Section 57. Forward Calls

57. Forward Calls

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

55 Make and Receive Phone Calls

SEE ALSO

56 Make a Conference Call

58 Manage the Speed Dial List

59 Take Advantage of Smart Dialing

68 Create and Manage Contacts

The great thing about mobile phones is that they allow us to receive calls just about any time we choose. The problem is that there are some times when we'd ideally choose not to receive calls on our mobile phones. Although you can certainly turn off your device or mute the ringer, I'm talking about situations in which you might want to forward calls you receive on your BlackBerry device to another number entirely. Maybe you're spending the day at a customer's site and want to take calls at a temporary office number. Or maybe you're working at home and prefer using your home phone line instead of eating up minutes on your mobile phone. Regardless of your motive, sometimes forwarding calls to another number can be useful. The BlackBerry phone provides a few options for fine-tuning the forwarding of calls to your BlackBerry device.

57. Forward Calls

1.	Open the Phone Screen Scroll to the Phone icon on the Home screen and click the trackwheel. The Phone screen appears, displaying a dialing area and a list of recently made and received phone calls. TIP You can quickly jump to the Phone screen from any location on your phone by simply pressing the Send key.
2.	Open the Phone Options Screen Click the trackwheel to open the Phone menu, select Options from the menu, and click again. The Phone Options screen appears and provides access to a variety of phone options. To configure call forwarding options, select Call Forwarding from the Phone Options screen and click the trackwheel. The Call Forwarding screen appears.
3.	Edit Call Forwarding Numbers Before you find out about setting call forwarding options, it's important to point out that your phone probably already includes your voice mail number as a forwarding number. This means you can forward your calls to your voice mail number. To use other numbers for call forwarding, you must enter them as forwarding numbers. To add a new forwarding number, click the trackwheel, select Edit Numbers from the menu that appears, and click again. The Edit Forwarding Numbers screen appears and displays a list of forwarding numbers. Any number you add to the forwarding number list becomes available as an option for forwarding calls on the Call Forwarding screen. To add a forwarding number, click the trackwheel, select New Number from the menu that appears, and click again. You are prompted to enter the number, after which you simply click to accept it and add it to the list. To delete a forwarding number, scroll to select it, click the trackwheel, and select Delete from the menu that appears. Click once more and then select Delete in the confirmation dialog box to finish deleting the number. When you're finished editing forwarding numbers, press the Escape button to return to the Call Forwarding screen.
4.	Configure Call Forwarding Options There are two main options on the Call Forwarding screen: Forward All Calls and Forward Unanswered Calls . The Forward All Calls option is pretty dramatic in that it forwards every call to your device to a number you specify. The Forward Unanswered Calls option is the one you will use more often; it allows you to specify individual numbers to which you want calls to be forwarded under certain conditions (such as if the device is busy, if there is no answer, or if you are unreachableout of service or the device is turned off). If you want to forward all calls to your device to another number, select the Forward All Calls option and double-click. Then scroll down to the setting just below the option and specify the number to which you want all your calls forwarded. The Do Not Forward setting results in the calls not being forwarded at all. Your phone probably includes your voice mail number as the other possible setting, along with any forwarding numbers of your own that you created. TIP The Forward All Calls option is useful if you want to pass all your mobile phone calls along to another number, such as if you want mobile calls routed to your office number. Just don't forget to turn off the option when you're finished forwarding calls. The second option on the Call Forwarding screen is Forward Unanswered Calls , which causes only unanswered calls to be forwarded. You might not realize it, but this option is likely already set for your device by default. This setting is necessary because your voice mail works by forwarding unanswered calls to your voice mail number. There are three different scenarios under which your phone doesn't answer a call, and they correspond to individual settings under the Forward Unanswered Calls option: If Busy, If No Answer , and If Unreachable . You can assign a different forwarding number to each of these scenarios; the default setting is to forward the call to your voice mail number in each scenario. To change one of the numbers, select the number, click the trackwheel, select Change Number from the menu that appears, and click again. Then scroll to select the number and click once more. NOTE Be careful when making changes to the Forward Unanswered Calls setting. If you set the forwarding number to a number other than your voice mail number, the caller won't be given a chance to leave a voice mail message under the given scenario. For example, setting a forwarding number for the If No Answer option results in all calls being forwarded to that number when you don't answer your phone, effectively bypassing your voice mail. After tweaking the call forwarding options, press the Escape button to return to the Phone Options screen. If you've made changes, a confirmation pop-up window appearsselect Save to confirm the changes and then click the trackwheel.
5.	Exit Phone Options Press the Escape button to exit the Phone Options screen. Press the Escape button again to navigate back to the Home screen, or just press the End key.