I really wish you could forward mobile phone voicemails like you could forward emails. Sometimes I get a call, someone leaves a message, and it’s more relevant to David or Sarah or someone else.
Visual Voicemail on the iPhone is a huge step forward for voicemail, but it still feels a bit last generation. It’s still about the static message that sits in your box. You can’t forward it along, you can’t email it to yourself, you can’t even play it to someone else who’s on the phone with you.
I’m looking forward to the day when voicemail is as easy and flexible and portable as email.
Benjy
on 10 Apr 08Our work voicemail system allows this…
Brenton
on 10 Apr 08A friend of mine runs a company called SimulScribe. It’s a subscription service.
They transcribe your voicemail to text and send it to you. I believe you can also get sent an MP3 of the call. . .
JC
on 10 Apr 08This is standard feature of nearly all mobile phone networks in the UK. Ironically, I’ve never found a need for it.
David Andersen
on 10 Apr 08Lots of corporate systems do this.
Michael
on 10 Apr 08Our IP phone system at work has an e-mail gateway component. When someone leaves me a voicemail, I get a low bitrate WAV file in my e-mail, and I can just play it on my phone.
Now, if we could only get people to send e-mail instead of leaving a voicemail in the first place…
Tim
on 10 Apr 08My Avaya/Nortel phone allows this to be done.
mandy
on 10 Apr 08Vonage actually does this, in a roundabout way. There’s a setting that allows your voice mails to be emailed to you as mp3s, and then you can forward them off as you like. I find it very useful, not just for forwarding, but for keeping records of voice mails I’ve received.
Jake Grimley
on 10 Apr 08Exactly. Perfect. Why can’t all voicemail (esp. iPhone’s) just work this way.
James D Kirk
on 10 Apr 08GrandCentral.com also allows for the transfer or forwarding of a call. Not sure if it is just within their system (between users) or if you can simply forward a link to anyone who could then listen. Like JC never really found a need, unless you consider the some time desire to torture people into having to listen to a message my crazy aunt leaves me!
Keith Mancuso
on 10 Apr 08Yea Grandcentral.com is great, I just wish google would finish whatever they are planning on doing with it and open up registrations again.
LBDG
on 10 Apr 08I used CallWave before I got my iPhone. It can email you each message, which was super handy when I had to forward a message to my wife. It also has some neat screening features, Mac Dashboard widgets, and a text transcription like the aforementioned Simulscribe.
Morgan Aldridge
on 10 Apr 08I’ve configured our Asterisk-based VoIP system at work to email GSM copies of voicemails to users to they have easier seeking & forwarding/redirecting. I believe that Asterisk 1.4 supports an IMAP client so that it actually keeps the read/unread/deleted state of your messages in sync between the mail server & the voicemail system
This is the “Unified Messaging” Holy Grail that phone systems have been striving for for quite some time and we’re now reaching. Now if only more systems would offer it and support it between services/carriers.
Jason Abate
on 10 Apr 08I’ve found GrandCentral’s voicemail support pretty useful – not only can you listen to your voicemail on your computer if you’d like (for example, when cell service gets spotty), but you can also attach the MP3 version to Highrise contacts, etc. I’ve pretty much quit giving out my direct cell phone number and just use my GrandCentral number now.
John
on 10 Apr 08Our office phone system saves voicemail as web- or e-mail accessible .wav files. I just dump them into iTunes, which is shared with other colleagues on the LAN, who can browse the messages like they can browse my music library. I call it social voicemailing. Someone is bound to respond, no? :-)
~bc
on 10 Apr 08My wife used to forward me messages when we had Verizon Wireless. It was a standard feature of their voicemail. Haven’t looked since going iPhone/AT&T. Maybe they have it on the dial-in version? If they do and you can find the dial-in procedure, I bet you could do that on your iPhone. (iPhone falls back to dial-in vmail when it cannot connect to EDGE). Maybe we’ll get fwd’ing in the next iPhone sw rev.
jeffery
on 10 Apr 08Youmail allows you to forward voicemails via their web interface.
Additionally, it:
- can email you your voicemail (great when you lose your phone)
- can have different outgoing messages based on the caller’s number
- can transcribe your voicemails and SMS them to you. - can save your friend’s numbers (great when you lose your phone)
- is FREE
As you can tell, I’m a huge fan.
