The following sequence will make it so calls to your home line will be passed through the GrandCentral screening. Until GrandCentral supports SIP calls, we will have to use PSTN as the interconnect (meaning you will have to pay for these minutes), but for some people the convenience may be worth it. Hopefully GrandCentral will support SIP in and out to avoid these costs on the future.

As an overview, here’s what we’re going to do.

1. We’re going to create a ‘direct-ring’ DID (phone number) that GrandCentral will think is our home number that rings our PhoneGnome-connected phone directly.
2. We’ll change the GrandCentral setup to ring the number from step 1 instead of calling our actual home number (to avoid an infninite forward-loop).
3. We’ll setup the PhoneGnome box to direct inbound calls to our home number (the line connected to the PhoneGnome box) to our GrandCentral number.

The resuult of this is that when people call our existing home number, our phone won’t even ring. Instead, the call will be diverted to GrandCentral. However, unlike standard phone company forwarding, GrandCentral still has a way to ring our home phone, so in the cases where the call should be passed through to us, it can still ring our normal phone. You could do essentially the same thing by having (and paying for) two separate phone lines and extra monthly fees for telephone company call forwarding, but in this case we can do it all with our existing single phone line/number, and without the added expense of call forwarding service on our phone bill(s).

Step 1
Follow the instructions here to setup a free IPKALL number. Except for the ‘SIP Phone Number’ in the IPKALL setup, prepend the string ‘dr-’ so for example, if your number is 650-555-3456 then use for the ‘SIP Phone Number’ field in the IPKALL setup the value ‘dr-16505553456` Note that we put a ‘1′ in fron of our number, removed all punctuation, and then put ‘dr-’ (for ‘direct-ring) in front of the whole thing. These numbers take a while to take effect. The site says an hour, but it often seems to take longer. You might just wait a day to test this. You should be able to call the number assigned by IPKALL from a plain phone (maybe your mobile would be a good choice) and it should ring your PhoneGnome-connected phone directly, bypassing any Find-me or other forwarding you may have enabled.

Step 2
Don’t do this step until you have confirmed the number setup in step 1 is working. Sign in to your GrandCentral site and go to the ‘Settings’ page. Under ‘My Phones’ click ‘Add/Edit Number’. In one of the free positions, add the IPKALL number assigned in step 1 above, as shown below:

Note that we’ve given the number the tag ‘directed’. Now when you return to the settings screen, you’ll see that number in your set. De-activate your actual home number and activate the new IPKALL ‘directed’ number as the place you want your calls to go. It should look something like the following:
Call your GrandCentral number (from some phone other than your PhoneGnome) and confirm that it rings through properly..

Step 3
Once your number is setup as above and it’s all working the way you want, the final step is to force all calls to intelligently ring to GrandCentral without ringing you first. The only way to do that is to use the Find-me feature of PhoneGnome (part of the optional PowerSuite package, $24.99/yr). You don’t have to pay to test it out. Simply activate the free trial and ensure it’s going to work for you first. Go to the Find-me Settings page of your My PhoneGnome site: Features > FindMe/FollowMe > Edit Enter your GrandCentral number as the first and only ‘Simultaneously Ring’ number and be sure to set ‘Do NOT Ring Main Phone’ to ‘Yes’. If your GrandCentral number were 1-718-555-5970 then the settings should look something like the following:

Click ‘Save’. Give the settings a minute or two to take effect, then call your existing home number from some other phone (not your PhoneGnome) and confirm that calls are now going through GrandCentral WITHOUT ringing your actual phone at all, and that callers can still ring through appropriately.

There you have it. If you have problem calls on an existing phone line, simply hook up a PhoneGnome box and enjoy no more hassle calls on that line. You don’t need to wait for GrandCentral to offer number porting. You don’t need the permission of the telephone company. You don’t even need GrandCenrtral’s approval or concent. The PhoneGnome box makes these services open to VoIP, whether they like it or not.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 28th, 2007 at 10:24 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.