About the App Pack
This article provides information and setup instructions for the Twilio SMS Communications App Pack published on the Podio App Market. Combined with a Twilio account, this pack manages two-way text message communications with all your contacts, including broadcasts to groups of contacts
Installing the App Pack and Flows
This App Pack requires Podio Premium with Podio Workflow Automation (formerly known as "Globiflow"). After installing the App Pack from the App Market, you will need to refresh within your Podio Workflow Automation (PWA) console. Note that you must refresh PWA after installing the App Pack, and before making any modifications to any app in the pack. If you make any changes to an app before refreshing in PWA, the flows for that app will not install.
If you have installed this pack into a workspace that is within a Podio organization on Podio Free, Podio Basic, or Podio Plus, you must upgrade your Podio organization to Podio Premium first, and then reinstall the app pack.
This pack includes 4 apps and more than 25 automation flows.
Setting up the App Pack with Twilio
After you have installed the apps and flows, you can set up Twilio and configure Podio to use your Twilio account. This video illustrates the setup process:
Contacts App
The contacts app is where contact information (including phone numbers) is maintained and where manual two-way communications is managed. A text message can be sent to a contact by entering a comment within a Contact item, and prefacing that comment with SMS: (or Sms: or sms: ). Text messages received from Contacts will be entered as comments as well. Podio notifications will be sent to item followers when those responses come in.
When entering new contact information, numbers will be verified to determine if they are capable of receiving text messages. For example, if a number is entered as type "Other" or "Work," the system will automatically look up the phone number in Twilio. If Twilio determines that the number is a mobile number, it will be updated auomatically within the Contact item within Podio. This check is done using Contact apps flow called "2-2 Check if reply is from non-primary number." Note that Twilio lookups costs $0.005/each, and any number manually selected as type "mobile" will not be looked up.
The video below shows how the Contacts app works.
Each Contact item can be associated with one or more Broadcast groups. This enables you to send the same text message (including merge fields) to more than one person at once.
If you attempt to send a message to a contact that has replied "STOP," then Twilio will return an error.
Broadcasts App
The Broadcasts app is where you can configure text messages to be sent to multiple contacts at once (up to 999). You can use merge variables in the broadcast message, such as [[firstname]] [[lastname]] and [[company]] so that the message will be personalized based on the value of those fields in the Contacts item.
Broadcasts can be sent immediately or scheduled for a future date/time. Future scheduled broadcasts can be updated as well, either to change the message content or the date/time of the broadcast.
The video below shows how the Broadcasts app works.
Messages App
This app maintains the log of incoming and outgoing text messages. In addition, users can create Messages items manually to schedule a text message for a specific Contact on a specific date/time.
Settings App
The settings app contains the specific parameters for your Twilio account, including phone number, Account SID, and Auth Token.