Rocketchat adding a name to incoming Twilio SMS numbers

Question

With Rocket.chat and Twilio - the incoming chat 'user' is just a mobile number. This is not very user friendly if multiple conversations are ongoing. Responding to and tracking conversations by name and not phone number is much better if possible.

I have a database that could be used to match the incoming SMS phone numbers to a human name for most of my expected incoming SMS IM's. Trying to figure out the best way to do a lookup and add that to the Twilio # identity so that the 'chat' makes more sense to the in-house user who would be using it.

Appreciate any ideas anyone might have that would save me from re-inventing the wheel w/ Twilio and Rocket.Chat.

Related to RocketChat: How to send SMS Messages to Livechat channel from mobile

Answer 1

Twilio developer evangelist here.

I have not used RocketChat for this before, I just took a look through the code to see what I could find.

Turns out, RocketChat has a field for phone number on the user model and when an incoming message is received it looks up a user from their phone number. If the user is found, the message is sent from the user, otherwise a new user is created.

So, what you need to do is merge your database of usernames and phone numbers with the RocketChat User model.

Hope that helps!