Google Voice, Another Awesome Free Utility

Google offers a great service with Google Voice. It is a virtual phone number that offers a suite of functions to help you manage voice communications, It gives you a number that you can configure as a local number or one from somewhere else, the ability to simultaneously ring and receive calls for that number on any phone you register with it, and via your Gmail inbox. It also includes voicemail, which you can use instead of your cellular provider voicemail (that is, your current cell phone number will go to your Google voicemail.) It offers voicemail transcription, and text and email options as well. It also offers web page widgets that you can use to let people call you from the web without disclosing your phone number on the internet. It actually calls their phone, then yours. That way you can deactivate it whenever you want. It has other options too. You can have it display the Google voice number with incoming calls or the callers number. The option to have the Google voice number show up is good if you want to use this feature to reduce minutes used for incoming calls from multiple numbers by adding this one number to your unlimited calling list You can set it to ring through per a custom schedule, email you or text you when you get voicemail, screen your calls, receive text messages, and more. There is also an iPhone app that makes retrieving your voicemails and managing your Google Voice account on the go really easy. You can also make outgoing calls from the same number if you choose to. And, it is all free.

I have two numbers setup. One for my personal use, and one for my business. There is a trick to having two phones forwarded to the same cell phone. The trick is that in the setup screen you need to call your cell phone a "Home" number on one Google Voice account and a "Business" number from the other. You cannot use the "Cell" option. Also, two is the limit. I tried to add a third account to forward to my cell phone and it was automatically removes from the other two accounts. It took me a while to get it all setup right again. The downside to having two accounts is that you can only use the iPhone App for one account at a time. If you are logged out, you won't get notifications of messages. I leave my personal account logged into the app and use the mobile website for the other. However, the mobile site tends to get tripped up for some reason and will not stay refreshed, so I am constantly having to logout and back in again to get new messages. Because of this, I turned on the email notification feature. For my business account I use the number masking feature that displays my google voice number for all incoming calls. First, it can be added to my ATT A-List and will be unlimited minutes. Second, i know to answer the call properly, with my business greeting. Last, is so that I know when to answer it. I don't take business calls during my day job or outside of business hours. I think it Google Voice is a great free tool. Check it out for yourself. Let me know what features you are using, or any tips you might have by leaving comments below.