Wondering where to get started with SignalWire?

Whether you’re an experienced veteran or a newbie to building communications tools, we’d like to help encourage some inspiration and give you the tools and resources you need to help start your next project. The limits of what you can build are your own imagination.

While SignalWire provides more than what can be carved up into simple categories, for the purposes of this post we’ll break it down to voice, video, messaging, and chat!

Voice

The SignalWire platform provides powerful Voice APIs. Using our RELAY SDK you can quickly create Interactive Voice Response (IVR) automation. Our tools allow you to programmatically build applications that can send and receive calls, play text to speech messages or audio files, receive user dial input, detect speech start and end, and much more.

We have comprehensive documentation that you can find here. We also have a number of in-depth guides posted to our developer portal as well, such as how to build a fully functional call center.

You can start experimenting with Voice by following this simple example of using the SignalWire RELAY SDK to make an app that can receive calls through a SignalWire Phone Number and connect it to another phone number. Or, check out this detailed code sample for building a full-featured IVR.

Once you get a taste for what you can do with SignalWire RELAY, you’ll want to dive even deeper. You could continue by using this example on creating a call translation and transcription service to build an automation that can serve people all over the world, regardless of what language they speak.

Dive into the RELAY documentation to help you truly understand the scope of what can be done with SignalWire. The rest we leave up to you and your creativity.

Video

SignalWire provides a number of paths to explore the usage of our Video services.

You can use Programmable Video Conferences if you would like something out of the box with customizability. PVC rooms can be embedded into any web app, even with no coding experience. The examples provided demonstrate how to do things like using Javascript to blur or replace the background of a camera feed and track how long each participant speaks for.

Or you can use our examples on using the Video SDK to build a full video conferencing application with absolute granular control over every feature. You can even enable room previews so that you can allow users to see what’s going on in a room before joining.

We also have a step-by-step set of instructions that will walk you through building a Zoom clone using React. It will help you understand how to create rooms, mute audio/video, change layouts, create custom overlays, and much more.

Messaging

In the same way SignalWire RELAY makes it easy to make voice calls, the same can be said about messaging. Check out our documentation on how to send and receive SMS.

Chat

Earlier this year we released our SDK for adding chat to your applications. All you need is a SignalWire Space, your credentials, and Javascript. In a few lines you can easily add two way messaging for any use along with chat history.

While this is generally used for typical text chat, it can be used as an arbitrary data channel. Imagine combining this with our video or voice services to create interactive experiences — like collaborative games or sending real-time data from sensors to overlay over video.

With so many APIs and SDKs to choose from, there are endless possibilities of what can be built using SignalWire. Video, voice, and chat don’t have to be complicated things to add to an application. Through making it easier for developers, we hope that it enables you to go above and beyond your own expectations.

If you have any questions as you begin your SignalWire journey, stop by our Community Slack or our Forum to connect with us and work through any questions or issues that come up along the way.