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Call forwarding for law firms

How to forward your firm’s Vonage Business calls to your intake agent

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

Vonage Business

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 Vonage Business

Calls your phones don’t answer

  1. In the Admin Portal (a Super User or Account Administrator), click Phone System, then Extensions; hover over the extension you want to set and click the Pencil icon.
  2. Click Call Forwarding, toggle Forward Calls to enabled, and choose Follow Me: it rings up to five extensions or numbers in the sequence you specify.
  3. Under When My Phone Rings..., enter a phone number or select an extension to ring first (your own phone, not your Intake Gateway number), and its number of rings; then click Add Another Rule and enter your Intake Gateway number as the next rule.
  4. Under Use Caller ID choose Originating Caller ID, so your agent and your call emails see the caller's number: with Number on Account every forwarded call shows your own number, which the phone-line step's check reads as a test call from you.
  5. Click Save.
  6. From your own Online Account instead: click the Avatar, then Settings, then Call Forwarding, and set up Follow Me the same way (there the wait is in seconds).

Every call

  1. In the Admin Portal, click Phone System, then Extensions; hover over the extension you want to set and click the Pencil icon.
  2. Click Call Forwarding, toggle Forward Calls to enabled, select Send To Ext. or Number, and under Forward All My Calls To click Add New Number and enter your Intake Gateway number.
  3. Under Use Caller ID choose Originating Caller ID (see the step above), then click Save.
  4. From your own Online Account instead: click the Avatar, then Settings, then Call Forwarding; mark Forward All Calls, enter your Intake Gateway number, choose Originating Caller ID, and click Save.

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

  • To turn it off: in the Admin Portal, toggle Forward Calls to disabled; in the Online Account, pick another option under Call Forwarding.
  • Simultaneous Ring would ring your Intake Gateway number at the same time as your phones: your agent answers at once and would take every call.
  • Busy-only forwarding isn't on the pages we read.

These steps come from Vonage Business’s own help page and nothing else: check them on Vonage Business’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 Vonage Business 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

One plan, $149 a month, every answered call included. First month free: a 30-day free trial, every answered call included, one trial per firm. Card on file, nothing charged before day 31.

Get your number and hear your agent — no card yetCall the demo line: (608) 530-6116