enviar

Real-time, multi-user chat interface for SMS / text messages. Imagine a call center where customers can send a text message to a single number and have a live chat with any agent(s) available.

Installation

1. Clone this repo using git clone https://github.com/timwis/enviar.git
2. Install node dependencies via npm install
3. Copy .env.sample to .env

CouchDB

This application uses CouchDB to store messages. Follow their install docs to run CouchDB locally or setup a free hosted instance with CloudAnt.

4. Fill in your the COUCHDB_HOST in .env (ie. http://localhost:5984)
5. By default, couchdb considers everyone an admin. If you have disabled this setting (recommended for production) and have an admin user setup, fill in its credentials in the COUCHDB_USER and COUCHDB_PASS variables. Otherwise continue without these.
6. Configure the database using npm run bootstrap. If you're running couchdb locally, also run npm run cors.

Usage

Development mode

1. Run the server using NODE_ENV=development npm start
2. Access the server at http://localhost:3000

You can simulate sending messages using the interface. To simulate receiving a message, send a POST request to http://localhost:3000/api/inbound.

Sample inbound POST request: (note the + in the phone number is encoded as %2B)

curl -X POST -d 'SmsSid=123456&From=%2B12597150948&Body=hello' http://localhost:3000/api/inbound

Production mode

1. Fill in your twilio credentials in .env
2. Run the server using npm start
3. Point twilio's incoming message webhook to http://<your-server>/api/inbound (check out ngrok to expose your localhost)

Access the server at http://localhost:3000

User administration

By default, couchdb considers everyone an admin. If you have disabled this setting (recommended for production) and have created an admin user, you can use that user to login to enviar. You can also create users that have agent-level access, allowing them to user enviar without admin access. To create agent users, use the command line interface.

To create a user or change a user's password

npm run user -- <username> <password>

To "upgrade" an existing user to have agent access, simply omit the password.

npm run user -- <username>

This functionality will eventually be incorporated into the application.