Establish an Account with Twilio¶
If you have not already done so, please see the article Texting from TouchPoint-Overview in order to understand the big picture before you begin.
See also
To use the TouchPoint texting integration with Twilio, you will need to establish an account with Twilio for your church. Twilio uses pre-paid accounts, so when you purchase the Toll-Free number, you will want to deposit enough funds to last for a month or so. You would of course want to check with Twilio for the most up-to-date pricing, but the cost has been $2 per Toll-Free number per month and the texts have been $0.0075 per text.
Important
We highly recommend you purchase a Toll-Free number instead of a local number. This is due to the fact that 10-digit local numbers are subject to an additional registration process and other fees related to A2P 10DLC. See Twilio’s What is A2P 10DLC? help article for more information about this. Toll-Free numbers are not affected by the A2P 10DLC changes. Also, Toll-Free numbers send text messages at a rate of 3 messages per second whereas local numbers only send 1 message per second.
Your System Admin must complete the setup process for you in TouchPoint.
Below is the first part of getting your database ready to use Twilio for texting.
Twilio Account¶
- Step 1
Contact Twilio through their site for non-profits at https://www.twilio.org to create an account for your church.
Complete the form on their website with your church’s information.
If you do not want to receive replies to your texts, see the section below.
- Step 2
After you have completed the process to establish your account, purchase a Toll-Free phone number from Twilio.
- Step 3
Go through the Toll-Free Message Verification process so that all of your text messages will be delivered.
Tip
You can check the status of your Toll-Free Message Verification by following these steps on Twilio’s website.
Configure Your Twilio Account for Two-Way SMS¶
The following steps are required to enable the compliance messages and reply words functionality.
- Step 1
Click on the ellipsis (three horizontal dots) in the left menu and select Phone Numbers.
- Step 2
Click on the phone number you purchased and scroll down to the Messaging section.
- Step 3
Make sure that CONFIGURE WITH Webhooks, TwiML Bins, Functions, Studio, or Proxy is selected.
- Step 4
For the action when A MESSAGE COMES IN, select Webhook from the list on the left, HTTP POST from the list on the right, and between them enter
https://mychurch.tpsdb.com/incomingsms, where “mychurch” is replaced with your database name.- Step 5
Repeat steps 2-4 for any remaining phone numbers you purchased.
- Step 6
On the Twilio Dashboard, find the Account SID and the Auth Token. Contact Twilio if you have trouble finding these on their website. After you find the account numbers in Twilio, proceed with the steps in the next article Setup TouchPoint for Texting.
See also
Receiving Calls and Texts¶
If you do not want to receive calls or texts on your Twilio number, be sure to contact Twilio to make sure your account is set up this way.
Note
If you have any questions or need help regarding your Twilio account, please contact Twilio for support using Help in the top right corner of Twilio’s website when you log on.
If you need help setting up your TouchPoint database for texting, please submit a Support Request using ?Help in the right corner of your TouchPoint database and Contact Support.
Caution
If you started with a Test Account on Twilio, you will need to actually upgrade and purchase a Toll-Free phone number from them in order to be able to text via TouchPoint for any numbers other than those phone numbers you have verified on Twilio’s website. You do not need more than one phone number in order to use Twilio with TouchPoint. However, you do need at least one phone number that you have purchased.
Latest Update |
8/28/2023 |
Added info about Toll-Free Message Verification