Wow! Porch, thanks for taking the time to post all that. Of course, it brings up many new questions for me...
DID = inbound phone line?
Wouldn't it be easier to just port the GV number into my new SIP provider?
Yep. DID is short for Direct Inward Dialling. AKA, a phone number.
That's what I did, I ported the number to Vitelity. They charge $1.49 per DID per month and then 0.012 per minute. They also have a 911 fee, but it's not much.
VOIP.MS is cheaper and I like them better, but Vitelity has better SMS support and 90% of my communications is over SMS.
I checked out Vitelity and it looks pretty expensive to me. How much (approximately) is your monthly bill? More importantly, how much is mine going to be if I have, say, 6 incoming phone numbers? (Is that 6 DIDs?)
VOIP.MS runs $0.99 cents per DID, so for 6 "phone numbers", that would be 6 bucks a month. That is on the pay as you go plan. You may want to try an "unlimited" plan for the more often used numbers. I don't talk much on the phone anymore. Most of my normal clients just send me a sms or an email, maybe leave a voice mail, and remote in and fix the problem, or if I have keys, swing by at night and fix it if it's none critical. I find that trying to walk someone through a problem over the phone, to be a waste of time if the troubleshooting goes past "are the lights on?".
I'm really clueless about how this would all work. Can you take me through, step by step, how I would go about switching 6 different GV numbers/accounts over to a SIP provider like Vitelity?
You have to "unlock" the number from the google side.
https://support.google.com/voice/answer/1316844?hl=en
Then you submit a request to port in the number to Vitelity or VOIP.MS. They will processes your request, and give you a date that the change will take place. Around 2 week or so for me. When that date hits, that number will be connected your provider account. Be sure before you do this that everything is up and running first. Buy a DID just to test with so you are not making a last second scramble to get it all working. It will make the change over smoother.
OK, but how? Where? Do I configure this using FreePBX? Or somewhere else? Where exactly do I go to configure this? Exactly what settings do I change?
Have you installed PIAF before? Just trying to get an idea of where to start.
OK, so basically, Krista would park the call and call me. Then I could either pick up the parked call or - if I'm unable to take it, she could pick up the parked call then put them through to my voice mail. Is that correct? Again, where/how exactly do I set this up?
You turn on call parking in PIAF. It creates an extension of 70 that you transfer calls to. So she hits the transfer button # works on most non-smart phones, then hangs up and calls you. If you tell her to tell them to take a hike, she dials 70, tells them she to talk to the hand, and transfers them to your voicemail.
I don't do exactly this with my setup, so I would need to play around with it and hammer out the details, but call parking is just turning on a module in FreePBX and setting what kind of music they hear and other options.
What do I use to do that and where do I go to make those changes?
In the inbound route. Call flow works like this.
You add a "trunk" to your provider. Be it Vitelity whoever. A trunk can have many incoming or outgoing DIDs on it. The provider will give you the settings to use.
Then you setup an inbound route. In short, it matches an incoming call to a set of conditions. AKA, A call on the 555-1234 number will have the caller ID changed and directed to extension 200. Stuff like that. You can have many inbound routes.
Outbound routes are the same way, just for outgoing calls. Extension 200 dialed 11-555-1234 so change the outgoing number to 555-1111 and send the call out through Vitelity.
It's great that all this is possible - but out of everything you said above, that's about all I understood. Sounds like your "secret DID" is kind of the key to a lot of cool stuff. What makes it a "secret DID"? Is it just that you don't give the number out to other people? Or is it more than that?
My "secret DID" is just a phone number I don't give out. It connects to a menu system just like the "Welcome to Acme Inc, press 1 for sales, 2 for tech support". It's called an IVR. Only mine does not have a verbal menu. Someone dials my "secret DID" and they get to listen to Mr Trololo do his magic. You have to know what buttons to press to do anything else.
You mentioned 2 apps. How hard are they to install & configure?
International Dialer is just a app for using calling card. It just dials some digits before dialling the number you want to dial. It works well with the DISA.
CSipSimple is a sip client. VOIP over the internet and all that. When I am on wifi, it connects and my cell phone becomes extension 200. I place calls over it without eating into my cell minutes.
Direct Inward System Access. It lets me call it, and dial back out. Just like using a long distance calling card.
I call my "secret" DID, press 5, enter my pin code, then I get a dial tone to dial out of my system. In reality, I use the International Dialer app to do it, but that is what it does.
It's the why I can change my caller ID when I dial out.
I don't need a "Do Not Disturb" for my iPhone; I just need the system to - at a particular time - switch the outgoing announcement and send callers to the main voicemail box -- and NOT route them to the ATA or to my/Krista's iPhone.
You can do that. Instead of the inbound route going direct to an extension, it will go to a "time condition" setup to route the call depending on time.
SipGate is out of the equation now, and MJ will be, too. I'm open to a different SIP provider but depending on what I'm going to pay to have 6 numbers via a SIP provider, I may try my damndest to just make GV work.
Like I said, I had issues with GV routing to a DID. They do some funky stuff and I documented it here and how I got around it. And they have made it very clear they don't want outside system using their system anymore. I gave up and figured it's worth paying $1.50 a month at least to get support.
That, and by calling over SIP most of the time, I was able to cut my cell plan to a $30 a month plan, so even having 5 DIDs in my stable, I am still saving money.
Phone System 