Twilio API Conference: How to start a participant in hold mode

Question

I want to start a conference with 3 participants:

1. Client
2. Agent
3. Supervisor

Where the client would "enter" the conference in hold=true mode.

I did not find in the twilio api documentation how to do that, there is a possibility to start him in mute mode, but that does not serve our needs.

What i could do is to start the conference and then immediately put the client into a hold mode. But is there is a proper way to do this?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Twilio developer evangelist here.

There is no way to start a participant in hold. But a conference participant on hold is not really participating in the conference.

Could you keep the user waiting by sending them to TwiML that just returned hold music using <Play> until you want to bring them into the conference by redirecting the call?

Alternatively your suggestion to have them join the conference, then immediately send them to hold will work for you.