Before you start
- Create a Twilio account at twilio.com.
- Upgrade it from the free trial in the Twilio Console, under Billing. A trial account can call and text only the numbers you have verified in Twilio, and says it is a trial on every call.
- Buy a number in the Twilio Console, under Phone Numbers. Choose one that can take calls and send texts. A local number is registered for texting with A2P 10DLC; a toll-free number (800, 833, 844, 855, 866, 877 or 888) with toll-free verification instead. See Register for texting.
Connecting
On Phone and text, enter:
Press Connect. RescueConsole asks Twilio whether they are right before keeping them, and makes an API key called RescueConsole in your account for its everyday requests. The Auth Token is needed as well because Twilio signs every call and text it sends to RescueConsole with it, and that signature is how RescueConsole knows a call really came from your account. Both are kept encrypted and are never shown again.
One Twilio account can be connected to one rescue.
Choosing the rescue’s number
The page lists the numbers on your Twilio account. Under each one it says whether it takes calls and texts, and where its calls go now, such as a Twilio Studio flow or another system.
Press Use this number. Before you do, the page says that calls and texts to the number will come to RescueConsole instead of where they go now. What the number and the Messaging Service pointed at before is kept, so that disconnecting puts them back.
To use a different number, press Change beside it.
What is left to do
The page reads each step’s state from Twilio when you connect, choose a number, or press Check again. Each step says Done, To do, Waiting on Twilio, Needs attention or When needed, with what to do next.
This month at Twilio is what Twilio says the account has cost so far this month.
Register for texting
US carriers block texts from numbers that are not registered. You register in the Twilio Console, under Messaging, Regulatory compliance. A local number: A2P 10DLC. You register the rescue as a brand, and the Messaging Service as a campaign: what the texts are for, with examples.- A 501(c)(3) registers its brand as a US Non Profit. Twilio checks the status against IRS records, and a 501(c)(3) can then choose the Charity campaign use case, which carriers charge less for.
- A rescue that is not a 501(c)(3) registers as a Standard brand. Without an EIN, the Sole Proprietor brand allows one campaign and fewer texts a day.
- Campaigns are taking 10 to 15 days to review.
- As of October 2026, Twilio’s figures: brand registration 15, then 10 a month for a Standard one. Check Twilio’s own pages for today’s.
Texts
A text to the rescue’s number is a conversation in the inbox, beside the email, and is answered by text from there. Under Texts on Phone and text, choose which inbox Texts arrive in: the default inbox unless you choose another. Who can read the inbox can read its texts.Consent
Nobody is texted first unless they have agreed to texts. Consent belongs to the phone number, and it is recorded with how it was given and in what words:- On a person’s record, under Texts, somebody whose role can change People presses Record their consent and says how they agreed, such as “Asked at the adoption event on Saturday”. See the person record.
- By the person themselves, when they turn on Notifications by text for their own account.
- By texting START to the rescue’s number.
How long a text is
A text is sent in segments of 160 characters, or 70 when it has an emoji or a character outside the plain alphabet, and Twilio charges by the segment. The box under a text conversation counts them as you type. A text longer than ten segments is refused.Queues
A queue is an inbox that answers calls and texts: Adoptions, Surrenders, Lost and found. Under Queues on Phone and text, choose an inbox in Make an inbox a queue and press Make it a queue. Changing a queue needs Configure on Communications. Its conversations stay the inbox’s: who can read the inbox decides who sees them. Each queue says Answering now and who, Open, nobody answering, or Closed now. Change opens it:
A call to a queue rings everybody answering at once, and the first to pick up takes it. Somebody who says they are Away or Off in the inbox is not rung, whoever named them.
