We are trying to build a 2-way communication application. The main purpose is to send updates on service work orders. It functions great until we have two or more work orders with the same phone number. The conversations get confused at that point. With email, replies can be parsed for what we need to keep the conversation on track. With SMS there is no way we know of to do this. Twilio says the only way to do this is to use a bank of numbers. Work order 1 conversation on this Twilio number, work order 2 to this Twilio number, and so on. Work order gets closed the number is released. Problem is this could be 20+ Twilio numbers per location. Any ideas? We are not married to Twilio.
0
votes
1 Answers
0
votes
Twilio developer evangelist here.
When you are talking about SMS, there is simply nothing in the protocol that allows for us to thread conversations, so yes, you will need multiple numbers.
To work out how many numbers you would need, you just need an estimate of the maximum number of conversations that may exist for one external phone number at a time. If that number could be messaging about 20 different orders, then you will need 20 numbers, however if there are 20 open orders but each external number will only ever interact with 5 of them, then you can use only 5 numbers for this. Also, if there are different orders and different people interacting with them at each location, you could still use the same number pool. Check out this article for more detail on the size of your number pool
You should also check out Twilio Proxy which is built to handle situations like this, including managing a number pool and automatically increasing your available number pool if necessary.
