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T8 · T8-R23 · Webhooks and IVR

TwiML verbs and what an IVR is

An IVR, in the encyclopedia, gathers and routes. TwiML is one vendor's XML for telling Twilio what to do on a call. Say speaks. Play plays a file. Gather collects input. Dial, Queue, and Conference move the call. Hangup and Reject end it. Pay is a payment verb on that list. None of those words is a contact-center workforce plan.

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Learn it in 5 minutes

  • Wikipedia says an IVR interacts with callers, gathers information, and routes calls, using speech recognition and DTMF from the keypad.
  • The article says IVR is often combined with an automated attendant and an automatic call distributor.
  • Twilio's TwiML page lists voice nouns and verbs including Say, Play, Gather, Dial, Conference, Queue, Record, Redirect, Hangup, Pause, Pay, Refer, Reject, and Sip.
  • The voice navigation also names Build IVR phone trees and a VirtualAgent noun.
  • RFC 4733 is still the RTP payload for the keypad digits. Gather is Twilio's verb. They are not the same document.

Visual

TwiML verbs and what an IVR is IVR. Teaching sketch. Confirm a live system. Gather Say Dial Queue Names come from pages opened in 2026-10. A missing name stays confirm.

Count the boxes: 4. Each label is a name from a page or a study label marked on the drawing.

Flow

TwiML verbs and what an IVR is Caller SIP Called session setup session setup RTP, not required to hairpin Teaching sketch from RFC 3261 and RFC 3550. Not a packet capture.

What is going on

An IVR, in the encyclopedia, gathers and routes. TwiML is one vendor's XML for telling Twilio what to do on a call. Say speaks. Play plays a file. Gather collects input. Dial, Queue, and Conference move the call. Hangup and Reject end it. Pay is a payment verb on that list. None of those words is a contact-center workforce plan.

The automated attendant and the ACD are Wikipedia's neighboring terms. Twilio's Queue verb is not, by itself, the article's ACD. Say which one you mean.

Worked example

A business-hours menu: Gather a digit, Redirect to a queue or Dial a number, and Hangup on a timeout. Cite TwiML for the verbs and the IVR article for the idea. Cite RFC 4733 only if you are explaining the digit in RTP.

Quiz

1. Gather is a TwiML verb on the page that opened.

2. The IVR article says an IVR is only DTMF and never speech recognition.

Ecosystem

Sister pieces sit on the ecosystem page: the glossary, the mind map, the integration map, and the bridges.

  • TwiML — Twilio's markup for Programmable Voice. The page that opened lists the verbs and nouns above.
  • ACD — Automatic call distributor. The IVR article says routing can be optimized when IVR is combined with an attendant and an ACD.

Config. Return TwiML from the voice webhook. Keep the verb list short enough to test one path at a time.

Troubleshooting. A menu that talks and never hears digits: check Gather, then the digit payload, then the keypad itself. Three different layers.

Bridge. Vonage's voice page says you can create IVRs and voice bots, and it names NCCO as a reference. NCCO was not opened as a verb list, so Vonage's nouns stay confirm.

Mind map, sister technologies, and future hooks live on the ecosystem page.

Sources and go deeper

Opened 2026-10. A row marked confirm has no link, because that page was not verified.

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