The phone system in my office allows patients, hospitals and practitioners to leave messages and then calls to alert us about new message. Retrieving the message is a multistep process:
- call the main office number
- dial a prefix plus my extension
- dial my password
- enter the code to play back my messages
You can program an iPhone to playback a telephone script to do this. This is a huge aggravation saver.
Create a new contact with an appropriate name
Enter the voicemail number and then tap the bottom left button
This brings up an alternate keypad with 5 buttons
The wait button inserts a semi-colon and the pause botton inserts a comma.
A “wait” will delay sending the next numbers until you tap a button, a pause will delay the next numbers by a second or two. This is what a semicolon looks like when dialing a number:
I use a pause until the phone picks up and then insert a pause after each step so the phone number looks like this:
(313) 886-8787 ; extension , passcode , play-back code
This trick works great.
Sometimes I wish most phones still came with keypads. I favor ones that have both a keypad and a touch screen.