Twilio Flex Conversations Park an Interaction Plugin

Disclaimer

This software is to be considered "sample code", a Type B Deliverable, and is delivered "as-is" to the user. Twilio bears no responsibility to support the use or implementation of this software.

Important note

To use this plugin you need to have Flex Conversations enabled on your account as well as Flex UI 2.0. Please read our doc for more details about it: https://www.twilio.com/docs/flex/developer/conversations

Information about the plugin

This plugin is based in the instructions given on our doc on how to Park an Interaction. In the legacy Flex this functionality was known as "long-lived channels", but with the new Flex Conversations this feature needs to be built - hence the need for this plugin.

It adds a pause button in the chat so the conversation history is not lost. Next time the customer writes a message, if the chat was paused, the history of the conversation will be present.

Customization

You may need a different use case then what this plugin does today. For example, currently when the customer writes a message, the task is routed to the specific workflow you added in the .env file. If you need to route back to a specific agent, you can simply change the unpark-an-interaction serverless function accordingly (details for this example here).

Setup

Twilio Serverless Functions

This plugin includes a service used to park/unpark/close the interactions using Twilio Functions. Make sure you have the Twilio Serverless Toolkit installed before proceding.

• After installing it correctly, follow the procedure below:

cd serverless-park-an-interaction

cp .env.example .env

• Fill the .env file accordingly:

Config Value	Description
TWILIO_NUMBER	Your Twilio Phone Number used for Flex. Add in E.164 format. Ex.: +551143214321.
WORKSPACE_SID	TaskRouter Workspace identifier. Obtainable in the console under TaskRouter > Workspaces. Starts with WSxxxx.
CONVERSATIONS_WEBHOOK_URL	This you will need to add AFTER deploying your Twilio Serveless Functions. Once deployed, in your console under Functions and Assets > Services, click in the corresponding service. Inside you will see a function /unpark-an-interaction. Click on it, then click on Copy URL and paste in the .env

• Run

twilio serverless:deploy

*DO NOT FORGET

• After the first deploy, you need to add the CONVERSATIONS_WEBHOOK_URL and run the twilio serverless:deploy command once again.

Plugin

• First install the dependencies in the plugin's folder and create the .env file:

# If you are inside the serverless folder, first run: cd ..
cd plugin-park-an-interaction

# If you use npm
npm install

# Create the .env according to the example
cp .env.example .env

• Fill the .env file with the URL of your Twilio function created earlier /park-an-interaction.

• Inside the /public folder, create a appConfig.js file according to the appConfig.example.js file.

• Finally, to deploy the plugin, run:

twilio flex:plugins:deploy --changelog "WRITE YOUR CHANGELOG HERE"

• You can also run the plugin locally for testing purposes:

twilio flex:plugins:start

Kudos

Special thanks to Aymen Naim for the thoughtful insights and assist on building this plugin.