Calls
Under Calls on Phone and text, choose the queue Calls go to. A call to the rescue’s number then rings everybody answering that queue, every way each of them answers, all at once, and the first to pick up takes it. Twilio rings at most ten at a time: a queue with more people answering rings them ten at a time, in turns. When nobody picks up in the queue’s ring time, the caller hears “Everybody is still busy. Please stay on the line, or press 1 and we will call you back”, and the queue rings again, until the caller has waited as long as the queue allows. Then what the queue says happens when nobody answers: the call tries another queue, or the caller is told to call again later or send a text. Pressing 1 puts a conversation called Call them back in the queue’s inbox, with the caller’s number. Outside the queue’s hours, a caller hears the queue’s closed message. Every call is kept: who called (matched to a person by their number), which queue, who answered, how long it lasted and how it ended.The phone menu
The phone menu is what a caller hears and chooses before a call rings anybody: a greeting, a menu of choices, opening hours, a language. Open it from Phone menu on Phone and text. Changing it needs Configure on Communications. Until a menu is published, calls go to the queue chosen under Calls. Start from the rescue starter menu gives you one to change. It thanks the caller, tells anybody whose animal is in danger to hang up and call 911 or animal control, checks the queue’s hours, and offers adoptions, giving up an animal, a lost or found pet, the surrender form by text, and an extension. Every choice starts at the same queue: point each at the queue it belongs to, and put your surrender form’s link in the text. A menu is a list of steps. Each has a name, and says what it does and where the call goes next:
Save the draft keeps the menu as it is and lists anything to fix. Publish makes it the menu calls get, once there is nothing to fix: no step going to a step that does not exist, no step leaving the caller with nowhere to go, no queue or extension that does not exist, and no way round in a circle without the caller being asked anything. Each publish is a new version; a call that began on the old one finishes on it. Try it on my mobile rings your own mobile (from My phone) into the draft, so you can hear it before callers do. Stop using the menu sends calls to the queue chosen for calls again.
Answer the first text of a conversation with this menu’s choices: when it is ticked, somebody who texts the rescue for the first time is sent the menu’s choices that ring a queue, such as “Reply 1 for Adoptions, Reply 2 for Surrender”. Their reply moves the conversation into that queue’s inbox, and the rest of it stays there.
The voice
The menu speaks in the voice chosen for each language, under Voice on Phone and text. Choosing needs Configure on Communications. The voices are Twilio’s own, in three kinds that Twilio charges differently for each time words are said, so a long greeting in a generative voice costs more on every call. As of October 2026, per 100 characters:
Twilio has no way to hear a voice without a call, so hearing one is a call:
- Play a sample, on a computer with the browser phone, plays your menu’s greeting in that voice through your computer’s speakers.
- Call me to hear it rings your own mobile (from My phone) and says it.
Recorded greetings
A recording of your own voice, played by a Play a recorded greeting step in the menu. Under Recorded greetings on Phone and text:- Upload an MP3 or a WAV file of up to 5 MB, with a name.
- Record by phone rings your own mobile: speak after the tone and press the pound key. It is kept as soon as you hang up.
Extensions
Under Extensions on Phone and text, give each person who answers calls an extension of 3 or 4 digits, and say how it rings them:
Only somebody on the team, who signs in, can have an extension, and two people cannot share one. Giving and changing extensions needs Configure on Communications. Each person can also change how calls reach them under My phone.
Calling out
An extension can be let call out, from the browser phone, a SIP phone, or by calling through the rescue from a mobile. Calls show the rescue’s own number. Let this extension call out (under the extension, for somebody with Configure on Communications) buys the extension a number of its own in your Twilio account, and registers an emergency address on it. Choose the address the person calls from: their address on record, one of the rescue’s locations, or another. Twilio checks it against the official street database, and says so if it cannot find it; nothing is bought until it can. As of October 2026, the number costs about 0.75 a month, billed by Twilio. Give an area code to choose where the number is from, or it is in the rescue’s own. Stop calling out releases the number and its address. 911. Your organization operates this phone system, in its own Twilio account, so the rules for 911 from a system like this are its to meet (Kari’s Law and RAY BAUM’S Act). RescueConsole does what they ask:- An extension that calls out dials 911 directly, with no prefix and no menu.
- 911 goes out from the extension’s own number, so the dispatcher gets its emergency address, and calling that number back rings the same person.
- When the browser phone starts, it asks Where are you calling from?: Yes if they are still at the address on file, or I am somewhere else to give the address they are at. A new address is registered at Twilio and the number pointed at it.
- The organization’s admins are emailed at once, saying who called 911, from which extension and address.