Stupid iPhone tricks: auto-dialing into a phone maze

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:

1. call the main office number
2. dial a prefix plus my extension
3. dial my password
4. 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.