A checklist for building with Twilio Flex

Environment/Networking Setup

Assess existing/anticipated equipment
- Desktop/Virtual Desktop ( Note you may use Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) however it is not officially supported by Twilio)
- Agent headsets, and capability to connect to a supported endpoint
Run Twilio Network Test and record results
Wired vs wireless network? Do you need/handle network changes?
Do you need some form of Interconnect ?
Review Flex UI requirements
Determine whether your firewall supports DNS rules (for allowing Twilio traffic)

Channels

Identify important channels
Determine whether traffic will be inbound and/or outbound on each channel
Clarify call recording needs (as they relate to Work Force Management/ Work Force Optimization )
Do you have an existing relationship with a SIP Carrier?

Routing

Document pain points and limitations in existing call routing strategy
Establish a routing style/routing rules (establish skills, activities, queue expressions, etc)
Learn about timeouts and confirm that they map to expected SLAs
Discuss potential race conditions for routing (If-Match and Etag headers?)

IVR/Studio

Learn about Studio
Determine whether you need custom flows, or if the existing Messaging and Voice flows adequately serve your needs
Outline IVR and consider any need for machine intelligence in your IVR (e.g., with DialogFlow)
Is there a need for professional voice talent for IVR recording?

User management

Identify your SSO provider
Plan roles , associated skills, patterns and permissions

Billing

Ensure Active User Hour/Named User plan is appropriate for your use case

CRM

Determine CRM needs for your agents (if any).
Identify what level of integration between Flex/CRM is possible and desired. Do you want to embed the CRM in Flex as an iframe, or vice-versa ? Or perhaps create a custom plugin with a dedicated UI that leverages CRM functionality via API?

Plugins/Hosting

Outline what functionality needs to be added.
Establish a corresponding Plugin architecture based on Plugin limits
Are you using Twilio Flex plugins or self-hosted Flex UI?
Best practices for release management (dev/stage/prod)
- Have plans for testing functionality locally
- Establish separate Flex accounts for stage/prod

Insights

Assess current WFM/WFO solutions, if they exist
Determine how existing solutions will need to change and/or phase out with Flex implementation

Scale

Develop a rollout plan (start with a key set of agents, then roll out to larger groups?)
Assess A2P 10DLC concerns (if sending messages in the US)
Consider global phone number requirements for other geographies as needed
Determine what functions can rely on Twilio Serverless, and what logic should be offloaded to internal servers

Environment/Networking Setup

Node.js/npm installation for building your first Plugin
"npm install" package dependencies (and if required, install these for CI/CD setup)
Check accessibility of dev or prod environments (can they be reached in the form of webhooks from the internet, or will Twilio's traffic be denied?)
- Other tools to check for compatibility: ngrok for webhook URLs in development environment: status callbacks, Twilio Functions/Twilio Studio

Channels

Acquire phone numbers and IDs to handle traffic at scale on each channel
Enable channels in different geographies with phone numbers and handle geo-permissions

Routing

Create the required Task Queues and Workflows
Set up worker skills and custom attributes (this may also involve work in the SSO integration, see below)
Handle mutation with If-Match and Etag headers to avoid race conditions

IVR/Studio

Implement IVR using Twilio Studio
Consider whether to build a conversational IVR/chatbot leveraging AI
- Lay out your intents, "FAQs", data that needs to be gathered, defaults, fallbacks, etc

User management

Integrate SSO provider with Flex
Set up logic for provisioning/deprovisioning users
- Configure roles for individual agents. Make sure agents/supervisors get the appropriate role when they log in with SSO.
- Configure skills for individual agents.
- Establish patterns for worker's unique friendly names (what do you do if you have Charlie Smith and Chloe Smith?)

CRM

Implement CRM integration ( click to dial , screen pop, etc)

Insights

Confirm that Task Attributes from routing step are formatted correctly to be consumed by Insights
Enable Insights using SSO. (Setting up different roles and attributes)
- Add a WFO role for users to see WFO tab

Environment/Networking Setup

Create Agent runbook - things like checking agent network connectivity and procedures for using the Flex UI .
Review Flex UI requirements again

Channels

Test call recording (is it working as expected?) for inbound and outbound calls
Monitor message throughput across asynchronous channels

Insights

Handle data inconsistencies
- Change agent statuses when they forget to log out, etc.

Debugging and troubleshooting

Understand and debug different Flex errors coming from the Flex Debugger UI.
Have an escalation plan (e.g., collecting troublesome Call SIDs to share with support)
Select a support plan

Plugins/Hosting

Integrate Plugin CLI with CI/CD and other internal tools
Establish release cadence and best practices

IVR/Studio

Gather customer and agent feedback, decide whether to collect more or less information earlier in the IVR for higher-quality conversations

Agent Experience/End User Guides

Ensure audio drivers are working properly
- CallerID needs for outbound calling (callerId can fail)
Create basic troubleshooting guides for agents around enabling audio

Scale

List of IPs that should be added to allowlist to use different products in Flex.
Implement logic to catch any calls that fail to be added to voice / message queues
Review existing rate limits and needed capacity for Twilio products
- Particularly important if TaskRouter worker limit is increased
- Voice: Calls-per-second (CPS) and call queue size
- Messaging: messages per second (MPS) and message queue size
- TaskRouter: Task Queue Size, timeouts, limits on Queues and Workflows (work with your sales team to understand these limits better)
- Sync: connection limits
- Flex Flows (one per messaging address)
Investigate rate limits for any 3rd party integrations, and work with 3rd party sales/professional services to increase limits or improve efficiency
- E.g., Caching tokens to prevent per-hour limits, increasing concurrency on a 3rd party API endpoint
Migrate Twilio Function prototypes to internal infrastructure/servers as necessary
Establish practices for DevOps at scale

Billing

Have a valid payment method on file and confirm/establish payment plan
Validate that payment method is operational

Agent Experience/End User Guides

Ensure audio drivers are still working properly across different agent technology
Share troubleshooting guides with agents around enabling audio
Create End User guides for critical paths in using Flex (e.g., accepting tasks, making an outbound call)

Scale

Add VPN IP addresses to allowlist
Add IPs for other products to Twilio allowlists
Check Twilio API Concurrency at scale - does this need to be increased?