Twilio allows software developers to programmatically make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages, and perform other communication functions using its web service APIs.

Authenticating

Twilio uses API Key based auth, a developer-friendly delegated access protocol. Quolum has already connected the necessary wires with Twilio. Using a sequence of click-throughs, your organization's administrator allows Quolum to make API calls to Twilio without getting access to passwords.

Step 1: Initiate a connection to Twilio

Click the Connect button from the Connections card. If you are not an admin, you can invite your organization's Twilio owner/admin/developer role to make a connection to your Twilio organization account as shown in step 2.

Step 2: Log in to Twilio

When you click on the Connect button a pop-up will open as shown below. The credentials for these will be present in your Twillio portal. Log in to Twilio using your organization's credentials. The exact login mechanism may depend on your Twilio plan, and the sign-in mechanism used. You may have corporate SSO such as Azure AD, GSuite, or Okta along with multi-factor authentication. Once you have successfully logged in you can find the Account Key SID and Secret as mentioned below in Step 3.

Step 3: Find Account SID and Auth Token in Twillio

Open your web browser and go to the Twilio website (https://www.twilio.com/).
Click on the "Login" button located at the top right corner of the page.
Enter your email address and password to log in to your Twilio account.
Once you are logged in, you will be taken to your Twilio dashboard.
In the upper-right corner of the dashboard, click on "Account" or the dropdown arrow next to it.
From the dropdown menu, select "API Keys and Tokens"
Click on the "Create API Key" button as shown in the image below:

Then enter the key credentials as shown in the image below:

Friendly name: Give the key a friendly name like "Quolum SaaS Management" for future reference
Region: Make sure to select "United States - Default"
Key Type: Main
Note: Other key types than main and region other than "United States - Default" are not supported by Twilio currently for capturing usage

Then Copy the "API Key SID" and "Secret". You may be prompted to enter your account password or complete additional security steps. Copy it or make a note of it to enter it in the Quolum portal. Note: Make sure to copy the API Key SID and Secret as you cannot view it again

Step 4: Back to Quolum

Once you have granted access to Quolum, the data would start to flow in. The Connect button on the Connections card would now say Reconnect. Reconnect is used to reauthenticate under circumstances where the access has expired.

Under the hood

Using the OAuth protocol, Quolum now has delegated access to your Twilio Workspace. The Quolum server, running on Amazon AWS VPC, will be able to make API calls and retrieve feature-level utilization. Later, this data is crunched and available for visualization on the Quolum dashboard.