FYI Google Chat in New GV Accounts

[piafhbsh01]

Hi all,

I am a long time reader & lurker but first time poster.

I am not sure if someone has already posted this, if yes please accept my apology, but I do see still being mentioned in Nerd Vittles articles that if you create a new Google Voice account & don’t see the forward to Google Chat option you are out of luck, so I thought I am going to post what I have found.

I just created a new Google Voice account last week & indeed did not have the forward to Google Chat option available. So I decided to play around a little bit & see if I can figure something out. So I logged in to that new account’s Gmail inbox. On the left where there used to be the Google Chat section it’s now “upgraded” to Google Hangouts. As I was clicking around there, I found somewhere an option to downgrade to the “old Google Chat”. Unfortunately I don’t remember exactly where I found this option, but it’s somewhere there in the Hangouts section on the left. After I did this I went back to the Google Voice settings and voila! There is now a forward to Google Chat option!

So it here is my take on it. Google has been trying to push the Hangouts for a while. It seems all new accounts are setup with Hangouts by default. So don’t panic. Just login to your Inbox, change back to the old chat system, and you should be ready to go.

Hope that helps someone.

 

[wardmundy]

Appears to now be a new Chat tab in your Google Voice settings as well.

In fact, I just signed up for a new Google account with Google Voice and Google Chat is (once again) enabled by default.

 

[billsimon]

wardmundy or others, can you confirm this is still the case with your accounts? see https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/voice/NrdW6JS1I_o . Also, I'm wondering if it is necessary to set up forwarding now. Perhaps simply being logged in to the deprecated Chat service with Jabber capability now gets you receipt of calls. Trying to figure this out. I have a slightly renewed interest these days.

 

[wardmundy]

wardmundy or others, can you confirm this is still the case with your accounts? see https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!category-topic/voice/NrdW6JS1I_o . Also, I'm wondering if it is necessary to set up forwarding now. Perhaps simply being logged in to the deprecated Chat service with Jabber capability now gets you receipt of calls. Trying to figure this out. I have a slightly renewed interest these days.

Just set up a new Google Voice account with Google Chat yesterday and had no problems.

 

[billsimon]

So you're saying you were presented the Google Chat forwarding option, in spite of the announcement Google posted last Friday? Or are you saying it works without having to select Chat?

 

[billsimon]

Never mind. I appear to have misread the announcement.