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I am trying to create a group conversation using the Twilio Conversations API. I am currently following the "Group Texting in Conversations: Scenario 1" tutorial in their documentation using cURL.

(I'm obviously not going to post my Twilio Account SID or Twilio Auth Token in the code snippets below, but I am entering the tokens on my machine.)

I can successfully create a conversation sid (Step 1), using the following command:

curl -X POST https://conversations.twilio.com/v1/Conversations --data-urlencode "FriendlyName=orderId" -u $TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID:$TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN

I can successfully add a chat participant using the conversation sid (Step 1), using the following command:

curl -X POST https://conversations.twilio.com/v1/Conversations/CHXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/Participants --data-urlencode "Identity=chatParticipant", where CHXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX is the conversation sid returned from the command above.

I can successfully add an SMS participant (Step 3) using the same conversation sid.

curl -X POST https://conversations.twilio.com/v1/Conversations/CHXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/Participants --data-urlencode "MessagingBinding.Address=+18001234567" -u $TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID:$TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN, where +18001234567 is my personal cell phone number (not my Twilio number).

When I fetch the conversation participants using the same conversation sid above, my two participants are listed in the response from the following command:

curl -X GET 'https://conversations.twilio.com/v1/Conversations/CHXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/Participants?PageSize=20' -u $TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID:$TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN

However, at Step 4, after running the "send a message" command:

curl -X POST https://conversations.twilio.com/v1/Conversations/CHXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX/Messages --data-urlencode "Body=this is a test message" --data-urlencode "Author=chatParticipant" -u $TWILIO_ACCOUNT_SID:$TWILIO_AUTH_TOKEN,

I am presented with the following error:

{ code: 50435, message: 'Group MMS activation failed', more_info: 'https://www.twilio.com/docs/errors/50435', status: 412 }

There is no entry in the documentation for error code 50435. The "more_info" link provided leads to a 404 page. Both my Twilio number and personal cell phone number supports both SMS and MMS messaging. I am really at a loss for how to debug at this stage. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

philnash
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Katie
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1 Answers1

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Twilio developer evangelist here.

Sorry that the error URL is a 404 right now. I am seeing what I can do to get that published.

There are a few reasons that a 50435 error might show up though. In this case it appears that there is a chat participant in the conversation without a projected address. In this case, that participant is your step 1 participant with the ID "chatParticipant".

You should be able to update the participant using the API and give them a projected address (a Twilio number that is used in the group MMS). Then you should be able to send messages between your participants.

Let me know if that helps.

philnash
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  • Thank you so much! That did the trick. Thank you again for reaching out and I'll keep checking in on the error URLs (I'm sure I'll encounter a few more). – Katie May 28 '21 at 03:25
  • Most of the errors in Twilio have URLs that work, I promise! It's just some bits of Conversations that are missing at the moment. Hopefully you don't come across too many other errors anyway! – philnash May 28 '21 at 03:26
  • Can a twilio number initiate the group conversation ? My use case is that I want to start a SMS group without any chat app involved. All the participants will use SMS. I am not sure how to send the first message without using the "identity" field. That field is only available for chat app participants – user1952143 Oct 01 '21 at 21:05
  • @user1952143 in the scenario 1 in the docs, the real estate user initiated the group chat with an SMS from their projected address, which is a Twilio number. Is that what you’re looking for? Or can you explain what you mean further? – philnash Oct 01 '21 at 21:35