If there's interest in this kind of stuff, I'm working on open-sourcing the core of a SaaS side project[0] I have. It's visual voicemail on steroids (cliché, sorry) and, like the linked article describes, accepts your forwarded call and handles the voicemail. Afterwards (and this was my original use-case), it can trigger a bunch of hooks to your favorite things — Dropbox, email, Slack, SMS, Zapier, what have you (and all right out of the box).<p>I built it because I was on Android and wanted to keep my moms voicemails. :)<p>[0] <a href="https://tinyvoicemail.com" rel="nofollow">https://tinyvoicemail.com</a>
I hate voicemail so much.<p>I wanted my phone number to "ring forever" if I didn't pick up, and here is the Twilio twiml bin that does that:<p><pre><code> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Response>
<Pause length="600"/>
<Hangup />
</Response>
</code></pre>
OK, actually ring for 10 minutes, but that might as well be forever ...
This is super simple, and I like that using Twilio Studio makes it easy to expand and customise.<p>But for just the end goal, depending on use case specifics, another option is to use Twimlets which has the added bonus of the missing voicemail to email.
<a href="https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets" rel="nofollow">https://www.twilio.com/labs/twimlets</a><p>I've been thinking of building something a little bit more in depth, using Twilio Studio and Google Firebase, with proper dial-in voicemail retrieval, SMS notification, and maybe Sendgrid voicemail to email.<p>Does anyone has a ready-rolled Twilio Studio direct to Firebase example?
The only issue I have with Twilio is their charging. For voicemails, calls typically last less than 10 seconds, and often only a second (because they hang up and don't leave a message) - but as they charge per minute you are billed the full 60 seconds each call.<p>I built something similar as a side project but switched to Nexmo, purely because they charge per second. It was a fun thing to build and test.
I would also recommend having a look at Anveo. They have a visual call flow handler that is less flexible than Twilio, but generally easier to understand and faster to make changes in. <a href="https://www.anveo.com/consumer/features.asp?code=ivrcallflow" rel="nofollow">https://www.anveo.com/consumer/features.asp?code=ivrcallflow</a>
Twilio has a great API and documentation etc. But I don't understand why we don't kill the old telephone system as soon as possible. And for anyone who has looked at how SMS actually works, it's a dumpster fire similar to XMPP but probably worse.
Twilio is pretty great but for this use case using Google Voice is a lot simpler (assuming its available in your country)<p>I recently did this for a firm that is fully remote now during pandemic. They had non voip line for main number. Set the office phone to FW to a GV number and put GV in DND so it goes straight to voicemail which was what they wanted. Then setup GV to send voicemail to email and gmail to forward to slack channel using the basic slack email integration app.<p>All in all very easy to setup in 20 min or less and get transcribed VM in slack channel with link to play the message as well.
The one feature that everyone seems to be missing with these tutorials is a simple tool to have people confirm that they would like to accept the forwarded call... I'm helping a mutual aid group and we have a list of people whose phones all ring simultaneously (meaning that inevitably someones voicemail answers first) and I have yet to find an easy way to implement a simple "Press any key to accept this call" where the first person to answer AND press any key gets the call...
I did this a while back, and got rid of the home phone. We had made the transition to VoIP in the early 2000s, and then migrated the number to Google, Anveo, and finally Twilio. I was tired of getting calls all day for various things and decided to make a Twilio Studio IVR. Now, I have text messages and certain calls (if someone vocalizes a choice or pushes a key) forwarded to mine or my wife's mobile.
Twilio really is a great provider. Sure they're expensive, and sure you have to pay to lease your number every month, but I've had so much fun with them.<p>For example I hooked I setup a simple "on-call" system by monitoring a specific Slack channel, and when emergency-messages were present, would dial and play a message to an engineer. Wonderfully reliable and worked really well.
I've been wondering, how hard would it be to set up a system like Apple's "hide my email" but for phone numbers, generating a new random phone number whenever I need to give it out?