send incoming SIP calls to Google Voicemail with OBi202

[Beaker]

I'm looking for a way to have incoming calls go to my Google Voice account -- the intention would be to use GV primarily for its voicemail capabilities, rather than a directly-dialed number.

In my OBi202 I have setup SP1 with my primary SIP provider, and SP2 with GV. In my inbound call route on SP1 I have tried the following to bridge the call:

...{SP2(12125551212);d=10}

where 12125551212 is my own GV number (ie. my GV dialing itself). (The "d=10" delays the action in order to allow calls to first be picked up by other rules in the inbound call route.

Unfortunately all this does is reach my message retrieval directly, as Google detects that the call is coming from the same GV number. Nor does it matter if I change the Google setting to disable "Direct access to voicemail when calling your Google number from this phone" (under the "Google Chat" phone settings).

I realize I could just forward to GV over the SIP account, however this would send the call through PTSN rather than using the OBi's capability to bridge the call digitally. And having tried it, there was no success getting the CID to be carried across.

Any ideas, or is this even possible?

Much appreciated.

[Felix]

you want GV calls to go straight to voicemail, right? then why set up OBi for GV at all? if there are no endpoints that register for GV (browser, OBi, smartphone client) - the call will go to voicemail.

Or I misunderstood the question?

[hwittenb]

GoogleVoice has a help page on sending all calls to voicemail:
http://support.google.com/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115106

They say setup "Do Not Disturb" on the GV number tied to the voicemail.

If you forward the call directly from your sip account or thru the OBi bridging the call will go thru the PSTN unless you bridge the call using a 2d Google Voice account setup on the OBi.

[Beaker]

My "true" phone number -- the one that people call me on -- is with my SIP-based VoIP provider, not with Google Voice. It's set up on SP1 on my OBi. What I'm hoping to do is forward calls from SP1 to my GV number on SP2.

Is there no way to use the OBi as bridge from SIP to GV internally/digitally, without forwarding across the PSTN? Or supposing I add a second GV number as hwittenb suggests, might something like this work in my SIP account's inbound call routes on SP1:

...{SP3($1>18025551212);d=10}

where SP3 is the 2nd GV account, and the phone number called is that of the 1st GV account. I've added the "$1>" to attempt to pass the incoming caller ID through.

[azrobert]

If you use GV to bridge a call you will receive the GV callerid and not the original incoming call callerid.

If you want to pass the callerid through the service you use must support spoofing and GV does not.

[azrobert]

Maybe you should consider another service for voicemail.

Callcentric has a free account with voicemail and I believe you can pass the incoming callerid to them.

[Beaker]

I currently have voicemail set up on my main VoIP provider, voip.ms. Their voicemail service is quite OK (I think standard Asterisk-based), but not nearly as full-featured as Google's.

I've tried out Callcentric's as well (I use them for some services) but it isn't as good as with voip.ms.

Thanks for the suggestions, they are much appreciated.

[hwittenb]

If sending the caller id to GoogleVoice is important to you and you are willing to pay for the call I believe it can be done using sip.  With voip.ms, I believe it can be done in the following manner.  From voip.ms you obtain a "Virtual Number" as an incoming number and with the voip.ms "Manage DID" page you forward incoming calls to this virtual number to your GoogleVoice number with the voicemail.

Then on the OBi you configure the delayed call forwarding to send the call to the voip.ms "Virtual Number" using the sip uri address that you obtain.  On the OBi ITSP Sip Profile you enable X_SpoofCallerID so that your bridged outgoing sip uri call will pickup the incoming caller id.  As you know the voip.ms VirtualNumber has a 25c monthly fee plus they charge one tenth of a cent per minute for the incoming call and of course their outgoing per minute charge for the call to the GV number.

[Beaker]

with the voip.ms "Manage DID" page you forward incoming calls to this virtual number to your GoogleVoice number with the voicemail.

I think in that case the call would still go by PSTN, from voip.ms to Google? I had previously tried setting my main DID at voip.ms to fail over directly to my Google number, when calls are not picked up at the OBi. That way the CID is passed on by voip.ms -- which in practice, seemed to work for about 25% of calls. And the voice quality suffered noticeably due to going from digital > analog > digital.

Still, I will try your suggestion -- sounds like it could help reliability of the CID at least.

[hwittenb]

Yes, the GoogleVoice number is a pstn number and GoogleVoice has no other way of receiving a call unless, of course, it is their own system doing the calling.  In the latter case they have a policy of only using their own caller id number. 

I would think the difference between a direct fall over to your Google Voice number from voip.ms from routing the call thru the OBi would be the delay you are configuring to allow the call to be picked up by answering the call with the handset on the OBi unless voip.ms also allows you to configure that delay.  I wouldn't think the caller id handling would be much different.

I would imagine that voip.ms routes the call thru some other company's interface to the PSTN on the way to Google Voice and if there is a caller id delivery failure it would be at that point.