Help Connecting Google Now (OK google) to Hangouts Dialer

[electricpete]

I’d like to be able to use voice commands (at Google Now / OK google) to initiate free calls over wifi using Hangouts dialer. Can it be done?


(It’s for my Mom…at 85 years old she doesn’t have the dexterity to use a dialer…needs to use voice commands instead… her Tracfone phone plan has limited minutes but she has access to wifi and wants to initiate free calls by wifi to non-hangouts users inside the US ).


This page seems to suggest it can be done

http://www.androidcentral.com/hangouts-dialer-now-actually-identifies-itself-dialer

They show pop-up giving an option to select phone or hangouts dialer. I can get that same option if I click on a phone number in Color Note and other apps. But I see no such option ever when initiating a phone call from Google Now (it goes directly to stock dialer). I attempted to go into settings / manage apps / “phone” app to clear defaults… but it indicates that there are no defaults set. I clicked on phone number in Color Notes and told it to ALWAYS use Hangouts dialer... that didn't have any effect on Google Now behavior (so I went back and cleared defaults on the hangout dialer app)

 

[electricpete]

I gather from lack k of responses (and from searching) that my original request (call it “Option A”) can’t be done (open to comments).

So now I’m looking for the “next best thing” which would at least let her free wifi call to her Android/Google contacts without dialing. It leads to two more options:

Option B – Scroll through her long list of android /google contacts within the android hangouts app and select one to initiate call from there. It seems like it should work. But unfortunately it results in the popup: “Would you like to invite [contact-name] to hangouts?”…. which is not what we want. We just want to initiate call through the free wifi dialer without having to type all the numbers. My question: Is there a way to initiate free wifi calling to an android/google contact from within the Android Hangouts app (without having to dial)?


Option C – Develop some kind of “direct dial by hangouts-dialer shortcut" for each contact of interest. When I look at the types of shortcuts associated with hangouts and hangouts dialer in my launcher, there is no direct dial shortcut. But I am able to create a “direct dial by hangouts” shortcut using Tasker (paid app..I’ll have to buy Tasker for my Mom’s phone) based on the trick mentioned at this link which I'll explain below...

https://www.reddit.com/r/tasker/comments/2q06rj/send_intent_to_call_to_hangouts/

...Basically the Tasker call action is initially mapped to the stock dialer. And there is no obvious way to clear that association (as I mentioned before.. no defaults set on the stock phone app within manage applications). But the oddball trick to clear that initial association is to simply execute the phone call action in Tasker without any number (just need to do it once). After that, the next time you make a phone call with Tasker, it brings up the menu asking whether you want to use Hangouts Dialer or stock phone. Of course depending on your choice (once or always) you can set it up so every Tasker phone call prompts you to choose (select just once) or so that every Tasker phone call uses Hangouts dialer (select always).

With that done, all that is left would be to build a Tasker task to call each and every contact of interest. And then make those tasks available as home screen shortcuts. The good thing is that when creating a Task, it allows you to select from among contact photos for an icon, so when it’s all done it will be spiffy looking. There is probably a more elegant way like sharing the number to Tasker from contacts through autoshare (?) but it’s take some work to figure that out and might not be quite as easy to use when it’s done. So I’m going to keep it simple and just start with tasker-based Hangouts dialer direct shortcuts for four or five most frequent contacts (unless someone can help me with option B before I get done).