Google Voice & iPhone Call Forwarding

With the highly anticipated (at least by me) switchover of Grandcentral to Google’s infrastructure, they cleared up one dealbreaker that stopped me from using it regularly: Call Presentation. This feature announces each incoming call after you pick up, and gave you some options before you can actually start talking. Not cool.

Now that I can turn Call Presentation off, I’ve taken the first step integrating it into my life. Though I’m not ready to start giving out my Google Voice number to everyone, it can still solve a pretty annoying problem without anyone using its number directly.

When I’m home, my iPhone stays connected to my PC in my office on the second floor. I don’t carry it around the house with me. When I’m in this situation, I want calls to my iPhone to be forwarded to my home phone, and/or in some cases, my Gizmo SIP number running on my Nokia tablet.

Let’s start with the forwarding part. The iPhone itself can only turn forwarding on or off completely. I don’t want to have to manage this setting manually, and from my research, there really aren’t any reliable apps that will do forwarding automatically based on location. Luckily, there are manual codes for AT&T that can do some selective forwarding. Sorry international readers, you’ll have to look them up for your own carrier. I found them on some forum site (linked above), but I’m reprinting them here. Note that [dest] is the number you want to forward to (eg +12025551234) and [sec] is the number of seconds to let the phone ring before forwarding (in the no answer case). [sec] can range from 5-30 in 5 second increments.

Forward All:
Activate: *21*[dest]*11#
Cancel & Retain: #21*11#
Re-establish: *21*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##21*11#
Status: *#21*11#

If Busy:
Activate: *67*[dest]*11#
Cancel & Retain: #67*11#
Re-establish: *67*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##67*11#
Status: *#67*11#

if no answer:
Activate: *61*[dest]*11*[sec]#
Cancel & Retain: #61*11#
Re-establish: *61*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##61*11#
Status: *#61*11#

If Unreachable:
Activate: *62*[dest]*11#
Cancel & Retain: #62*11#
Re-establish: *62*11#
Cancel & Forget: ##62*11#
Status: *#62*11#

While testing, I found that the activate code works as expected (15 seconds seems about right for me), and the Cancel & Retain codes brought it right back to using the iPhone visual voicemail.

If you want to ignore the whole Google Voice thing, you can just use this to forward calls selectively to any number. You can stop reading now and go play.

However for me, I spend some time away from home for work, and forwarding consistently to the home phone doesn’t work in those cases. Sometimes I want to stop forwarding and have calls go to my mobile, or forward to Gizmo on my laptop. This is where I use Google Voice to easily switch it up.

Google Voice allows a quick switch between any phones you have configured with it. Through their web interface, I can set it to my iPhone or Gizmo while I’m away. So I don’t have to remember any forwarding codes. Plus I get web-based voicemail and email transcription through Google Voice.

So there you have it. A very handy way to use Google Voice without giving anyone the number. Plus a great way to stop having to chase down your iPhone (or any other phone on AT&T!) when it rings.

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