Call forwarding for law firms

How to forward your firm’s Ooma Office calls to your intake agent

The steps the phone-line step of setup gives for Ooma Office, from Ooma Office’s own help page, with “your Intake Gateway number” standing for the number you get at setup.

Ooma Office

Before you start, read what forwarding changes.

How do I forward my office line to Intake Gateway?

You keep your own phone number — nothing changes for the people calling you. Once you're signed in, the phone-line step of setup gives you a second, private number that belongs to your account, then shows the star codes to forward your own line to it.

Codes differ by carrier and by plan, so that step links each carrier's own instructions and gives you a quick way to check the forwarding took.

The phone-line step starts with nights and weekends: forward only after hours, only the calls you don't answer, or every call. Forwarding only after hours or only unanswered calls means you keep answering the calls you already do — that step lays out each way.

This answer on the help page

Forward in Ooma Office

Every call

In the End User Portal or the Ooma desktop app, open Settings > Call Handling.
Select Forward it immediately from the "when a call comes in" dropdown.
Select My Forwarding number from the Forward to dropdown; in the popup window, fill in your Intake Gateway number.
From the Show dropdown choose to show the original caller's number, not your Ooma Office phone number, so your agent and your call emails see the caller's number.
Leave Require key press on answer off: it prompts whoever answers a forwarded call to press 1, which your agent can't do.
Save your changes in the popup window, then Save your settings.
Or an administrator: sign in to office.ooma.com, open Settings, click the user's line, click the Call Forwarding tab, choose Enabled, fill in the requested information with your Intake Gateway number, and click Save.
On an Ooma phone: dial *72, wait for the prompt, then dial your Intake Gateway number followed by #.

Only after hours

Forwarding only after hours isn't on the pages we read: check your phone system's settings.

Before you rely on it

Ooma's page: with call forwarding on for a user's extension, all incoming calls go to the forwarding number and none of the user's devices ring until it is turned off.
To turn it off: in the administrator's Call Forwarding tab choose Disabled; on an Ooma phone dial *74, which turns forwarding on and off.
The administrator's Enabled when devices offline (and the End User Portal's "When all devices are offline, send calls to Forwarding number") forwards only while the user's devices are offline: it isn't forwarding for calls nobody answers.
These are one user's settings. If your main number rings a Virtual Receptionist, a Ring Group or a Call Queue, their calls aren't covered here. Ooma's page says a shared external line (Pro Plus plan only) is what lets them send calls to an external number; the note below covers it for one user.
On the Pro Plus plan, Ooma's shared external line page says an administrator adds one Shared External Line per account (Settings > ADD > Shared External Line) with your Intake Gateway number; it then appears as an option in each extension's Call Handling settings, so a user can send the calls their phones don't answer to it (Ooma's example: an employee who forwards calls they can't answer to an answering service). Leave its Required key press on answer off. The exact Then send to label, and unanswered forwarding on other plans, aren't on the pages we read.

These steps come from Ooma Office’s own help page and nothing else: check them on Ooma Office’s site. Menus change; where yours read differently, follow their page.

Never set your Intake Gateway number to ring at the same time as your own phones: your agent answers at once and would take every call.

If Ooma Office lets you choose the caller ID on forwarded calls, choose the caller’s number: a forwarded call that shows your own number reads as a test call from you, on the phone-line step and in your call emails.

Testing it

Test from a phone that isn’t yours once forwarding is on.

A caller says they got nothing: silence, a busy signal, or the call dropped.

Check these in order.

Is your line live? Your setup page says so. Until it does, a forwarded call has nowhere to go; see "My setup page says Almost there" above.
Is your plan active? After the trial ends without a plan, or after a failed payment's grace period runs out, calls are refused before the agent answers. Your Billing page shows your status and fixes it. Before you add a card, your line answers only test calls from phones on your list of your own numbers, up to 10 calls or 15 minutes in all, whichever runs out first, one call at a time; every other caller is refused.
Is forwarding pointed at the right number? Compare the number your forwarding sends to with the Intake Gateway number on your phone-line step, digit for digit.
Does the phone you transfer urgent calls to also forward to us? Then a transfer can come straight back to your Intake Gateway number, and that call is refused so it can't loop into the agent. Transfer urgent calls to a phone that does not forward here.
Did we email you, or does your dashboard say, that calls to your Intake Gateway number are not being answered? Then it is on our side; see "If your calls stop being answered" below. No such notice does not rule it out: that notice can be late or never come.

If none of that explains it, email us the number the caller dialled from and roughly when, and we'll look into it.

This answer on the help page

If your calls stop being answered

We watch every call we let through to your agent. When at least two calls to your Intake Gateway number, ten or more minutes apart within one hour, go unanswered, and our voice provider's own records show it failing at least two of those calls, we try to email you (at the addresses in Settings, or your sign-in email if you set none) and your dashboard shows a red notice. The problem is on our side, not yours. That email is a courtesy, not a guarantee: it can be late, it can miss a problem, and it may never be sent, so do not rely on it alone.

What this cannot catch quickly: it needs calls to notice anything, so on a quiet line it can take hours before two calls arrive; it notices only calls that reach us; and callers who hang up before they are connected are not counted as a failure. If our voice provider stops passing calls to us at all, you may not get this email; we are alerted when it stops answering our own checks, and that alert comes to us, not to you; if we confirm a failure like that, we may send you the same email ourselves. If a caller tells you they got no answer, check your own line by calling your Intake Gateway number directly.

What to do until it is fixed:

Point your call forwarding at your transfer phone — the number you gave for urgent calls — instead of your Intake Gateway number. Use the same forwarding steps as at setup, with your transfer phone's number in place of the Intake Gateway number. Your callers then reach you directly.
Or turn forwarding off, so your office line rings as it did before you had us.
Never forward to your own office number: it forwards to us, so the call would come straight back.
Call back the people on the dashboard's list of callers who got no answer. Call them back soon: the list is kept only for a short time, and we never had a recording or transcript of those calls, because nobody answered them.

We try to email you again once it is fixed: after a call to your line is answered, we wait 30 minutes to be sure it holds, then two more hours in case it fails again, so a brief recovery does not send you back and forth. Meanwhile your dashboard says calls are being answered again; keep your forwarding as it is until the email arrives or you have checked for yourself. You can check at any time by calling your Intake Gateway number directly: if your agent answers, it is working again, and that call tells us so too.

When that email arrives, or your own call to your Intake Gateway number is answered, point your forwarding back at your Intake Gateway number and place one test call to your office number from a phone that is not on your list of your own numbers.

This answer on the help page

Other phone systems

Every system, the Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile codes, and testing, on one page

Try it on your own line

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