Exercise - Create a Twilio account and launch Visual Studio

  • 5 minutes

Create a Twilio account

To be able to send SMS messages from an Azure Function, you'll need a Twilio account. The free account is more than enough to get started.

  1. Head to twilio.com.

  2. Select the Sign Up button in the top-right corner.

  3. Fill in your details and select Get Started.

  4. Twilio will send you an email to verify your email address. Select the link in the email to verify it.

  5. Enter your phone number to verify it. Twilio free accounts let you send messages only to verified phone numbers to stop them from being used for spam. Twilio will send you a verification code that you need to enter to verify your phone.

    Screenshot that shows the phone verification step in Twilio sign up.

  6. Answer the next set of questions to choose your product, what you want to build, and how you want to build it.

  7. Select Get Started with Twilio and you’ll be logged into your account.

  8. Select Get a trial phone number on your account dashboard. Twilio assigns you a phone number that's used to send messages.

    Note

    These assigned numbers might not be able to send messages in some countries/regions. The Twilio documentation lists which countries/regions have restrictions, and shows ways to send SMS messages using an international number or AlphaNumeric sender Id.

  9. Take note of your new Twilio Trial Number. You'll need the number later in this module. You can also get this number anytime on your dashboard under Account Info.

    Screenshot that shows the Twilio Account Info panel.

  10. Note your Account SID and Auth Token because you'll need these values later.

Launch Visual Studio

For this module, you'll develop the mobile app and Azure Functions app using Visual Studio. Although Xamarin.Forms apps can be built to run on iOS, Android, and Universal Windows Platform (UWP), this module will just focus on UWP.

Launch Visual Studio on your system.

Summary

In this unit, you created a Twilio account that you'll use to send SMS and launched Visual Studio. Next, you'll learn how to create a Xamarin.Forms app and add the Xamarin.Essentials NuGet package.

Important

Keep note of the Twilio Account SID and Auth Token and My Twilio phone number values that you gathered in this unit, because you'll need these values later.