Kerri
on 10 Apr 08“I really wish you could forward mobile phone voicemails like you could forward emails.”
I can, to a degree at least. I’ve been able to do this on my home phone and my wireless (TMobile) for years. The only caveat—the recipient has to be on the same network.
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/2351/t_mobile_forward_voicemail_message
Another of the slew of reasons to avoid AT&T Wireless.
VoIP guy
on 10 Apr 08Mitel and other VoIP phone systems have unified messaging that allow you to do exactly that. A very handy capability indeed.
ChrisFizik
on 10 Apr 08I second the Asterisk note. Just about to turn VM emailing on with our system. Users want it for sure, just for the notification, but it will also allow them to fwd the messages around .. they’re just small sound files.
Brian Jones
on 10 Apr 08There’s no reason why voice mail can’t be integrated with email. Why should we have multiple inboxes when it easy enough just to have one.
Brian.
TC
on 10 Apr 08I can forward with AT&T, and guess why? I’m NOT on the visual voicemail system. And when I had an iPhone, I remember seeing an application that could grab your voicemail files (audio files) and grab them and send them to your Mac. Though it was probably not the best solution, if somebody continued working on the app, it could probably forward things. Of course, with lack of MMS, email would probably be the only thing! Thats why I’ll stick with 3G Windows Mobile with SlingPlayer Mobile until further notice.
BL
on 10 Apr 08http://www.ribbit.com
here you go
Jennifer Davis
on 10 Apr 08Unity Messaging by Cisco has the voice mail files show up as email .wav attachments, so they can be forwarded to anyone who has email.
In the speech-to-text arena, I use a free service from SpinVox that I love. Also, GrandCentral , Google’s acquisition in the voice space, also has email messaging and their service is free today in beta.
Chuck
on 10 Apr 08Both my T-Mobile and my AT&T accounts do this irregardless of the phone.
Cade Roux
on 10 Apr 08+1 for Grand Central
Jason L Perry
on 10 Apr 08Looks like that day came and went a long time ago.
Tomahawk
on 10 Apr 08Put me down for GrandCentral also. I love service, it lets you forward the voicemail or embed it in to a website. I use as my main contact phone book. There is also an option to screen phone calls, or even record live conversations (which for some reason often gets triggered whenever I make phone calls via GrandCentral com). I do have to agree with Keith Mancuso though…Google does really need do some finishing of the product and then start promoting it more.
Alberto
on 10 Apr 08My Vodafone voice mail here in the Netherlands allows me to forward the message either to another user’s voice mailbox or as a .wav file to my own email address. These features have been there for years I think.
The only thing I miss is the ability to login to the vodafone websites and being able to manage and listen to my voice mails from there.
Seth
on 10 Apr 08I like RingCentral…
http://www.ringcentral.com/
...You get emails with wav’s attached for voicemail. You can forward those, have it ring your phone etc.
Just signed up with Google/GrandCentral, but haven’t put it through its paces yet.
Paolo
on 10 Apr 08I use youmail for my cell phone then have my vonage go there as well. you can still call and pick up your vm but you also get the message in your email with the mp3 which you can forward.
And it’s free.
Ben D.
on 10 Apr 08I feel your pain, Jason. I have pined for the exact same thing. And while all of these suggestions are good, they don’t do what I want…which is: for Apple and AT&T to just implement this on the iPhone. :-)
Yes, some will call that a terribly iPhone-centric approach. But frankly, all these other good services require additional “stuff”. I just want to be able to select a voicemail on my iPhone, hit the “forward” button, pick a contact from my contact list, choose whether I forward the message via phone or via email and hit SEND.
Let’s beg Apple. (the iPhone feedback page)
JF
on 10 Apr 08Ben, right. I don’t want to have to sign up for another service. I want voicemails to be as ubiquitous as email. I can send an email to anyone, forward an email to anyone, save an email to anywhere. That’s what I’d like to see from Voicemail.
