OBI202 w/GV Not Ringing Incoming Calls?

[tpir72]

Hi,
   I have an OBI202 with Google Voice on SP1 and E911 on SP4.Over the past three days, the OBI202 is not ringing any incoming calls on my home phone. Outgoing works just fine. Also even though I have a cell phone attached to that GV account with all boxes unchecked, it still rings that cell phone.

I deleted GV from SP1 and completely configured it from scratch with no change.

Any thoughts on why the home phone no longer rings with GV?

Regards,

Terry

[SteveInWA]

Hi Terry:

The usual reason that outbound calls work, but inbound calls don't work, is that you are missing a check mark to the left of the Google Chat forwarding destination in your Google voice settings.

Log onto your Google Voice account from a laptop or desktop computer's web browser (not from a tablet or mobile phone), and go here:  https://www.google.com/voice#phones

Make sure that you are indeed logged into the same Google account as you are using with your OBi device, since it is very easy to accidentally be logged into a different account.  Look at the list of forwarding destinations, and ensure that Google Chat is listed, and it has a check mark next to it.

[tpir72]

Thank you. Yes, the Google chat box was already checked. For some unknown reason it just started working again this afternoon without me changing anything.

This isn't the first time this has happened in the past couple of years.

Regards,

Terry

[tpir72]

OK, I have ID'd two problems. When I call home with my cell phone it rings 4-5 times and goes to Google Voice voicemail. The problem is that even though I hear it ringing in my cell phone, it doesn't actually ring in the house (out of OBI202).

The second issue is when I use my wife's cell phone to call the home number, I get an instant "This number is no longer in service...)

My cell and her cell are both as a contact with Google Voice and I can't find where the numbers are blocked in any way.

Any help is sincerely appreciated.

Regards,

Terry

[LTN1]

OK, I have ID'd two problems. When I call home with my cell phone it rings 4-5 times and goes to Google Voice voicemail. The problem is that even though I hear it ringing in my cell phone, it doesn't actually ring in the house (out of OBI202).

The second issue is when I use my wife's cell phone to call the home number, I get an instant "This number is no longer in service...)

My cell and her cell are both as a contact with Google Voice and I can't find where the numbers are blocked in any way.

Any help is sincerely appreciated.

Regards,

Terry

Regarding your wife's cell phone that gets the message, "This number is no longer in service...." Check to see if the number was inadvertently blocked or blocked as a SPAM number in Google Voice. If it was, unblock it.

Sometimes even though you have the Google chat checked under Settings/Phones, there are other places to check also--particularly all the Groups & Circles. You get there under Settings/Groups & Circles. Go through each one of the Contacts and Groups to make sure that the Google Talk is also checked.

[tpir72]

Fantastic! Took some digging but a single call from the wife was in the Spam folder.

Any thoughts on how to get my number to actually ring to OBI202 again?

Does my cell & home number both have to also be listed in GV Contacts even though they are both assigned to GV?

Regards,

Terry

[SteveInWA]

If the caller (you, in this case) hears ringing, but the GV number isn't ringing, then you've either de-selected Google Chat as a forwarding destination, or you have set some specific calling behavior for that number, such as not ringing any of your forwarding phones, as LTN1 pointed out.

A special case is when calling into your GV number from one of your defined forwarding phone numbers (a number that is on your list of forwarding phones, on this page:  https://www.google.com/voice#phones

You can decide:  when calling your GV number from that forwarding phone number, do you want your GV number to ring, so it can be answered, or do you want to get directly into your voice mail menu tree, so you can listen to your messages?  This is known as the "Voicemail access" option.  To change this setting, click the Edit button under each forwarding phone number, then click "Show advanced settings".  The default behavior for numbers classified as "mobile" to go directly to GV VM, and for numbers classified as "work" or "home" to ring the GV number.

If you have further GV-specific questions, I recommend posting them over on the Google Voice help forum (URL is in my signature block below).

[tpir72]

Hi,
  I can tell you that the ring-through issue had something to do with the way specific numbers were entered or imported into Google Voice Contacts. I didn't touch any of the settings you mentioned. Instead I went through those contacts and any instance missing +1 in the number or the number listed with dashes 213-555-1212 was the issue. An example entry was 213-555-1212. I changed it to +12135551212 and now everything works perfectly.

Damn strange and no documentation that I am aware of to use that specific format in GV Contacts.

Who am I to argue, it simply works!

Regards,

Terry

[SteveInWA]

There's no documentation telling users to add a +1 to the number, because it's not required.  I don't know what went wrong with your contact import, but there may have been some non-visible and invalid character in that field.

Note that there is no dedicated "Google Voice Contacts" list; Google Voice uses the same overall Google Contacts system as Gmail, Google+, Hangouts, Calendar, etc.

[tpir72]

Thank you very much!