README.md

answering-machine

A little Twilio based answering machine in NodeJS. You can forward calls to a real phone, and then if the person doesn't answer, sends it to the Twilio voicemail, records their message, and does something with it.

Usage

To deploy to heroku:

git clone https://github.com/justicedemocrats/answering-machine.git

# Create phones.js - instructions below
# Edit handlers.js - instructions below

heroku create my-answering-machine
git push heroku master

Finally, you must configure the numbers in Twilio. When a call is received, you set it so that it sends a POST to https://my-answering-machine.herokuapp.com/call, and that when texts are received, it sends a POST to https://my-answering-machine.herokuapp.com/sms.

Setting up Voicemails

In order for Twilio to play your voicemails, they need to be hosted somewhere.

Surge makes this pretty easy.

I put all my .mp3s (they have to be .mp3s) in a folder called audio, and then ran surge -d my-answering-machine-audio -p ./audio, and voila! If I had voicemail.mp3 in audio, I can now visit my-answering-machine-audio.surge.sh/voicemail.mp3 and it'll play in my browser.

Run heroku config:set SURGE_SUBDOMAIN=my-answering-machine-audio, or whatever your surge subdomain was, and then you can refer to that voicemail snippet by voicemail.mp3 in phones.js.

Phones.js

You must create a configuration file called phones.js, that exports an object with phone numbers as keys.

If you want to forward the number, the phone object should have a forwardTo object. If no forwardTo is present, it will go straight to voicemail.

Finally, you should include any other fields that you'll want to associate with your number use in your handlers.js.

The sample handlers.js makes a POST to record the contact loosely following the OSDI spec, but yours will probably do something different.

Here's a minimal phones.js for two numbers, one forwarding one not, both with voicemails:

module.exports = {
  '+12137000860': {
    note: "James's line",
    callTag: 'Called: James',
    voiceMessageUrl: 'james-answering-machine.mp3',
    forwardTo: '+15555555555'
  },
  '+14609602314': {
    note: "Tyson's line",
    callTag: 'Called: Tyson',
    voiceMessageUrl: 'tyson-answering-machine.mp3'
  }
}