FCC Admin Tasks - Handling Church Telephone Calls

Handling Church Telephone Calls

First Congregational Church’s main phone number (817) 923-2990 is a Google Voice. This resource is accessed via either web or with the mobile app and handles calls and texts. The number is assigned to the Google account fcc_iam@fortworthucc.org. FCC maintains a second Google Voice number associated with the account fcc_youthgv@fortworthucc.org for the exclusive by the Youth and Children Ministry Director. This number is shared at the discretion of the Director.

Who Handles Telephone Calls?

The task of fielding phone calls to FCC’s main number falls primarily to the office administrator, but can also be handled by volunteers with access to the Google credentials. Voicemail is forwarded to the office email address, but can also be forwarded to volunteers. As appropriate, messages are to be forwarded to the appropriate individual or group in the church’s organization.

If volunteers want to hear or download the audio recording of the voicemail (see Figure 1), they would use the credentials above to login into https://voice.google.com/u/0/calls. A good practice would be to download the audio to a file and attach it to the forwarded email message.

Figure 1: Google Voice Calls Page

What Happens When a Call Comes In?

When a caller leaves a voicemail, a transcript of the message is sent to the fcc_iam@fortworthucc.org email address with a link to the audio recording.
The gmail account for fcc_iam@fortworthucc.org is set to auto forward all email to office@fortworthucc.org.
Filters are defined in the settings (see “Setting Up Forwarding Filters”, below) of fcc_iam@fortworthucc.org to forward email received from voice-noreply@google.com to volunteers handling phone calls.
Volunteers who receive the forwarded emails (see Figure 2) can then forward the message to other FCC individuals and/or groups who would actually respond to the voicemail.

Figure 2: Forwarded Voicemail Body

Setting Up Forwarding Filters

Login to the fcc_iam@fortworthucc.org account, click the gear icon and “See all settings”. Click on “Filters and Blocked Addresses” to see the existing filters. Figure 3, below, depicts 2 filters for the gmail account fcc_iam@fortworthucc.org, which forward email received from google voice to office@fortworthucc.org and to facility_manager@fortworthucc.org.

Step by step instructions to forward messages to multiple email addresses can be found here. Alternatively, you can edit an existing filter and take note of the settings. Click on “Create a new filter” to create another filter with the same characteristics, but set to forward to an additional email address.

Note that whenever you add a forwarding address to gmail, the person to whom the messages are forwarded must confirm that they want to receive forwarded messages. They will receive an email with a link (see Figure 4) to confirm when you establish the forwarding address.

Figure 3: Google Voice Forwarding Filters

Figure 4: Forwarding Confirmation Email Message