Version: 8.3 Beta 🚧

Twilio Voice Notification

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Voice notifications can be sent with the Twilio Notification module. To function, the Gateway must have Internet access, and a Twilio account (www.twilio.com) with voice capabilities must be created and then defined in Ignition.

caution

This module requires the Alarm Notification module to be installed and enabled. If the Alarm Notification module is not installed or is disabled, this module will fault with a warning in the logs and display the state as "Faulted Missing Dependency" on the Platform > System > Modules page.

Creating a Twilio Voice Notification Profile allows you to configure a custom message associated with the alarm using the Alarm Notification Pipeline via an automated phone call when an alarm is triggered. The alarm can optionally be acknowledged through the phone call.

Messaging Configurations

Notification profile settings include enabling acknowledgement, pin validation, broadcasting notification calls to all users, and recording calls. Additionally, the language and text-to-speech voice to use for generating calls are selected when creating or editing the notification profile.

The Twilio module adds a User PIN field to user profiles, which is where the pin validation value used to authenticate users is pulled from. When enabled, validation is required before the user can read alarm information or acknowledge the alarm. When acknowledgement is enabled, the call will ask users if they want to acknowledge or ignore an alarm, and if the user selects acknowledge, the alarm state is changed to acknowledged.

If you choose to enable broadcasting, the voice message is sent to all users on the assigned roster at once. When broadcast notifications are used, the above PIN authentication and alarm acknowledgement settings are ignored. This means that broadcasted calls are unauthenticated by default, even as they might contain sensitive alarm information.

It's also important to be aware that when recording calls is enabled, the recording is stored and accessible in the Twilio dashboard. Recorded calls can be accessed in the Twilio dashboard after they are recorded. Select an auditing profile from the setting dropdown on the Voice Notification Profile page to store phone calls and acknowledgements to the audit system.

Pipeline Configuration

Like all notification methods, the Twilio Voice profile is selected in the Notification Block Editor in the Designer's pipeline configuration. The Twilio Voice profile includes two properties, From Number and Max Pin Attempts.

From Number: The phone number configured in the Twilio dashboard, from which to send the phone call.
Max Pin Attempts: The maximum number of attempts allowed for a user to correctly enter a PIN when pin validation is enabled.

The Call Script and Delay Between Messages (seconds) property are also displayed here.

Expanding the Call Script list allows you to customize the alarm message the user hears through a call script text. There are several points where the call may stop to collect user input, so the call script is the list of messages used by the text-to-speech engine to generate the call.

Call Script Options

The following table is a full list of configurations for the call script, with their respective defaults:

Configuration	Description	Default
Greeting	Introductory message.	Hello, this is an Ignition alarm notification.
PIN Challenge	A message asking the user to enter their PIN number. Must instruct them to press '#' when finished.	Please enter your pin, followed by the pound sign.
Non-PIN Challenge	When a PIN is not required, this message is played to instruct the users to press any key to continue.	Please press any key to continue.
Invalid PIN	A message telling the user their PIN was invalid, and to try again.	Invalid pin number. Please re-enter your pin, followed by the pound sign.
Summary	When there are multiple alarms, this message will be played to tell the user how many to expect. It must include the placeholder '%d' somewhere in the message.	There are %d events.
Active Message	The message to play for active alarms. This message can reference properties of alarms by using syntax like "{propertyName}".	At {eventTime
Clear Message	The message to play for cleared alarms. This message can reference properties of alarms by using syntax like "{propertyName}".	At {eventTime
Option 1: Acknowledge	Tells the user to press '1' to acknowledge.	Press 1 to acknowledge
Acknowledge Confirmation	Tells the user that the alarm event has been successfully acknowledged.	Alarm has been acknowledged.
Option 2: Ignore	Tells the user to press '2' to ignore/bypass the alarm.	Press 2 to ignore
Ignore Confirmation	Tells the user the alarm event has been ignored.	Alarm has been ignored.
Option 3: Repeat	Tells the user to press '3' to repeat the last message.	Press 3 to repeat
Closing	Closing message	Thank you, goodbye.

Voice Functions

See the system.twilio section of the appendix for more details on the sendPhoneCall function available for the Twilio Voice Notification Profile.

Create a Twilio Voice Notification Profile

Go to the Services section of the Gateway Webpage.
Select Alarming > Notification from the menu on the left side.
Click on Create Profile +.
Select the Twilio Voice Notification profile type, and click Next.
Provide a name for the profile, and select a Twilio Account from the dropdown.
Set the other profile settings as desired. (See table below for a description of all settings.)
Click Create Alarm Notification Profile.

Once your Notification profile is created, you can use it in an Alarm Pipeline.