What are my options for handling my campus phone while working remotely?

There are basically two options for handling your phones while working remotely.  What’s most important is to consider the academic and business needs of your customers and set up your phones accordingly.  It is not necessary that every person in your division follows the same approach.    

1. Option 1:  Continue to receive calls on your University phone and manage incoming calls using email and your voicemail account

   1. First, change your voicemail message to say that you’re working remotely but are checking voice mail regularly.  All employees are encouraged to change their outgoing voice message and the instructions to access your voicemail are here. 

   2. You can listen to your incoming messages either using the University’s voicemail system or you can retrieve voicemail messages which are forwarded to your email account.  

   3. If you listen to messages using your email account, please note that deleting the email message does not remove the voice message from your University voicemail account.  You will need to access your voicemail account directly to permanently delete messages.  

   4. Notify key constituents that you are conducting your work activities using email.  You might consider including your email address in your outgoing voicemail message and sending a proactive message to frequent constituents.   

2. Option 2:  Forward Work Phones to Cell/Home Phone - If you are in your office, follow the instructions found here.  If you are working remotely, submit a ticket to IT and we will quickly set up call forwarding.  There are some important considerations so please note the following: 

   1. All calls will be forwarded to your cell or home phone

   2. Unfortunately, OIT does not have an easy way to toggle call forwarding on/off remotely so if you decide to forward phones you’ll need to manage the calls using the features of your cell or home phone.

   3. Since your calls are bypassing the University’s voice mail system, voicemail will not be delivered to your University email account.  

   4. Calls will bypass the University’s voice mail system so voice mail for unanswered calls will be stored with your personal cell phone provider.