Well, that just happens to be our specialty! VoxOx lets you manage all your phones from a single phone number. With our call routing feature, VoxOx Find Me, you can create a common link between all your phone numbers – mobile, home, work phone, and so on – and then set all your phones to ring in sequence or simultaneously.

Say you’re in the kitchen preparing for your 4^th of July BBQ this weekend. You hear your cell phone ring and realize that you have no idea where it is! You may feel an urge to run like a chicken with its head cut off to find it and see who’s calling, but then you remember – you’ve set up Find Me to route the call to your home phone next. So, you can just dry off your hands and get ready to pick up the kitchen landline phone. Relaxing thought, no?

This type of rolling call forwarding can be really useful beyond party planning. With Find Me, you can be more accessible to the “VIPs” in your life (spouse, kids, elderly grandparents). You just give them your VoxOx number, and they’ll be able to reach you anywhere — work, mobile, home, a cabin in the woods — without having to dial a long list of phone numbers. Or, you can use Find Me for your business contacts. Say you want to be accessible to work colleagues and clients when you’re not at your desk, but you don’t want to give out your personal cell phone number. Just give out your VoxOx number, and turn on Find Me during the work week. This can also be handy for business travelers, as Find Me can forward calls anywhere, even to a hotel room overseas!  

So, here’s how you set up Find Me:

• Go to Tools -> Settings  -> Phone  -> Find Me, and enter all your other phone numbers in the order you’d like them to ring: 

• The numbers you select with a check-mark will ring in sequence.
• If you prefer to have all your phones ring simultaneously, then select the “Call Numbers Simultaneously” option.
• Set the number of seconds you want each phone to ring and then hit “Apply.”
• If you don’t pick up, ultimately the call will go to VoxOx voicemail. Read about how to access your VoxOx voice messages here.  
• You can add or remove phone numbers any time by coming back to this Find Me window within the VoxOx client, or by calling your VoxOx number, entering your 4 digit pin code and selecting the “Settings” option. 

Don’t forget that in order for VoxOx Find Me to kick in, you need to provide callers with a VoxOx phone number. This doesn’t mean that you need to get rid of any of your existing numbers – just think of the VoxOx number as your “umbrella” number that reaches all your phones, but if you want to be reached specifically on your cell phone or another device, then by all means, give that number out. If you’d rather not provide a new number at all, there’s a way to forward your mobile phone number to VoxOx.

So that’s it – you have all the tools to be totally accessible to all your 4^th of July party guests this weekend and beyond! Now go change your RSVP phone number on your Evite to your VoxOx number, take a deep breath, relax, and host your party with ease.

Have you tried Find Me yet? Please share a comment here about how it has helped you or someone you know, we would love to hear your story!

Natasha Grach is a PR pro by day and singer by night -- when not telling the world about VoxOx, she can be found on stage at some of San Diego’s favorite musical theater venues. She is also a travel junkie. Her favorite countries include Turkey, Israel, Spain, UK, Italy, Russia, Lithuania. She’ll be using VoxOx SMS CallBack on her next trip around the globe!

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After diving into the service pretty extensively over the past few weeks, I wanted to present my list of the top five ways the VoxOx PA can help you be more productive in your business and personal life.

1. Screen Your Calls — One of the best things about the PA is having someone answer and screen your calls — not unlike a real secretary. When someone calls my VoxOx number, my personal assistant will answer the call and politely ask the person to identify themselves. She (yes, she is a she, although you can choose a male personal assistant) will then let me know who is calling. I can then either answer the call or send it to voicemail (I can also listen in on the voicemail and pick it up, but I’ll save that for another post). Not only does this make me feel important (!), it forces people with blocked numbers to identify themselves. Knowing who is calling each time makes me more productive. Really cool.
2. Faxing — I admit I don’t send a lot of faxes, but when that occasion occurs — usually some sort of document signing — I sure don’t feel like paying companies like eFax $17 a month for an account, and then 10 cents per page (for outbound). Through the VoxOx Personal Assistant, all inbound faxes are free and all outbound faxes correspond with regular VoxOx calling rates (about a penny a minute in the US). This aspect of the PA can save you a lot of money each month.
3. Outbound Conference Calling — It’s cool that you can use the personal assistant to make outbound conference calls from your softphone (on your desktop), but the new version of the VoxOx PA enables you to do so remotely from your cell phone. When you are on a mobile call and want to bridge other people in, just hit *3 to access your personal assistant. Enter in up to 20 numbers and the PA will call everyone, and then bridge them into the call. So no matter where you are, you can have an on-the-fly conference call. That’s productivity — at extremely low rates. Click here to access a user guide for the PA.
4. Changing Your Find Me Settings Remotely — Say what? This doesn’t sound very exciting. Oh, but it is. One of the features the VoxOx PA offers is the ability to “find you” wherever you are. That means calling you sequentially on your mobile, your office, your home phone or any other number you program in (she will also ring all your phone simultaneously). But what happens when you are traveling overseas and don’t have access to a computer? No problem, just call into your personal assistant and add the number of your pre-paid SIM card or mobile phone to your Find Me list and you are good to go. People calling you won’t necessarily know you are overseas, and you don’t have to worry about giving them a new temporary number.
5. Call Recording — Using your personal assistant, you can easily record a conversation. For example, let’s say you are talking to a customer or a friend about something important. You just hit *1 to start recording a call. The PA will let you know that call recording has begun, but the caller on the other end will have no idea (so it’s up to you to tell them if so inclined). Hit *1 to stop the recording and a sound file of the conversation will automatically be sent to your email address. Depending on the conversation, this can be hugely productive and alleviate the need for taking notes.

There you have it — five ways the VoxOx Personal Assistant can make you more productive. I’d love to hear what you think are the best or most productive PA features.

Until next time!

Erik Bratt is the master of his domain and the head of communications for TelCentris, the creator of VoxOx. He loves Quentin Tarantino movies, dabbling with the electric bass, and fiddling with the text-to-speech functionality on the VoxOx Personal Assistant.

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