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Overview

This guide shows how to write an autoresponder for SMS text messages. Autoresponders can streamline marketing campaigns and subscription signups and reduce the amount of work humans have to do. You can create an autoresponder either by using our PHLO visual workflow builder or our APIs. Follow the instructions in one of the tabs below.
Here’s how to use Plivo APIs to set up an SMS autoresponder.

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How it works

Outbound-SMS Flow

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Prerequisites

To get started, you need a Plivo account — sign up with your work email address if you don’t have one already. To receive incoming messages, you must have a Plivo phone number that supports SMS; you can rent numbers from the Numbers page of the Plivo console or by using the Numbers API. If this is your first time using Plivo APIs, follow our instructions to set up a Ruby development environment.

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Create a Rails controller to receive and respond to SMS messages

Change to the project directory and run this command to create a Rails controller for inbound messages.
$ rails generate controller Plivo sms
This command generates a controller named plivo_controller in the app/controllers/ directory and a respective view in the app/views/plivo directory. We can delete the view as we don’t need it.
$ rm app/views/plivo/sms.html.erb

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Create the autoresponder application using Rails server

Edit app/controllers/plivo_controller.rb and paste into it this code.
include Plivo
include Plivo::Exceptions
include Plivo::XML

class PlivoController < ApplicationController
  skip_before_action :verify_authenticity_token
  def autoresponder
		from_number = params[:From]
		to_number = params[:To]
		text = params[:Text]

		if text.downcase == "interested"
			body = "Thank you for showing interest. One of our agents will contact you."
		else
			body = "Reply 'Interested' to connect with our agents"
		end
		response = Response.new
		params = {
			src: to_number,
			dst: from_number,
		}
		response.addMessage(body, params)
		xml = PlivoXML.new(response)
		render xml: xml.to_xml
	end
end

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Add a route

Edit config/routes.rb and change the line
Rails.application.routes.draw do
  get 'plivo/sms' 
end
to
Rails.application.routes.draw do
  post 'plivo/autoresponder/' => 'plivo#autoresponder'
end
Start the Rails server.
$ rails server
You should see your basic server application in action at http://localhost:3000/plivo/autoresponder/.Set up ngrok to expose your local server to the internet.
Note: For ngrok testing, add this line to config/environments/development.rb.
config.hosts << /[a-z0-9-]+\.ngrok\.io/

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Create a Plivo application for the autoresponder

Associate the Rails controller you created with Plivo by creating a Plivo application. Visit SMS > Applications in the Plivo console and click on Add New Application, or use Plivo’s Application API.
Create Application

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Assign a Plivo number to the application

Navigate to the Numbers page and select the phone number you want to use for this application.From the Application Type drop-down, select XML Application.From the Plivo Application drop-down, select Autoresponder (the name we gave the application).Click Update Number to save.
Assign Phone Number to Plivo Number

Test

Send a text message to the Plivo number you specified using any phone.