This week, I'd like to talk about a Google Voice feature some of you may not have heard about: custom greetings. With custom greetings, you're able to record personalized voicemail greetings that only play to a specific group of people or to an individual. This feature is completely optional, but once you use it, you may realize how helpful and fun it can be.

Instructions for creating a basic custom greeting can be found in the Google Voice Help Center, along with tips for recording custom greetings for "different groups or individuals in your contact list.".










I'll give you examples of how I'm using custom greetings, but these are just a few ideas -- perhaps you'll be able to think of other creative ways to take advantage of custom greetings.

General default: "Hi, I can't get to the phone right now, so please leave your name and a message. If you don't leave a message, I probably won't return your call. Thanks."

Friends: "I might be in, I might be out. Leave a message and you might find out!

Grandparents-who-only-speak-Chinese: "爺爺奶奶你們好。對不起我現在不能接電話。請給我留言，我等會兒給你們打回來。謝謝！"

I can also imagine custom greetings being incredibly useful if you own a business. You can have a "professional" greeting associated to your business contacts and perhaps some important business partners would even have a custom greeting that includes emergency contact information.

Now that you have a bit more insight on custom greetings, be creative and record yours today. If you encounter any issues, search first to see if another user reported it in the Google Voice Help Forum; if you don't see the issue, ask users for help in the Problem Solving section of the forum.

If there are other features you'd like to see in Google Voice, please leave your suggestion on the Google Voice Suggestions page.

Posted by Carol and Heather
Googlers

I spend a lot of time in Gmail and love how Google Voice email notifications let me see voicemails in my email inbox. I can scan the transcript quickly, and when I want to hear the voicemail, it is just a click away on my computer.

However, something always seemed a little off when I clicked "Play message" and it opened up a new browser window. Wouldn’t it be better if the voicemail just played in the email? Now that is possible in Gmail. You have to turn on the Google Voice player in the Gmail Labs tab under Settings, but after that you are good to go. When voicemails come in, click on the play button, and you can listen to the whole message, adjust volume and everything right inside the Gmail message. To read more check out the post on the Gmail blog.









We hope you like this new feature. Let us know what you think by leaving a comment in our forum.

Posted by Robert Dong,
Software Engineer

With Google Voice, you receive SMS messages on your phones AND in your Google Voice inbox, which means you can send SMS replies from either from your mobile phone or your computer. Today, we're going one step further by allowing you to get text messages by email. After enabling SMS-to-email forwarding, every time you receive a new SMS on your Google Voice number, we will send you an email notification. Some of the benefits of this new feature include:

• Unified messaging - You can get SMS together with email and voicemail notifications, all in one place in your email inbox, where you can easily search and reply to these messages.
• SMS savings - If you spend your time in front of your computer, or if you get email on your mobile phone, you can turn off SMS notification to your phone in Google Voice and receive and reply to your SMS by email, saving on SMS costs.
• SMS threading - If you use Gmail, you also get the extra benefit of threading all SMS between you and one contact into one conversation, so it is easy to see the whole discussion.

This feature can be easily turned on or off from the call settings page:






As always feedback is welcomed and we hope you like this feature.

Posted by Vincent Paquet

A few days ago, I decided to spend some quality time poking around the Google Voice Settings page. I'm glad I did, because I found a Voice feature I never knew existed! It's the "ring schedule" feature. I'd never thought about setting up a preset schedule for phone calls and was pleasantly surprised to find out this was actually a popular requested feature by users.

This help center article describes how to set up your ring schedule. So then the question is: why would you want to do this?

There are many possible reasons, but two examples came to my mind immediately. Say you have unreliable cell phone reception at home, and you want to be able to take your calls from your home phone on evenings and weekends. However, you don't want the home line to ring and bother your roommate during work hours when you're not there. You can do this. Or if you don't want any calls interrupting your dinner from 6pm-7:30pm every night, go ahead and set your ring schedule so calls to your Google number never ring your phones during dinner time. During those hours, callers will be able to leave you voicemail so you can catch up after you're done eating.

Whether you're new to Voice or didn't know this feature existed, give it a try! If you have questions about this or any other features, visit the Google Voice Help Forum. We also welcome stories and comments regarding interesting ways you're using Voice. Share these in the "Tips and Tricks" category of the Google Voice Help Forum.

Posted by Carol and Heather
Googlers