CRITICAL ISSUE with Google Voice Incoming Phone numbers????
mo832:
I have a status report. I still need to do some longer-term testing and observation, but I'm making progress. I'm home now, and upon returning, I first noticed several calls show up on my old-style caller-id boxes. These were calls which were going straight to voice mail, but evidently, they must have rung in the house at least one full ring cycle to register. Then a couple of answering machine messages were just a beep, as if a hangup.
This is starting to appear like the GV voice mail is in a time race with the ans. machine to see who can answer the fastest. It could be a very close race. But this has not been an issue before and the answering machine has not been changed to wait more rings. Sometimes they might grab it at the same instant or within a fraction of a second. Remember, the ans. machine ALWAYS picked up when calling the CC number directly or calling the Obi number. Neither of these have a voice mail or other call interception that I'm aware of... but GV does.
Then I had a friend call in twice. It rang both times. The first time, I picked up and we talked. The second time, I waited for the machine or GV VM to pick up. It was the machine. So now I can't even watch it malfunction while I'm present ;). Ironically, the ans. machine is supposed to work primarily when I'm NOT here...
One thought which may or may not mean anything- Today is Aug. 1. Could there be a feature change or any kind of system update which might cause unusual behaviors?
I have not yet done a power cycle since I'm still trying to notice what happens, and the phone appears to be ringing when it's supposed to, so no critical malfunctions that I can detect.
SteveInWA:
You ought to troubleshoot this in a more rigorous, step-by-step manner, instead of jumping all over the place.
Power-cycle your home network stuff, just to eliminate any issues that would otherwise cause you to waste more time troubleshooting it.Turn OFF the answering machine.Using some telephone number that is not already assigned as a forwarding phone on either of your GV accounts, place calls to your two different Google Voice numbers. Confirm (several times) that the calls make it to your OBi, and that you can answer the calls. IF this works, great, continue. If it fails, report back what happens.If inbound calls reliably reach your OBi, then there is nothing wrong with your GV accounts, nor your OBi, and the answering machine is the culprit. Continue...
Google Voice has a fixed ring-interval of approximately 25 seconds. The time interval isn't precise, and some variable, few seconds of delay may occur, depending on network conditions. In order to use an answering machine, it must answer calls well before the 25+ second interval expires.
Since one of the primary functions of GV is its voicemail, it really makes no sense to use an answering machine; you can simply use GV VM instead. For the Callcentric forwarding DID, use Callcentric Call Treatments, and set the ring time to 30 seconds. This will ensure that GV takes the VM if unanswered.
mo832:
Just thought I would update again on this...
I did the power cycle and had several outside calls dial in and everything appears to be "normal", or at least as it was before.
I think some calls, but not the majority, actually did get improperly diverted by GV and didn't reach the Obi. Whatever it was, it seems to have been a passing thing. Also, perhaps the "expectation" that the ans. mach. was doing its job correctly, led me to believe that a bunch of calls were being missed, when in fact, GV was answering with VM after the standard delay.
As for the merits of having an answering machine or not, it probably does no good to start a philosophical debate, but let's just say that there *are* good reasons for it in some cases, and some of those reasons apply to me. YMMV :)
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