Can Obi202 access voicemail on GV account?

[Rumboogy]

My question is simple.  Can a phone plugged into an Obi202, which is setup to access a GV account, be used to listen to voicemails on that GV account?  

I have called Obihai twice and both times they said that it could not.  Then I went through email support  and they said that it could, but they could not help me to make it work.  

So what is the real answer?  Has anyone been able to do this?

[azrobert]

Call your GV number with the same account.

[Rumboogy]

Call your GV number with the same account.

That's what I am doing.  I am calling my GV number from a phone attached to the Obi202 which is connected to my Google account that has the GV number I am calling (that sentence is sounds some circular I know).

[SteveInWA]

And, what happens, exactly, when you do that?

[Rumboogy]

And, what happens, exactly, when you do that?

I get a busy signal.

Can you tell me if you have been able to do this?  I am looking for an existence proof that this can be done

[SteveInWA]

Yes, of course it works.

It's likely that you are doing something wrong.  You're either trying to call a phone number different from your Google Voice number, or you don't actually have a Google Voice number -- instead, you have a Google Voice "Lite" account.  You cannot call the GV Lite VM access number from the OBi-attached phone.

Log into the OBiTALK web portal and go here:  http://www.obitalk.com/obinet/pg/obhdev

Mouse-click the "SPx" that is configured with your Google Voice credentials (for example, SP1 or SP2...).  Click "Accept" on the pop-up window to get past it.  Now, look at the next page, for the phrase "Active Google Username".  Log onto the same  Google account in another tab of your browser, and go here:

https://www.google.com/voice#phones

Look on the left side of the web page.  Do you see the exact two words "Your number", and underneath it is the number you are trying to call, or do you see "Access number"?

[Rumboogy]

Yes, of course it works.

It's likely that you are doing something wrong.  You're either trying to call a phone number different from your Google Voice number, or you don't actually have a Google Voice number -- instead, you have a Google Voice "Lite" account.  You cannot call the GV Lite VM access number from the OBi-attached phone.

Log into the OBiTALK web portal and go here:  http://www.obitalk.com/obinet/pg/obhdev

Mouse-click the "SPx" that is configured with your Google Voice credentials (for example, SP1 or SP2...).  Click "Accept" on the pop-up window to get past it.  Now, look at the next page, for the phrase "Active Google Username".  Log onto the same  Google account in another tab of your browser, and go here:

https://www.google.com/voice#phones

Look on the left side of the web page.  Do you see the exact two words "Your number", and underneath it is the number you are trying to call, or do you see "Access number"?

Thanks for your detailed steps.  I did what you suggested and I see "Your number" followed by the number I have been trying to call.

[SteveInWA]

It would be very helpful if you'd take a screenshot of the GV settings page, Phones tab, as linked above, black out all but the last 4 digits of all phone numbers, and attach it here to your reply post.

Before you do that, hover your mouse cursor over your avatar at the upper right corner of the web page, and look carefully at the Google account name (e.g. rumboogy@gmail.com), and confirm that it is identical to the account name displayed on the OBiTALK portal for your GV SP slot.

[Rumboogy]

It would be very helpful if you'd take a screenshot of the GV settings page, Phones tab, as linked above, black out all but the last 4 digits of all phone numbers, and attach it here to your reply post.

Before you do that, hover your mouse cursor over your avatar at the upper right corner of the web page, and look carefully at the Google account name (e.g. rumboogy@gmail.com), and confirm that it is identical to the account name displayed on the OBiTALK portal for your GV SP slot.

I verified that my the Google account that I am using has the same name as what ObiTalk that it is connected to.  Attached is the screen shot you requested.  I have greyed out he start of the email/phone info.  Note that I created a Google account just for use with GV and the Obi202.  I gave that account a name based on the phone number that I ported into the account (my old home phone number).  This is why both the account and the phone number end with the same digits.

[SteveInWA]

Thanks very much for the screenshot.

So, you ported in this number.  Did you just recently do it?  What happens when the number is called from some other phone number (not the OBi, and not from your AT&T forwarding number)?  Does the OBi-attached phone ring, and does the AT&T forwarding phone ring?  Do the calls appear in the History section of your GV account?

If any of these things fail, then you've got a problem with your number port.  Please describe what happens.

