Spoke: Feature Request: Re-Routing Phone Call

[Frydafly]

Problem
At this time, if a person we text decides to call us, they receive an automated twilio message and are disconnected. This creates distrust between the recipient and the sender.

Solution
Options:

1. Set up an automated voicemail that sounds kinder, or more professional, that can be customized by the organization using spoke.
2. Re-route the phone calls to an official phone number provided by the organization.

Context
-- Hustle currently does the second option, and this is how it looks like in their UI:

Not everyone likes to, or is able to receive calls, so setting up option 1 for organizations that don't have the capacity would be really helpful too.

[Frydafly]

Anyone know if setting up programmable voice in twilio can resolve option 1?

[jeffm2001]

It's possible to create a TwiML bin, script it to do any of these things, and attach it to the Twilio number. You can do things like play a recorded MP3, read an automated message, redirect the call, reject the call, etc.

My TwiML bin looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Response>
  <Say>
    Thanks for calling. We can't recieve voice calls at this number, but if you text us back we will respond.
  </Say>
  <Hangup/>
</Response>

Unfortunately, this is a pretty manual process now, and I had to edit every phone number I added in Twilio individually to assign the TwiML bin. I think once phone number management is eventually brought into the Spoke app, this could be automated as well.

[Frydafly]

@jeffm2001 thanks! I'll try this manual process for now with the numbers I buy, until something gets worked out in bulk through Spoke?

[Frydafly]

Adding that if setting up the TwiML bin could be automated through switchboard-twilio, that would already relieve a lot of the load of manually adding this twiML bin to each phone number that is purchased in twilio (the current process for adding a "voicemail" to a phone number if someone attempts to call)

@ibrand pinging you since we set up switchboard-twilio together and realized that the twiML URL env variable isn't actually set up in switchboard, even though it shows up in the documentation as a feature.

[matteosb]

We'll address this in the inventory management feature. See the changes to the twilio lib in #1525
https://github.com/MoveOnOrg/Spoke/blob/7c07ed52553c5227fd50f9382c25671dd304fb17/src/server/api/lib/twilio.js#L445

[ibrand]

@matteosb is there any documentation on how this works with the new set up? I don't wanna close this issue without a clear path forward for folks who want to add a voice url set up