WH: Virtual Phone Number

Posted on by

After working from home for years, I put together this new series of posts to help those who are working from home for the first time. Tips and tactics to get more done in a day.

If your work has issued you a work phone (cell, desk, virtual phone) you can skip this article. This is for those of you who have only your personal phone to communicate with workers, students, etc, the last thing you want to be doing is giving out your personal cell to everyone. And as part of maintaining boundaries with coworkers, you need to be able to turn off those calls.

Imagine this:

You can give a number out to your coworkers/students/etc, that they can call and it automatically forwards to your cell or home phone. That this magical number you can have it only forward those calls during your ‘office hours’, and the rest of the time it goes to voicemail. And perhaps after all of this Carona/Covid shelter-in-place is over, you can turn off that number and still keep your personal phone number private!

There are two great ways you can do this:

  1. Google Voice is completely free and if you have a Google account, such as gmail.com it’s really easy to set up!
  2. Ring Central is a fantastic business level option, and during this Carona/Covid situation, if you’re in education, healthcare, non-profit or a few other cases get Ring Central Free at this link. I have personally used Ring Central for years – and they’re great, and I was really excited to see they’re offering this free for select industries. Of course, they’re hoping you’ll fall in love with it and pay to continue service, but there is zero obligation. And remember Google Voice is permanently free!

 

Also, be sure to watch to pay special attention to the feature that prevents your personal voicemail/answering machine from grabbing the message. Both Google Voice and Ring Central have options for this – that way your work and personal voicemails stay separate.

Finally, be sure to check out the texting options also available on these platforms!

 

This article will be updated as I create more articles that cross-reference each other. None of the links to products or services on here are affiliate links (I don’t make any revenue from them.) Additionally, the WordPress platform I use does provide other advertisement links that generate them revenue but I receive zero financial benefits.