Initiate twilio flex chat using node.js - node.js

Question

I am having difficulty getting twilio flex to show messages created using the API using node.js.
I am creating a channel, adding a member, creating a message on the channel using the member.
The flex dashboard shows the incoming chat request in the task list, I can answer the chat request but none of the messages I save to the channel are show.
The interesting thing is if I use the twilio-flex-webchat.min.js script and initiate a chat from a web page and then get the ChannelSid for that conversation (using https://chat.twilio.com/v2/Services/ISXXXX/Channels) I can use the APIs to create messages for this channel and they appear on the flex dashboard. But I need all this to work via node.js.
I compared the task, channel, reservation, member and message twilio objects both for chat conversations using the twilio-flex-webchat.min.js web library and the objects created by the node.js code. I cannot find any notable difference.
Does anybody have any insights?
Here is my code.
const accountSid = 'ACXXXXXXXXXX';
const authToken = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX';
const workspaceSid = 'WSXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx';
const workFlowSid = 'WWXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX';
const serviceSid = 'ISXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX';
const client = require('twilio')(accountSid, authToken);
(async () => {
//create channel
let channel = await client.chat.services(serviceSid)
.channels
.create({
attributes: JSON.stringify({
status: "ACTIVE",
from: "Some Person",
channel_type: "web"
}),
workflowSid: workFlowSid,
taskChannel: 'chat',
friendlyName: 'Flex WebChat',
type: 'private'
});
//create a member in this channel
let member = await client.chat.services(serviceSid)
.channels(channel.sid)
.members
.create({ identity: 'WEB_CLIENT' });
//post a message to this channel from the member
let message = await client.chat.services(serviceSid)
.channels(channel.sid)
.messages.create({ body: 'This is a test message', to: channel.sid, from: 'WEB_CLIENT' });
//create a task for my programable chat channel and associate the channel sid for my current conversation
let task = await client.taskrouter.workspaces(workspaceSid)
.tasks
.create({
attributes: JSON.stringify({
channelSid: channel.sid,
channelType: "web"
}),
workflowSid: workFlowSid,
taskChannel: 'chat',
});
})();
Thanks

Answer 1

Before adding a message and creating a Task, you need to create a proxy session, add the members as participants and then update the channel attributes:
{
"status": "ACTIVE",
"forwarding": true,
"twilioNumber": firstParticipant.proxyIdentifier,
"serviceNumber": someIdentity,
"from": from,
"channel_type": "sms",
"proxySession": session.sid
}