# Twilio: Prerequisites

**Cognigy Support**

November 16, 2023

This page describes a two-step process to connect your Twilio phone numbers to Cognigy.AI.

With the implementation of a Twilio Endpoint you can easily connect your **Twilio phone-numbers** to Cognigy.AI.

## Two Step Process

1. **Create a Twilio Account** for the usage of the Cognigy Endpoint on [Twilio](https://twilio.com/ "")
2. **Obtain a phone number** within Twilio Console

## 1 Create a Twilio Account

[Location: Twilio.com](https://www.twilio.com/ "")

Visit **[https://twilio.com](https://twilio.com/ "")** and **Sign up** for an account. By default you will get a **trial** account assigned which gives you some credits you can use to test the integration.

_Figure 1.1: Twilio.com_

After you verified your account, login to the Twilio Console. The first time you login, they will guide you through the process of creating a project (see **Figure 1.2**). For this example, we created a project with the default name **My New Learn & Explore Project**.

_Figure 1.2: Project Creation_

## 2 Obtain a Number

[Location: Twilio Console](https://www.twilio.com/console "")

**Requirements**  
✔ Twilio Account

**Twilio SMS**  
If you want to use a Twilio SMS Endpoint you have to obtain a phone number, which is capable of using SMS communication.

### 2.1 Search for a free number

Now that we have a project created, let's search for a number we can use for our users to make calls to our Twilio Endpoint on Cognigy.AI. On your project page, click on the **Hashtag**-Symbol on the left side of the screen (see **Figure 2.1**).

_Figure 2.1: Twilio project dashboard_

Next, click on **Buy a Number** in the left sidebar (see **Figure 2.2**).

_Figure 2.2: Buy a new number for your Twilio Endpoint integration._

Select the **country** and ensure that your selected number is capable to be used with **voice**. For our example we selected **any** so that we can use the same number for other services in the future. If you want to use **Twilio Voice** and **Twilio SMS** you have to check **Voice** and **SMS** as capabilities. Optionally you can search for a certain **area code** e.g. to obtain a number in _Düsseldorf_.

### 2.2 Buy a free number

_Figure 2.3: Some free numbers in Düsseldorf_

Here we searched for the **area code** 211 which gave us a list of numbers available in Düsseldorf, Germany. Search for the country and area code that you want, pick one of them and click on **buy** (see **Figure 2.3**).

**Number Validation**  
Certain phone numbers require you to validate that your company operates in the same city/region. This is especially the case for German numbers! For the validation process you need to visit the **Documents** page and e.g. upload a document of your company registration. This process takes up to 3 business days - US numbers do not require this type of validation.