Using YouMail wth Public Mobile

[ricardo37]

I'm trying to set up YouMail to work with my Public Mobile account. I have no trouble getting calls to my PM phone number forwarded to my YouMail phone number. But YouMail's "Test Call" process reports that call forwarding won't work reliably because PM isn't supplying Original Call Number (OCN) info along with the forward.

I've seen some (quite old) posts in this Community about OCN on PM. Some say that PM doesn't support it. Others say that PM does support OCN (it is working for some of their friends or on other phones) but nevertheless it isn't working for them or on isn't working on one of their phones. One of the latter people suggested this might because he had ported his phone number over from Telus to PM.

So two questions. First, does Public Mobile in fact support OCN? Second, if it does, since I'm one of those people who ported in their phone numbers from Telus (well, Koodo), what do I have to do to get OCN working for me?

[darlicious]

@dabr 

Lol.... Yes that's a little bit like when I use the search bar to look for an answer and I click on the thread to look at the solution and I see my username there?!!💡🤔👈

[dabr]

@darlicious   Lol...yeah I just searched for YouMail and this thread popped up and I've just realized now, that I posted in it by tagging the resident expert...  😊

[darlicious]

@Nezgar 

Yes thanks another great post and I learned something new again today! It's just too bad I can't tag it.

@dabr 

Thanks for the roundabout link.

[ricardo37]

Awesome! Thanks so much for your help. 

[Nezgar · Accepted solution]

@ricardo37 The OCN could mean "operating carrier number" or more likely "originally called number" - as such, they use a single "shared" number for everyone, and have numbers in each city. I found the Montréal number by just saying I was in a different city... doesn't matter as Public Mobile lets you forward to any Canadian number.

With their free service, they need to be able to detect the "originally called number" (yours) so that when the call is forwarded to their shared number, they know which voicemail box to associate it with.

If you test it and callers get your voicemail, it's all good! Of course it means it only works with 1 phone, and they will try to upsell you to a paid account which actually gives you a dedicated number and the "originally called number" doesn't matter anymore.

[ricardo37]

Thanks for your assistance, but I need a little more help.

I forwarded my calls to the number you provided and was able to activate successfully. But surely I can't use YOUR YouMail number and must use my own? On that assumption, after activating successfully with your number, I cancelled forwarding to that number and tried once more to forward to the number YouMail assigned to ME. In that case the YouMail test failed just like before, with no OCN forwarding being specified as the cause.

Maybe the problem here is that I don't understand how YouMail uses its forwarding numbers. So it might be on that subject more than on PM itself that I need info.

Any assistance welcome.

[Nezgar]

@ricardo37  I have been using YouMail with Public Mobile for a few years now and recall this issue as well when I was first setting it up. Solution was to set the conditional forwards to a YouMail number in a different city -- currently I'm using this Montréal number: 14388002666

You can set all three conditional call forwards at once by dialing this code: *004*14388002666#

Hope it works for you!

PS: I found if you set email notifications to plain text (not HTML) then the text transcription of the voicemail is included in the email, and you don't even really need the app installed. 🙂

(Thanks for the ping @dabr !)

[hTideGnow]

Hi @ricardo37 i am pretty sure someone is using YouMail here, too

[dabr]

@ricardo37    Sorry, I don't know much about YouMail/OCN, but I'm sure @Nezgar has mentioned those things in previous posts and will be able to offer more information...