Call Assistant

My cell phone, office phone, and home phone are all through Verizon’s wireless and land services.  I recently found a new tool available for Verizon’s land line services call Call Assistant.  This tool is AWESOME and it’s FREE.  It’s still in the new stages but some of the features that will be added soon look amazing.  Just as it is now is great.

There’s a Desktop VCA Software that you can download.  This allows a small screen to pop up in the corner of your monitor letting you know when a call comes in

(It’s kinda of neat because it actually rings a couple seconds before my phone rings.)  I don’t need to grab the phone because I know right away who is calling and if I’m in the middle of something and can’t take the call I don’t have to.

Then, if they leave a voicemail I get this message

So, I know who left the message and I can go in to listen to it.  I don’t usually not take phone calls if I’m at my desk but occassionally I do need to send something to voicemail.

Most often I need to check missed calls or voicemails after being out of the office.  When I come in to the office this is the first thing I look at:

Which tells me I had three calls and have one voicemail.  I’m a little neurotic about watching which calls I’ve missed so I clear them out after I’ve taken are of what needs to be taken care of so the red bubbles aren’t usually there.

Since I see that there’s one new voicemail I’ll click on that icon and get this:

Which tells me I actually have two new voicemails.  I can listen to them on my computer and delete them from here which will delete them from my voicemail system.

I LOVE this thing.  It keeps my hands free when I’m listening to voicemail so I can write down information.  It’s super easy to see what calls have come in and to listen to and delete voicemail.  Seriously, this thing ROCKS!

There’s also a webbased panel so if I’m out of town or at home I can log in to check calls.

I’m super excited about some of the new features that they say are coming:

Call Forwarding Forward your calls on demand or use Selective Call Forwarding to automatically forward calls from specific people or during a certain time frame.

Call Block and Do Not Disturb Block calls from specific people, send them directly to Voice Mail or only allow certain numbers to get through.

Real Time Call Management Decide which calls reach you and which you can ignore by using your Verizon Call Assistant desktop software. A click of your mouse lets you immediately forward incoming calls, send them to Voice Mail, ignore, block or answer your calls.

Calendar Use the new Calendar feature to schedule Call Forwarding or keep track of appointments and tasks.

Contacts Keep track of Contacts by adding them from your incoming calls and Voice Mails. You can also import numbers from other address books you use, like GMail or Outlook so all of your Contacts are in one place.

Have More Than One Phone Number? Use your Verizon Call Assistant to manage several phone numbers at once, even your Verizon Wireless phone.

Other Features You can even use Verizon Call Assistant to display a map of the location of your Contacts and Incoming Calls.

If you have Verizon telephone service check this out.  I hope you like it as much as I do.