FileMaker Screen Pop with Twilio

Twilio is a leading cloud communications platform, according to an IDC MarketScape report. Their platform is used by major companies, such as Lyft, Twitter, American Red Cross, and Salesforce, expanding digital communications with custom, scalable solutions. A FileMaker and Twilio Integration works well together for sending reminder messages to your clients or for automated internal communication within your organization. It can also receive information just as well as it sends it out. You could retrieve answers from surveys or appointment confirmations you messaged to customers. Wouldn't it be great if FileMaker notified you when your customers contacted you, just as easily as you contacted them? With a webhook and a few lines of code, your FileMaker solution can notify you via screen pops when your customers reach out.

Let's see what a customer call notification could look like.

Setup

Twilio Account - If you already have an existing account, you can log in to your console. If not, you can sign up for a trial account here.

Twilio Console ​- On the console, you can activate a trial phone number. Once you have an active number, you can navigate to its settings by clicking the active number to configure Twilio to contact your webhook.

Webhook File - This web script is what connects Twilio to FileMaker. When you receive a call on your active number, Twilio's API will pass the call's information to the webhook file, which then passes it to your FileMaker solution via the Data API. The webhook file must be hosted on a web server and must be accessible over the web to Twilio's API. Twilio's API expects a TwiML response, so our webhook returns "Hello World!" to the caller. You can read more about what else you can retrieve from your webhook in Twilio's API Documentation.

FileMaker Solution - You will then need to set up a web log table to store data from incoming calls passed by Twilio, as well as a listener table. The webhook data will include the phone number that was called, so you will know which user to notify in your solution.​​

How It Works

1. When a user logs into the FileMaker solution, the startup script finds the user in the user table and creates a listener record for them. FileMaker then opens a hidden window on the listener layout that has an OnRecordLoad script trigger.

2. When a user receives a call from Twilio, the call is routed to the webhook file.

3. The webhook file runs a script in the FileMaker solution to create a new record in the web log table and populate it with the call data.

4. After the web log record is created, the webhook will find the user's listener record and delete it, triggering our OnRecordLoad script.

5. The OnRecordLoad script then performs the screen pop by opening a new window and showing the call's information in front of the user.

Conclusion

With a webhook, you can integrate your FileMaker solution with Twilio to provide screen pops, showing call and messaging data, and much more.

Connecting FileMaker to the other tools your business runs on? That's what we do. Contact us today if you would like help integrating your FileMaker solution with Twilio!​