Issue with character limit in Twilio and responding back manually

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I'm facing some challenges with Twilio and was wondering if someone knows how to resolve them. First, would like to highlight that I don't have a programming background but I can write low-level code.

Current Case: A session is booked > Record is created in Airtable via a Zap with calendly > Twilio sends a message using the info in Airtable via a zap with calendly.

Problems:

  • I'm currently only able to send 160 characters in the message. If the message is longer, only the first 160 characters are sent and the message is cut short (e.g. looking forwa....)
  • I don't have an easy way to respond back to messages. Currently Twilio forward all messages to a Voice number in one big thread and I have to respond back in this format +1123456789: Message. This is confusing and causes a lot of issues. Is there any way to build something in Twilio which allows for manual responding?

Thank you all in advance!

zapier twilio
1 Answers

Twilio developer evangelist here.

I'm currently only able to send 160 characters in the message. If the message is longer, only the first 160 characters are sent and the message is cut short (e.g. looking forwa....)

This sounds like a limitation of the Zap you are using. SMS messages are 160 characters in length, but Twilio can stitch together up to 10 messages, allowing you to send up to 1600 characters. Twilio doesn't truncate the messages either, so it sounds like something the Zap is doing. In 2017 Zapier did announce that you could send longer messages with their integration, you just had to update your Zap with the right setting.

I don't have an easy way to respond back to messages. Currently Twilio forward all messages to a Voice number in one big thread and I have to respond back in this format +1123456789: Message. This is confusing and causes a lot of issues. Is there any way to build something in Twilio which allows for manual responding?

You could certainly build something. Or integrate with an app like Front which can give you a shared inbox for things like incoming SMS from Twilio.

user_283760
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