I want my OBI connected phone not to go to voicemail when I call my own number

Started by Tangible2, June 25, 2017, 11:23:36 AM

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Tangible2

Apologies if this is asked-and-answered; I couldn't find it in Search.

My Google Voice is set to ring several phones. When I call the number from the phone attached to my OBI, it goes into voicemail administration, but what I want is for it to just ring my other phones, such as my wife's cell.

In the Legacy GV Setup menu, the OBI appears under "Google Chat" for reasons I don't understand. In that EDIT page for that entry there's a Voicemail Access section that seems to address this issue. The NO box is checked.

Is there something else I can do to resolve this?

SteveInWA

Hi -- no worries, this behavior is not documented, and it's counter-intuitive.  The setting you referenced is ignored by Google Voice, for the Google Chat destination.

Chat (which is now discontinued on all Google platforms) is only used as a forwarding destination for OBi devices.

Just call your wife's cell phone number directly.

Tangible2

"Just call your wife's cell phone number directly."

Well sure I can do that, but it doesn't let me use GV as intended, to reach her without having to know which destination phone is convenient for her.

Just to be clear, are you saying there's no known way to achieve what I want?

SteveInWA

You can call your Google Voice number from one of that account's verified 10-digit forwarding phone numbers, setting that forwarding phone number to ring other phones before going to GV VM.  Of course, you can also call the Google Voice number from any other (non-verified/non-forwarding) phone number and get the same result.

Your wife can also get her own Google Voice number, which would forward to her mobile number, and you can provision that second GV number on your same OBi.

Tangible2

Understood, and thanks for the clarification. It's too bad the engineers at Google and/or Obi can't just fix this obvious bug, and have the Obi phone honor the Voice Access option setting that's already been provided on the Google Chat entry that connects to Obi. Or at least gray out the checkbox since it does nothing.

One thing that's been lost in the transition from landlines to cell phones is the old norm of calling a household rather than an individual, willing to talk to whoever answers the phone. Sometimes that's an inconvenience; sometimes an advantage in terms of human relationships. As in, call John to say happy birthday to him; call Mary to say happy birthday to her; call John and Mary to say happy anniversary.

SteveInWA

It is not an "obvious bug".  Google discontinued all of its own Chat clients.  As far as Google is concerned, the service is defunct.  In fact, all remnants of Chat/Talk settings have been removed from the new Google Voice web page user interface.

They've left the underlying Chat/XMPP protocol in place as an accommodation for OBi customers.  Whether or not they clarify the wording of it, in a future update to the new UI, is unknown, although we've asked them to do so (for example, add a setting to enable or disable OBi support).

Your "household" scenario already works today:  "Dad" is at work, and wants to call "Mom".  Dad calls the household's inbound GV number, from his office or cell phone, which then forwards to, and rings all the forwarding phones.  Mom answers whichever phone she is near at that time.  If Dad is already at home, then he can either go talk to Mom in the other room, or call her from a real telephone number.  Google Voice was designed to give an individual one inbound number, with the intended use case of people calling that number, to reach that one GV user at one of their forwarding phones.  It wasn't designed for shared use.