maxkc
commented
4 years ago It seems from the documentation like there is no method to mass-buy numbers, but you can buy them one at a time from the API.
Correct. API or Console, unless you're looking for >100 numbers at once and they can help.
This is moderately off topic for the Issue here but @ibrand @bobbyoderek do you think it'd be helpful if I put together a page of which area code/numbers/overlays you absolutely not get between now and the election? VAN talked to them about this a couple weeks ago so I have a bunch of data that I'd be happy to share!
ibrand
Frydafly
mayefsky
This is a broad proposal to revamp Twilio phone number management in Spoke, with an eye toward making it easier for non-sophisticated users, and specifically to fix the inability to purchase many numbers at once; it covers a few individual issues that could also possibly be addressed on their own, but also might make sense to think about together as part of a broad project. Problem
Note that some of this is made obsolete/doesn't apply to the on-the-fly messaging service type features that arrived in Spoke 8+. However, as a provider of Spoke to a bunch of smaller campaigns and orgs, there is likely to be a lot of use of one-messaging-service-per-org-but-lots-of-orgs-on-one-build features this cycle.
Solution Ideally on a single page within Spoke Admin: -List of all phone numbers belonging to the Organization's Twilio Account (whether or not they came from Spoke) -Ability to buy new numbers, many at a time --Graceful failure/errors, e.g. if I didn't buy a number, is there some connection issue? Or does Twilio not have numbers from this area code? -Ability to attach and detach from messaging service, and delete numbers entirely --Why have a separate detach option? It's somewhat common that users don't buy enough numbers for their first campaigns. If they don't remove those numbers for future campaigns when they've bought more, the old numbers will still get too much usage at first (because Twilio will prioritize continuing to send to existing contacts from existing numbers). But, if the numbers actually had a good response rate, you might want them back in the pool at some point rather than spinning up even more new ones.
Nice to haves: -Potentially detecting multiple messaging services and allowing numbers to move between them might be a positive thing, for organizations that go over the daily limit for one service but don't want to move to the full on-the-fly style of things -Allowing people to search more specifically for numbers beyond area code, e.g. area code + exchange
Context Potentially Relevant APIs: https://www.twilio.com/docs/sms/services/api https://www.twilio.com/docs/sms/services/api/phonenumber-resource It seems from the documentation like there is no method to mass-buy numbers, but you can buy them one at a time from the API. Note: I am planning on migrating my build later this week to 9.0 and AWS Lambda, and will see if that resolves the issue with the current mass-buying tool; I am not sure how many others are affected by that issue.