If the actions above do work properly, but you get a busy signa, then you may have a call forwarding loop.  Try removing the check mark next to your AT&T phone, and then delete it off of the GV account.  Only Google Chat should now remain.  Now, try the call to your GV number from your OBi-attached phone.  What happens?

[Rumboogy]

Thanks very much for the screenshot.

So, you ported in this number.  Did you just recently do it?  What happens when the number is called from some other phone number (not the OBi, and not from your AT&T forwarding number)?  Does the OBi-attached phone ring, and does the AT&T forwarding phone ring?  Do the calls appear in the History section of your GV account?

If any of these things fail, then you've got a problem with your number port.  Please describe what happens.

If the actions above do work properly, but you get a busy signa, then you may have a call forwarding loop.  Try removing the check mark next to your AT&T phone, and then delete it off of the GV account.  Only Google Chat should now remain.  Now, try the call to your GV number from your OBi-attached phone.  What happens?

Thanks for your persistence on helping me with this problem. 

I am able to call out and call into that number with no problems.  On incoming calls the Obi phone rings and the forwarding phone also rang (until I disabled ringing my cell phone in the settings).  The history in GV looks fine as well. 

I tried removing the cell phone from GV and the busy tone persists.  I am attaching a screen shot of my Google Chat settings.

[azrobert]

Steve,
I don't know if my memory is failing, but I thought in the past you couldn't edit the GoogleChat number.

Rumboogy,
FYI I have "NO" selected for VM access for my GoogleChat, but I still go to the VM prompt when I call my GV number.

What happens if you setup your AT&T number to access VM and call your GV number with your cell?

[Rumboogy]

Steve,
I don't know if my memory is failing, but I thought in the past you couldn't edit the GoogleChat number.

Rumboogy,
FYI I have "NO" selected for VM access for my GoogleChat, but I still go to the VM prompt when I call my GV number.

What happens if you setup your AT&T number to access VM and call your GV number with your cell?

AZ,

I have tried the voicemail access both ways - Yes with PIN not required, and No.  My AT&T cell phone can access the GV voicemail without problems.  I have tried it with and without PIN and it works both ways.

[Rumboogy]

I decided to try a few different experiments to see if I could solve this problem.  Each experiment is described below.

1) Deleted the connection of my Obi202 to my Google account then re-added.  Same problem.

2) Deleted the connection of my Obi202 to my Google account, then deleted my Obi202 from ObiTalk.  Then did a factory reset on the Obi202.  Finally added Obi202 back into ObiTalk and re-added same Google account.   Same problem.

3) Deleted the connection of my Obi202 to my Google account, then deleted my Obi202 from ObiTalk.  Then created a new Google account and connected the Obi202 to the new account.  This worked.  

So I now have proven to myself that this works (calling in to hear your own voicemail from your Obi), but I still don't know what is wrong with my original setup which was also based on a new Google account (as of a few days ago).  Unfortunately I have ported my old home number to this broken Google account so I would still like to fix the issue and not just abandon that account.

[Rumboogy]

After finding a test case where I was able to call into voicemail I realized that something must have been wrong with my initial Google account.  I therefor transferred my number to another Google account and connected the Obi202 to that account.  Now everything, including calling voicemail from the Obi connected phone, worked as it should.

[SteveInWA]

The "Voicemail Access" setting would not have been the root cause of the problem, anyhow, so I am glad that transferring the number to another account apparently fixed it.  This is the first time I have seen this bug, and it's likely that some arcane setting in the account didn't get updated when the number was ported in.

Steve,
I don't know if my memory is failing, but I thought in the past you couldn't edit the GoogleChat number.

Rumboogy,
FYI I have "NO" selected for VM access for my GoogleChat, but I still go to the VM prompt when I call my GV number.

What happens if you setup your AT&T number to access VM and call your GV number with your cell?

Robert (and Rumboogy):

The "Edit" button takes you to the screen as shown in the screenshot, and you can change the settings, but those settings are ignored for Chat/OBi use. 

As an aside, I did try, twice, to get Google to have Chat honor the PIN setting, but their position is that the GV<--
>Chat interface wasn't designed with OBi use in mind, but rather, for people to use on a web browser with the plugin.  The assumption was that the user was already authenticating via their Google user name and password, so the PIN was redundant.  Of course, this isn't ideal, but it's now a moot point, since Google is no longer making any changes to the Chat-based interfaces -- all future development is and will be on the Hangouts user interfaces.