Introducing Twilio Add-ons: Do more with less code

Introducing Twilio Add-ons: Do more with less code

Today, Twilio announced Add-ons, letting you instantly install partner features and capabilities through the Twilio API. This announcement fits right in with Twilio’s DNA. Being the tinkerers we are, we don’t just obsess about what you build, but also “how” you build.  And with Add-ons we want to make it just as easy to build with the entire ecosystem of communications APIs as it is to build with Twilio.

If you dissect the anatomy of a communications app, it’s much more than the voice and video call or the message. It usually means stitching together a range of technologies and APIs to make something that’s unique to you. Something that fits your business, your customers, and your product. Sometimes Twilio has you covered. Sometimes you need additional specialized communications tools to work side-by-side with Twilio.

We see these creative mashups all the time:

• You want to use sentiment analysis to automatically pinpoint calls with angry customers and bridge in a supervisor.
• You want to detect the language of inbound messages to route them to a person who can respond quickly in native tongue.
• You want to identify demographics of an inbound sales call so you can prioritize people with the best buying profile.
• You want to use spam or fraud scoring on inbound calls and messages so you can drop them on the floor before they distract your staff.

APIs and the whole idea of app composability make all of this possible in the first place. But anyone that’s done it knows that it doesn’t come without some effort. Integrating all these disparate technologies means new authentication models, new accounts to manage and even different programming paradigms and languages that can alter your application’s architecture. And yes, it means new code. Often lots of it.

And it’s usually not the kind code we love to write. It’s not the code that takes groundbreaking ideas about business workflow and customer experience and turns them into reality. No, it’s really the equivalent of glue. Middleware. I’m not trying to hate. Middleware can have an elegance and intrigue about it, but most would rather skip it. Especially when that middleware represents common elements and logic that just repeats what others have already done.

Add-ons

This universal disdain for writing middleware is really the genesis of Add-ons. We think working with 3rd party building blocks should be just as easy as working with Twilio on its own.

Instead of requiring developers to write integrations, Add-ons are pre-integrated capabilities, by partners and Twilio, that you can enable on the Twilio API for your account. It’s done with one click of an “install” button in the Twilio Console. Here’s an example of an Add-on for TCPA compliance:

After that, the behavior of the Twilio API is transformed to incorporate the new capabilities. There’s no need re-architect your application or Twilio communications flows. All of a sudden the same Lookup API that was returning carrier information is now returning a fraud score for the phone number. The SMS API that was sending and receiving messages is now returning sentiment analysis on message bodies. And those are just a couple examples of what’s possible today. As the number of Add-ons grows, so do the possibilities of what you can do with the Twilio API.

Marketplace – A Catalog of Vetted Options

The experience of using Add-ons starts with a new Twilio Marketplace. This is where you browse through available Add-ons, filtered by the Twilio products you want to use Add-ons with.

Any Add-on you select has been pre-verified by Twilio before it’s published to make sure it meets criteria of scale, security and reliability.

There are three categories of Add-ons available today and more on the way.

Number Add-ons

of you that aren’t familiar with Twilio’s Lookup product, it’s designed to give you information about a phone number. Things like carrier, number formating, and more recently, caller name. It’s great information for cleaning up your contacts and for using in the call or message flow to give you a better idea about who’s trying to reach you.

Number Add-ons supercharge the Lookup and Programmable Voice API. They do this using Twilio partners. These are partners that, in some cases, have built an entire business dedicated to maintaining specific information about a phone number.

For example White Pages Pro has an Add-on called Phone Reputation. Phone Reputation returns risk information about a phone number so you can identify fraudulent signups and deter bad behavior on inbound calls and messages. It provides a simple, actionable, real-time spam reputation level of 1-4. A level 4 phone number has a 97% likelihood of having engaged in spam or scam, giving you confidence to know when to block a number. Here’s an example of the json response that would be returned.

Another great example is an Add-on called Mobile Ownership from a Payfone. This returns phone number registration information so you can check if an owner has changed before sending a message. That way you stay compliant and avoid complaints from people that haven’t opted in to hearing from you.

Messaging Add-ons

Messaging Add-ons, as the name implies, add insights into the content of messages. For instance, our partner IBM offers Add-ons that use natural language processing technology and machine learning algorithms. This way you can extract semantic meta-data from content, such as information on people, places, companies, topics, and languages. Here’s an example of what their Watson Insights Add-on returns:

There are lots other Messaging Add-ons available. Even a Food delivery Add-on from msg.ai that parses out the urgency and the topic someone is sending for food delivery services.

Recording Add-ons

Recordings Add-ons are coming soon. These allow you to get information about call recordings with services like IBM Watson & Voicebase and more are on the way. For your voice calls, you can gather everything from language identification, to sentiment analysis, to voice transcription.

Publish your own Add-on

Add-ons are all available to install and use from the new Twilio Marketplace. And the beauty of a Marketplace is that it’s open to anyone to publish an Add-on. After a short vetting process, you can offer your API to more than 1 million web and mobile developers by publishing to the Twilio Marketplace. These aren’t just any developers, these are developers who build voice, video, and messaging apps with Twilio.

We handle the billing as well. It’s a rev-share model with Twilio. You set the price and Twilio handles all payment processing through one bill, saving you and your customers the extra accounting steps.

You can start your submission and learn more here

More Intelligent Communications

Add-ons are all about making communications more intelligent, with sentiment analysis, speech transcriptions, demographic insights and more. They let you to do more with less code.

Look through the Marketplace and see what Add-ons will be most useful for you.

We can’t wait to see what (and how) you build.