Get Started with Open CTI

Build and integrate third-party computer-telephony integration (CTI) systems with Salesforce Call Center using a browser-based JavaScript API.
Supported Editions
Available in: Salesforce Classic (not available in all orgs) and Lightning Experience
Available in: Essentials, Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions

No new features or enhancements are being added to Open CTI. To enable your contact center users to take advantage of the latest phone channel innovations, Salesforce recommends that you modernize your experience by moving to Service Cloud Voice. Service Cloud Voice offers many of the Open CTI features that you love and more. Unlike Open CTI, Service Cloud Voice is natively integrated with Omni-Channel and Omni Supervisor, providing a seamless experience for contact center reps and supervisors across all digital channels. See the Service Cloud Voice Learning Map.

Tip

To display CTI functionality in Salesforce, Open CTI uses browsers as clients. With Open CTI, you can make calls from a softphone directly in Salesforce without installing CTI adapters on your machines. After you develop an Open CTI implementation, you can integrate it with Salesforce using Salesforce Call Center.

Here’s how Open CTI connects to your telephony system.

Architecture diagram

The way you implement Open CTI depends on your org’s user interface. There are separate Open CTI APIs for Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience. You can’t swap the two Open CTI APIs in custom JavaScript code because they behave and function differently. Make sure that you think about where you want to implement your CTI system before you begin developing.

Note

With Open CTI, you can:

  • Build CTI systems that integrate with Salesforce without the use of CTI adapters.
  • Create customizable softphones (call-control tools) that function as fully integrated parts of Salesforce and the Salesforce console.
  • Provide users with CTI systems that are browser and platform agnostic, for example, CTI for Microsoft® Internet Explorer®, Mozilla® Firefox®, Apple® Safari®, or Google Chrome™ on Mac, Linux, or Windows machines.

To implement Open CTI, it helps if you have a basic familiarity with: CTI, JavaScript, Visualforce, web services, software development, the Salesforce console, and the Salesforce Call Center.

Keep in mind that Open CTI is only available for use with JavaScript pages. The examples in this guide are in JavaScript. You can use Open CTI in JavaScript to embed API calls and processes.