If you still have a landline phone and have never used Ooma before, you may want to transition to cloud-based phone service so you can take advantage of some of the amazing smart home integrations available.
You probably don't think there's much an Internet-based phone service can do for your home, but you do think Ooma can do things like:
When you consider Ooma's functionality to control your home devices, it actually makes Ooma's phone service more valuable than your smartphone! Let's take a closer look at how these integrations work.
One of my favorite smart home features of the Ooma service is its integration with Nest products. In your Ooma account, under Applications In the menu, you'll see an option to integrate your Ooma service with your Nest products.
There are three ways you can do this. The first is to enable Ooma's. “Follow me” integration with Nest.
When you enable this, your Nest Thermostat can alert Ooma when you're away from home so that all your calls are automatically forwarded to your cell phone. When you're home, call forwarding will be turned off and all calls will ring on your home phone. It's like an automated call forwarding service, and you don't have to do anything to set it up—Nest automates everything.
If you enable “Alarm Monitoring” every time your Nest Protect devices detect smoke or carbon monoxide, it will use your Ooma service to call you and let you know that the alarm just went off. You can tell Ooma to call you at any number you want, it doesn't have to be your Ooma phone number.
The latest integration with Nest is “Entrance Control”. This is probably the best integration of all. Take advantage of the Nest motion detection service to detect when people are at home. If you always expect someone to be home at a certain time of day (like your kids are always supposed to get home from school at 4pm every day), and Nest detects that no one is home by then , Ooma can give you a Call to let you know that they are not home yet..
It's like perfect peace of mind, even when you're not home to keep an eye on things.
One of the coolest features that Ooma quietly added to your toolbox is the ability to keep track of your calls somewhere other than your Ooma inbox.
This is especially useful if you want convenient access to your voicemail from your mobile device or anywhere else you have access to your Dropbox account. When you consider all the ways you can access Dropbox, it's obvious how convenient this would be.
You can access Dropbox:
To set up your Dropbox “Voicemails” directory and link, under Applications From the menu, choose the Dropbox option.
Here you can define the directory in Dropbox to save your voicemails. Once you set this up, every voicemail you receive to your Ooma number will be backed up to this Dropbox folder. Now you can delete the voicemails in your Ooma account and never worry about missing an important voicemail again.
You can also record calls in a Google spreadsheet, but to do so you must have an IFTTT account and then add a pre-made IFTTT recipe using one of the recipes found on Google under the Ooma Applications menu.
These prepared recipes allow you to:
As you can imagine, each of these integrations opens up a world of possibilities. Keep track of how many times the telemarketer has called you so you can report it to the authorities. Listen to your voicemails from the comfort of your Gmail account. Now you'll never miss a call again just because you have a landline.
If you really want to get into the cool of smart home automation, and if you have popular home automation devices like WeMo plugs, Philips Hue lights, and more, then you'll want to check out all the devices under Apps Menu where you can integrate your Ooma account..
As well as Nest, which I mentioned earlier, you can also integrate Ooma with Amazon Alexa, Philips Hue, LIFX, and WeMo. All of these, except for Alexa, integrate with pre-made IFTTT recipes (Alexa can be integrated using the instructions on the Amazon Alexa page in your Ooma account).
Some of the things you can do with your WeMo plugs include flashing lights whenever you get a voicemail or call. Better yet, you can just make the lights flash when the call is from someone you know, or stop telemarketers from flashing the lights if the call is from someone you don't know!
If you have Philips Hue lights, you can do all of the same integrations described above. Better yet, if you have multiple bulbs, why not have specific lights flash when specific callers are calling you?
There are many options for using the lights to notify you of incoming calls or voicemails.
And the integrations don't end with the options listed above, there are other apps listed in the Applications menu as well.
Other things you can “connect to” your Ooma account include notifications from iOS or Android (including Android clothing) using pre-prepared IFTTT notifications, and you can even set up Ooma to receive your Google Voice calls on your Ooma landline.
As you can see, having a landline doesn't mean you're old school. It means you can have an affordable Ooma account, which lets you integrate that convenient landline with everything that matters to you. It allows you to automate your home, identify callers, and even send voicemails and phone calls wherever you want to receive them. You can't get much more tech savvy than that!
Do you have an Ooma account? Did you know you could connect all of these services and devices to your Ooma account? Share your thoughts in the comments section below!
