Lately we’ve been getting quite a bit of questions surrounding google voice and how to set it up properly. Here are the simple steps to accomplish this from a regular web browser. Note: Legacy options, which need to be accessed, are not available on the app.
- Head to Google Voice and sign up. Ideally, this should be done with your official business email such as [email protected].
- Pick a phone number you like.
- For google voice, there are two different settings. This is not apparent but there are “regular” and “legacy” settings, which are a little different from one another although most will overlap.
- To access the legacy settings, click on the 3 lines in the top left corner and then select “Legacy Google Voice”.
- Click the cog wheel in the top right corner and select settings, which will get you into the legacy settings.
- Go to the Calls menu and for “Caller ID (incoming)” select “Display my Google Voice number”.
- Disable “Call Screening” to avoid requiring callers to say their name before the call is forwarded.
Now, when someone calls your business number, it will forward the call showing your business number to your cell phone. To make life easier, enter your business number into your phone contacts and you’ll know right away when a call is for your business.
Install the google voice app on your phone, as you can also send and receive txt messages and should use the app to make business calls and send business txt.
You should also take advantage of the google voice voicemail feature but since the calls are forwarded to your cell phone, you have to test which voicemail answers first. Google voice has a ring duration of 25 seconds, which cannot be changed. However, your service provider ring duration usually can be. For ATT it is around 20 seconds by default, which would cause the cell phone voicemail to pick up the call before google voice can. If you happen to have ATT, you can follow the format below. If you have a different provider, they all have similar procedures, which can be googled.
- On your phone, dial ##002# to set all settings to default. This is in case previous changes had been made.
- On your phone, dial *#61#, which will display some information such as the number that the calls are being forwarded to and the delay before the voicemail engages.
- Write down the number (including +1).
- Dial **61*+1xxxyyyzzzz*11*30#. +1xxxyyyzzzz being the number you wrote down previously and 30 is the delay in seconds. The delay can be set in 5 second increments with 30 being the maximum.
- Dial *#61# to verify that the new settings are active.
- Just to confirm, place a test call from a different phone to your business number to ensure your google voice voicemail answers.