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We have a C# MVC app that sends and receives texts utilizing the Twilio API effortlessly.

We have a button that sends a text to one or multiple people FROM a certain department (HR) / Twilio phone number.

Our problem is- When a user responds to the HR text, how do we craft a conversation between the HR department workers personal phone number, and the original recipient. (So they can communicate right in the SMS chat)

We tried:

  1. To create a 'Group MMS Chat' but that doesn't seem to be supported by Twilio (yet)
  2. To store the senders personal number, and the Twilio registered number - to make our server act as a 'switchboard', but that wont work if two different HR workers send a text to the same person.

I have read the questions / docs here: But cookies don't feel like the proper answer.

  1. Twilio: How to map an SMS reply to an original SMS

  2. Send Group Message with Twilio

  3. https://www.twilio.com/docs/sms/tutorials/employee-directory-csharp-mvc#handle-multiple-or-no-results
  4. https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223136287-How-do-Twilio-cookies-work-

Please let me know if this is too broad / a bad question, and i'll try my best to fix it. I don't want to go to SO jail :)

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Ben O'Neill
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1 Answers1

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You might think about using twilio proxy service , the flow for that would look like this

  1. Pre select which HR person number or numbers will be responsible for that communication.

  2. provision a new twilio number (not the same one already used by the HR department) this number will be used for the duration on the conversation

  3. Initiate a proxy session https://www.twilio.com/proxy

** This is a more expansive approach , because you will need a twilio number per each individual conversation

Shachaf.Gortler
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  • The security of each HR workers personal number isn't a big deal, so i don't know if Proxy is our solution. If we wanted to buy a number for each person we could just do that. We just want to find a way to 'pass off' the text to a personal number, and let more conversations get started through our app. – Ben O'Neill May 08 '18 at 16:16
  • it less about the security aspect , its more having a group conversation between a single person and a group represent by one voice ( a twilio number). you can always code up you own forwarding solution when a user replies to the shared twilio number twilio has a conversation token valid for 4 hours so that might work if the conversation are short enough. – Shachaf.Gortler May 08 '18 at 20:17
  • So if the HR user sends out a text to 5 employees, with the cookie token for 4 hours - we could wire up a forwarding solution for each individual conversation on the HR users cell phone? We figured out a forwarding solution if they were messaging one person, but with multiple it got messy. – Ben O'Neill May 09 '18 at 12:32