Family link setup prevents making phone calls and using Messages app

Question

I got phones for my kids, and I set them up with family link. Because I'd previously had a similar setup and they would continually factory reset the phone to get rid of the family link supervision, I set these phones up with an account I own and used that to enable "Find my phone" so that if they factory reset the phone they still can't use it without my pin.Then I turned on multiple user profiles, and created a second profile that's managed by family link. All of this works fine. (The phones are Pixel 7s with the stock carrier ROM.)

What's odd is that they can use everything except the phone app and Google Messages. When they try to place a call during allowed time, the phone app says that only emergency calls are allowed. And when they try to open Messages, it says This app isn't allowed by the device owner, even though I've got it set to always allowed.

How can I enable these to allow the phone to actually be a phone?

Answer 1

It does not seem to have to do anything with family link but with default behavior of multiple user profiles.

As mentioned in answer to Hide call logs across user profiles, the default behavior is not to permit the secondary user to make or receive phone calls.

Tap the cog icon on right of the secondary user and disable

Turn on phone calls and SMS

That's it.

If you enable, it gives you a warning that your calls and SMS would be shared as shown and they can use phone and message apps.