sms demo for L-net

I've been working on integrating text messaging with L-net and got a demo working today. A few weeks ago, Pam from libraryh3lp put me on to Twilio, which makes a super-easy SMS to HTTP API. How is that for some acronyms?

It works something like this:

1. The patron texts their message to our number.

2. Twilio gets the text and hits our website in a certain place.

3. Our website generates a new chat for whoever is monitoring.

First the librarian sees:

And then she clicks 'accept' and sees:

As you an see, the chat is fake, it just contains a link to answer the question on our website.

You try it:

1. Log into Spark and monitor the 'practice2' workgroup.
2. Send a text to (415) 599-2671 and begin your message with the code 1779-8845 (if this were a real service, we'd get a local number and not require a code).

Twilio made it very easy to set this up and test it - wow! If nothing else, we can start on usability testing to see if this kind of setup will work. If we actually end up using this, their price, at 3 cents per message, might be a little expensive. I am going to have to do my public duty and explore all the options.