SB
on 11 Apr 08Another YouMail user here. I used it for months on my Blackberry, but went ahead and used visual vm when I got my iPhone. I gave it about two months before giving up and configuring my iPhone (no hack necessary) to use YouMail instead. I use it commonly to forward messages exactly like your talking about. Try it before you knock it.
jj
on 11 Apr 08my gos! u r right! jason loves emil up thw ass!
Chris
on 11 Apr 08You might want to take a look at Ribbit’s Amphibian. www.ribbit.com. It does forward your voicemail and a whole host of other things. Really nice bit is that it has a sweet API that let’s you programmatically access that same data – for Highrise integration for an example, you could grab voicemails from a particular contact and store them with the record. I think they do something like this with Salesforce.com now.
Kevin
on 11 Apr 08I’ve also been using YouMail for a couple of weeks and I’m loving it. I hate checking voicemail – it’s often the worst part of my work day (I know that’s odd, but I hate listening to messages). I love being able to have voicemails sent to me as an MP3 file and I love how easily I can skip through and review a bunch of messages on their site.
They also offer free transcription which is still pretty dodgy, but seems to get the phone numbers people say correct every time.
Nic Wise
on 11 Apr 08both New Zealand cell carriers do this. You can forward it to another number, or even send a voice mail to someone else from within voice mail.
I think the issue is the US carriers – they are stuck in the 80’s and 90’s. Not that the NZ ones are better, mind you, tho they dont market themselves on having the fewest dropped calls :)
Cameron
on 11 Apr 08I’ve used GotVoice (gotvoice.com) for this type of thing. It’s also handy when you are out of the country and want to be able to check your voicemail without incurring big LD fees. I did this when I was in Canada and Verizon roaming was 50 cents a minute.
FredS
on 11 Apr 08“I dont want to have to sign up for another service”
fine. wait 3 years.
J I
on 11 Apr 08You can do this with any Sprint phone. No extra subscription required. Seems funny that even though Visual Voicemail is a huge step forward in voicemail user-friendliness, it lacks some rudimentary features found in basic phones.
Eddie
on 11 Apr 08I’ll through pinger.com into the madness… I use it for voice messaging (hybrid of VM and SMS), but they have VM services as well, including forwarding.
Simple.
kathryn
on 11 Apr 08I signed up for SimulScribe a year ago and by now have completely forgotten that it’s a separate service.
Getting (emailed) voice-to-text-versions of my voicemail is literally priceless to me. I can skim it in three seconds on my blackberry, and it also sends me an mp3, which I can play directly inside gmail. So if I really want to listen to it I can do it on my computer through email, or call up my voicemail to hear it (and here’s the kicker – it plays the last message FIRST! Finally!)
I suggest it to people all the time but the website looks so janky, and the setup seems so sketchy, that it’s hard to believe it actually works so seamlessly and reliably. Literally, not a single issue since signup a year ago, and I can’t remember when I last actually had to use the website.
It may not be ubiquitous, but it’s drastically changed the way that I personally work with voicemail.
The only downside is that the friends who know I have it use snarky robot-voices when they leave their messages.
Mathias Stjernström
on 11 Apr 08I get all my voicemessages as mp3 attachments to an email. done.
Jeff
on 12 Apr 08YouMail completely solves your problem.
I tell everyone about it, and 10 out of 10 love it.
Sarah
on 14 Apr 08Our office phones send all VMs as mp3s to Outlook and you can forward the VMs in your phone to anyone in the system. This is widely available in office phone systems.
We are in Chicago and use Gregg Communications Systems with a Comdial phone system with CONVERSip EP100 phones. We have 20 employees. They do training and set up and everything.
Rob
on 15 Apr 08AN ACTUAL SOLUTION (granted it’s not the most convenient one):
(Sorry. I get frustrated when everyone replies to legit questions with ‘I don’t have that problem, sucker.’)
If your phone is jailbroken, you can browse to /var/mobile/Library/Voicemail/ where you should be able to find your voicemail stored as amr files, playable in Quicktime. They’re not named anything convenient in lieu of numeric file names but if you really need that voicemail for reference or legal reasons, you’ll be willing to go through all of them to find the one you need.
If you have a mac, I suggest installing AFPd on your phone.
For a PC, I recommend WinSCPPE.
Giles Bowkett
on 16 Apr 08Asterisk ftw
This discussion is closed.