Finally getting Google Voice to do my bidding
After reading some posts about getting Google Voice’s voicemail transcription abilities from your regular cell phone number, I decided to play around with it. Luka summarized exactly what I wanted to do:
so what i really want is my gv number to fwd as i set it up, but my fwd’d cell phone vm to just hit gv and transcribe
It turns out Google Voice allows you to do this exactly. From your Google Voice settings do the following:
-
Phones: Enable your mobile phone here as a forwarding number. Then activate Google voicemail on the phone. This will require you to type in a GSM number on your phone which will forward callers to your Google voicemail instead of the AT&T voicemail system.
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Voicemail & SMS: Make sure you have a greeting set and check ‘Transcribe Voicemails’
-
Calls: These settings are up to you. I have:
- ‘Call Screening’ off
- ‘Call Presentation’ off
- ‘Caller ID’ set to display the caller's number
- ‘Do Not Disturb’ unchecked.
The downside of all of this is that you lose visual voicemail. However, I find getting voicemail transcriptions via SMS is worth that tradeoff.
