JUST RELEASED: Visit the Incredible PBX WikiThere now are a number of ways to make free calls to anyone in the U.S. and Canada using Google Voice without having to jump through the hoops of calling into your voicemail and having Google Voice call you back. There’s our Asterisk® implementation using pygooglevoice which lets you transparently place calls through Google Voice using any phone connected to your PBX in a Flash system. You also can set up a Sip Sorcery account and make free calls through that interface using a SIP phone. And now there’s Dogface05’s stand-alone Dialer for Windows that lets you place calls from the Windows command line in seconds. Because this is such a simple alternative, everyone should add it to their Windows toolkit. Here’s how.
Prerequisites. You’ll obviously need a Google Voice account. If you don’t have one, just register for an invite. Next, you’ll need a phone number to use for placing the outbound calls. And, finally, you’ll need to download and install Dogface05’s dialer on your Windows system.
Google Voice Setup. Log into your Google Voice account and click Settings, Phones, Add Another Phone. Add the area code and phone number of the phone you’ll be using to place calls and mark it as an Office phone. You’ll have to go through Google’s confirmation drill to successfully register the number with Google Voice. After the number is confirmed, be sure there’s a check mark beside this Google Voice destination so that incoming calls to your GV number will be routed to this number.
While you’re still in the Google Voice Setup, click on the General tab. Uncheck Enable Call Screening. Turn Call Presentation Off. And set CallerID to Display Caller’s Number. Finally, uncheck Do Not Disturb. Now click the Save Changes button.
Dialer Setup for Windows. From your Windows machine, open a browser and download the Google Voice dialer to your Desktop. Unzip the downloaded file and drag gvdial.exe to your \windows directory so that it’s in your path.
Placing a Call. Let’s first make sure everything is working properly. Open a command prompt window from the Windows Desktop and enter a dialing command using the following syntax:
gvdial username password destination ani [phonetype]
where:
- username = your Google Voice email address
- password = your Google Voice password
- destination = 10-digit number of person to call
- ani = your 10-digit phone number registered with Google Voice
- phonetype = 3
The phonetype is actually optional and can be ignored unless you happen to be using a Gizmo number in which case it needs to be 7. Never enter the brackets. That merely signifies that the entry is optional.
Assuming your registered email address with Google Voice is joe@gmail.com, your password is secret, the number you wish to call is 6781234567, and your number is 4049876543, the dial string should look like this:
gvdial joe@gmail.com secret 6781234567 4049876543
Your phone should ring at this point, and Google Voice will complete the outbound call to 678-123-4567.
Creating Speed Dial Batch Files. Using Notepad, you now can create batch files for frequently dialed numbers. For example, the entry above could be saved in a batch file called joe.bat. Then simply create a desktop icon for Joe and link it to joe.bat. Double-click on the Joe icon whenever you wish to place a call to Joe. Here’s how the batch file might look:
echo off
cls
gvdial joe@gmail.com secret 6781234567 4049876543
echo Press ENTER key after the called party answers.
pause
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What’s interesting, though, is that Gizmo5 seems to be routing calls through Google Voice automatically and freely. At least for me. (Ever since Google acquired them.)
I’ve been using the Google Voice Plugin for Firefox and it works very nice as a dialer. It also let’s you click to dial on phone numbers on webpages.
TIP: If it didn’t link a phone number on a webpage, you can double click (at the bottom status bar) to rescan the webpage for numbers, or if you highlight text of a phone number, you double click to just dial the number.
So does anyone know if this dialer signs into google voice securely? Also kind of stinks that your username and password have to be out in the open. I was thinking of putting a command button, on a form, to a database at work for calling the clients, but I don’t want everyone to see me username and password. Anyways thanks for the write-up, works great!
[WM: You might want to consider a batch file compiler which would hide the code. PC Mag also released a free one years ago that we still use.]
Hey I followed the steps on this site in order to set up an Alberta number and how to by pass all the barriers from Google to get Google Voice to work in Canada
http://www.sxymobile.com/news/google-voice-canada-outgoing-incoming/
I can now call Unlimited to Canada and the US for free from my cell.