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Step 1: Create Twilio Account

The first thing we need to do is sign-up for a free Twilio account.

try twilio for free

Once you sign-up, Twilio will need to either send you a text message or give you a quick call to verify that you’re a real person and not a malicious spam bot.

 verify human

You’ll get either a text message or a phone call with a verification code. Enter that verification code and we can proceed to the fun part: getting a phone number.

verification code

Twilio will assign you a random phone number, but you can feel free to look around and see what other numbers are available. For the purposes of this tutorial, any number will do.

first phone number

At this point you have now become the proud owner of a programmable phone number. Sweet! Go ahead and click on “Get started”. On the next page click on the red button to “Go To Your Account”.

Step 2: Configure Twilio Number

When you’re logged-in to the dashboard, you can click on the “numbers” tab to see all of the phone numbers you own.

manage numbers

Clicking on a number brings you to the number’s configuration page. When someone sends a message or makes a phone call to your number, Twilio needs to know what to do. In order to deal with these inbound events, Twilio makes use of a construct known as a webhook. A webhook is simply a URL that Twilio will call in to in order to retrieve instructions on how to handle the incoming message or phone call.

twilio webhooks

Each phone number has two configurable webhooks:

  1. Voice Request URL for incoming phone calls
  2. Messaging Request URL for incoming SMS or MMS messages

Great. Now you have a Twilio phone number that we can interact with.