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The one-number-does-all concept is almost perfection with Google Voice. I have one number that rings my office, home and cell phones simultaneously when a call comes in. That local number is with Google Voice, and the voicemail system takes a message if I don't answer any of those phones. The voicemail is emailed to me and sent as a text to my cell phone if I want. I can set up different answering messages for different contact groups in Google Contacts as well.
Those are the high points of using Google Voice.
Then I set up Google Voice to send me my voice mail as an email as well. I get a text transcription and a link to play the voice mail. The transcription can be funny sometimes, but the original recorded voice mail is in my file that I'm building for that transaction in Gmail. I've set up systems to make sure that I end up with a full file of all transaction-related emails in one archive for my long term filing needs.
When I realized that I hadn't done the same for text messages, I found that Google Voice handles it quite well. If you give out the Google Voice number as your text number, any incoming text will be stored in your Google Voice account. But, you can also have it automatically forwarded to your email, which gets it into that filing system for transactions. Even better, you can reply out of the email back to the cell phone that sent the original text. You can carry on a complete text conversation right from email if you want. And, it will all be filed away appropriately.
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