Introduction to Call Forwarding

Call Forwarding is one of our network’s most popular features and it’s FREE. Typical use cases are out of the office, travelling between work and home, or simply transferring to another number if busy or unavailable. I will cover some helpful tips and tricks for configuring your call forwards on our service in this knowledge base. Using our Call Forwarding there’s an almost infinite combination of options customizable to your requirement.

How do I activate call forwarding?

You will manage your Call Forward requirements within our Switchboard management console.

1. Log into your account.
2. Select Switchboard.
3. Select number.
4. Select Inbound.
5. Toggle Forwarding.
6. Set your Call Forwarding preferences, including numbers and time schedules.
7. Click Save to update your settings.

Within call forwarding, you have the option of setting the following rules:

• Always: calls set to always 
• When unavailable
• When Busy
• When offline
• Turn off

Time rules are a popular controlling feature for many of the Switchboard services, including Call Forwarding.

• At All Times
• During Work hours
• Outside of Work hours
• During available work hours 
• Outside of available work hours 

Within the Preferences, you can further define the Work, Available and User Defined hours, invaluable features for businesses with their own unique work hours, such as emergency services or seven-day businesses.

Is there a cost of call forwarding?

As with all our calling functionality, we don’t charge for the Call Forward. The costs are where you transfer your call to an offnet number, such as a mobile phone or number hosted with another carrier. Remember, if you are one of our customers on a fixed monthly plan, there are no additional costs for setting the call forward.

What happens when call forwarding is on?

Depending on the rules set, our call forward feature is enabled once the toggle is set and the save button activated. Remember there are a number of features on the Call Forward, so any change following the enable toggle will require a further save.

Can you tell if a call is being forwarded?

On our network, we have a feature called preserve CLI. This useful Feature honours the incoming caller ID, helping you to identify the call. If you choose not to set preserve CLI, the caller ID presented will be your SIPcity number. In most cases our customers prefer the Preserve CLI.

Does Call Forwarding Mean Blocked by Someone?

No, this is not the intention of Call Forward. The purpose of the call forward is simply to transfer the incoming call to an alternate number in the event you are not in the office to answer the call.

Multiple registrations

On our network, our SIP proxy allows up to five phones to be registered to a single number. While all registered phones will ring on the incoming call, once you answer, the other ringing will discontinue on your other devices.
In this way, you avoid the costs of transferring a call to your alternate handset. This Feature works particularly well with our MySIPcity softphone.

Can I identify a forwarded call?

Unless you’ve enabled ‘preserve CLI’, all transferred calls will appear to come from your number. In this way, you can identify the incoming call as forwarded.

Can someone divert my calls without my knowledge?

It is not possible to divert calls without your knowledge. Only authorised account holders can access SwitchBoard and the Call Forward features to ultimately enable or edit the Call Forwards, or indeed any of the SwitchBoard features.

How do I activate call forwarding on my android device?

This applied to both our Android and iPhone softphones. There is currently no direct mechanism to enable call forward from our own softphones. However, enabling CallForward from our softphones is in our feature roadmap. By the time you read this article, it hopefully will have been implemented.
Customers regularly query our support team with the differences between the Android and iPhone call forwarding features. While both applications support a number of Calling features, these do not apply to calling made on our platform. Both the Android and iPhone calling features are against the phones GSM features.

Call forwarding short codes

On our help.sipcity.com.au, knowledge base search for Feature short codes. Under the Forwarding and ‘locate me’ you will find a list of useful forwarding codes:

• *72xxx Call Forward Always Activation.
• *73 Call Forward Always Deactivation.
• *92xxx Call Forward No Answer Activation.
• *93 all Forward No Answer Deactivation.
• *90xxx Call Forward on Busy Activation.
• *91 Call Forward on Busy Deactivation.

How to turn on Call Forwarding

1. Listen for a dial tone, then select *72.
2. You will hear a stuttered dial tone which will then resume to a regular dial tone.
3. Dial the Call forward number – where do you want the call forwarded to.
4. One the phone is answered you can hang-up on the call – at this point your call forward has been set

Call Forward to voicemail

This is a useful and popular feature on our network. The use-case is where the phone isn’t answered, but the number owner requires someone else to receive the voicemail. Within our Voicemail we have a number of useful features for Voicemail receipt, including SMS and Speech to text.

Summary

So that’s our Call Forward features in summary. While this knowledge base describes our Call Forwarding features, take some time to also review our general knowledge bases articles. In the knowledge bases you will find helpful getting started including adding credit, managing your monthly payments, along with guides on managing your account. Many of our articles also include helpful YouTube videos which we find a helpful tool for describing many of our advanced features, such as setting up IVR and call queues.

Finally, if you have any questions or requests for more information, of voice calling features, you can reach us via chat within your account, or via a ticket in our Help Centre. If you’re a thinking about signing up to our service you can reach one of our sales specialists from the chat on our main site, or take the opportunity to have a look at our plans.