address

Main Address (you will later have an option for the billing address if different from this main address)

Sales Tax exempt?

Funding Account

We found their automatic recharges works well and the following image should be a good starting point for funding SMS services for most agencies.

Enter Card or PayPal Details

Congratulations!

(Refresh the page to remove the trial bubble at the top)

We noticed a message after the refresh, "You're limited to 50 daily messages. New Sub accounts can't be added. Check your email for details." If you do not see that message then disregard the next area Lifting Your Restrictions.

Lifting Your Restrictions

You might receive an email sent to your mailbox that looks like the following.

Reply to their email considering their questions carefully.

• Q1 -- We are an interpreting agency needing to verify identities and send communications relating to appointments in Courts, Healthcare, and other public services like schools.
• Q2 -- Your Business Related Information
• Q3 -- Your answer (We don't want to answer this for you because your notifications are customizable)
• Q4 -- Your answer (We don't want to answer this for you because your answer could be better then ours)

Configure Account

Next lets work on updating My First Test Account to be specific for Aqua Schedules, so that you can revoke sending permissions in the future if necessary. Please navigate to Account => General Settings (link shown in the following image) to update this particular account to Aqua Schedules (Aqua Chroma).

Update the Account Name to Aqua Schedules, shown in the following image and configure the following two radio selections.

• Account Name -- Aqua Schedules
• Require two-factor authentication (2FA) -- Every log-in: We will always ask for a verification code.
• SSL certificate validation -- Enabled: Enforces certificate validation on webhooks from Twilio to your servers. Twilio does not support self-signed certificates yet.

Be sure to click the Save button after making changes to these types of forms. After saving click the Aqua Schedules link under the word Console to leave the account settings.

Finding & Buying A Phone Number

Navigate by selecting Phone Numbers => Manage => Buy a number. Consider the Search Criteria of the phone number, Search by digits, matched to the first part of the number. We recommend getting a number similar to your business number. Try changing the first part of the Search Criteria to Locality and entering localities that you see exist under the phone numbers shown available for purchase. At the time of this writing numbers are $1.15 per month, when we first started it was $1.00 about a year or two ago.

Click Buy to the far right of the number that you would like to purchase.

Review Phone Number

Note: Check the box after reading the terms and conditions to comply with Emergency Terms & Conditions. If you receive the following salmon message then please see the above Lifting Your Restrictions area.

Once purchased close the window by clicking the X on the top right of the form

For now you can ignore the A2P 10DLC Registration and the configuration, we'll get to that soon.

Messaging Service

Create a messaging service by navigating the menu on the left by clicking Messaging => Services then click the blue Create Messaging Service

Step 1

• Messaging Service Friendly Name -- Aqua Schedules
• What do you want to use this Messaging Service for? -- Notify My Users

Then click Update Messaging Service to be taken to Step 2

Step 2

Click Add Senders, this will open a popup. Verify Sender Type Phone Number then click Continue

Select the check box to the left of the phone number you purchased then click Add Phone Numbers.

Then Click Step 3: Set up integration

Step 3

Select the radio next to Send a webhook. Enter the following into the Request URL field, replace the {Domain} with your scheduling system information, examples below.

https://{Domain}/iappi/functions/twilio.message.response.php

• https://myagency.scheduling.online/iappi/functions/twilio.message.response.php
• https://scheduling.myagency.com/iappi/functions/twilio.message.response.php

The rest of the form can remain unchanged like in the following image, then click Step 4: Add compliance info

Step 4

Click Register for A2P (Application to Person)

This area is very diverse for each agency, follow the prompts and complete everything to the best of your ability.

A2P 10DLC Registration

Effective January 26, 2023, all new A2P Campaign registrations are subject to a manual vetting process. We are currently experiencing 2-3 week delays vetting A2P 10DLC Campaigns. We are working internally and with our industry partners to improve the vetting times. In the meantime, please account for these delays when registering and for more information visit our FAQ on A2P 10DLC Campaign Vetting FAQ.

Quote Source: Twilio https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260800720410-What-is-A2P-10DLC- August 17th, 2023

Effective July 5, 2023, all 10DLC phone numbers used to send SMS and MMS messages to U.S. phone numbers must be fully registered to an approved campaign under your brand. Messages sent using unregistered phone numbers will be subject to a gradual increase of message blocking by Twilio, beginning on July 5, 2023, ultimately leading to a full block of all unregistered U.S.-bound messages sent after August 31, 2023. For more information see our Shutdown of Unregistered 10DLC Messaging FAQ.

Quote Source: Twilio https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/1260800720410-What-is-A2P-10DLC- August 17th, 2023

Definitions For The Following Paragraph

• Messenger - A packet of data that delivers your message.
• Kill - To not let the messenger through.

Once you have registered your A2P 10DLC we recommend that you don't enter the Twilio number into Aqua Schedules Twilio Settings until you have received approval after the 2-3 week process. If you do go ahead and enter your new Twilio Number in Aqua Schedules then they will accept the Messenger then once in holding check for proper documentation (A2P 10DLC Paperwork) then will Kill any Messenger undocumented -- without letting us know. You can see which messages are Killed in their Logs, they will be Killing a percentage of undocumented Messengers that will become 100% by August 31st 2023, at no charge to you. If you leave the Twilio phone number out of Aqua Schedules then we will email the notification instead.

End of definitions for Kill & Messenger.

Image Source: Wikimedia https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1d/Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-030-0780-28%2C_Krakau%2C_Razzia_von_deutscher_Ordnungspolizei.jpg

Entering Information Into Aqua Schedules

We are almost complete, click Aqua Schedules near the top left in the blue area. Something similar to the following should be displayed. The important part is the Account Info with SID, Token, and Phone Number.

Copy Account Information into your scheduling system

(Settings => Twilio Settings)

Copy the Account SID and paste it into Aqua Schedules. Same process for the Auth Token which once revealed will look a little like the SID number, a jumble of characters. Then copy the phone number with one change, it shouldn't have the + leading the number in Aqua Schedules.

Conclusion

Test the text service in Aqua Schedules. Please tell us how this went after testing to our +1.805.438.2782 number so we can learn more about this process.