How to set up click-to-call in Salesforce

Salesforce click to call needs three things: a phone inside Salesforce, reps who are allowed to use it, and a call button on the records they work from. The phone can be an Open CTI softphone, Salesforce Voice, Sales Dialer, or a dialer app in the utility bar. As of October 2026, Salesforce is retiring Open CTI and Sales Dialer, so check each option’s status before you choose.

Your options for a phone in Salesforce

In Lightning Experience, an Open CTI softphone, Sales Dialer and most dialer apps sit in the utility bar, a fixed footer in a Lightning app that opens tools in docked panels (Salesforce Help). The options differ in who runs the phone system and how long Salesforce will support them.

Option	What it is	How reps call	Status as of October 2026
Open CTI softphone	A third-party phone system connected to Salesforce Call Center through Salesforce’s browser-based JavaScript API	A phone button beside a number on a contact, lead, activity, or account	Maintenance mode; retirement on 28 Feb 2028
Salesforce Voice (formerly Service Cloud Voice)	Calls in Salesforce through a contact center backed by a telephony or contact-center provider	The Voice phone inside Salesforce	Recommended by Salesforce for new work
Sales Dialer	Salesforce’s own dialer, sold as an add-on license	The Dialer item in the utility bar	Scheduled for retirement; no new features
Utility-bar dialer app	A vendor’s Lightning component added as a utility item	Whatever the app adds: buttons on records, a panel, or both	Set by the vendor

Open CTI lets reps call from a softphone in Salesforce without installing CTI adapters on their computers. Salesforce’s guide separates it from Sales Dialer this way: Sales Dialer provisions numbers and makes calls from Salesforce, while Open CTI connects a phone system you already have.

Salesforce Help now files Salesforce Voice under Partner Contact Center, with models built on Amazon Connect or on a partner’s telephony. Its pages are written for service reps who answer and make calls, so check how well it fits a team that mostly places outbound sales calls.

What the retirement notices mean for a new rollout

As of October 2026, Salesforce documents two retirements:

• Open CTI. Salesforce Help says it is in maintenance mode, gets no new features, and is scheduled for retirement on 28 Feb 2028. It is already deprecated and unavailable for newly created Agentforce Service orgs, and Salesforce recommends migrating to Salesforce Voice.
• Sales Dialer. The set-up page says it is scheduled for retirement and gets no new features. It points to Salesforce’s product retirement list for the formal end-of-life date and recommends Salesforce Voice instead.

If a vendor’s click-to-call runs on Open CTI, ask what changes for your reps after February 2028 and when. If you are about to buy Sales Dialer licenses, check the retirement list first.

How to set up click-to-call, step by step

1. Pick the Lightning app your reps use, such as Sales. A utility bar made in the Lightning App Wizard or the Lightning App Builder can be assigned to only one Lightning app.
2. Install or turn on the phone. That means the vendor’s package for an Open CTI softphone or a dialer app, or the set-up pages for Salesforce Voice or Sales Dialer.
3. Add the phone to the utility bar. In Setup, open App Manager, edit the app, and on the Utility Items tab click Add Utility Item. For Sales Dialer you pick Dialer (Salesforce Help); a vendor’s app adds its own item. On the User Profiles tab, make the app available to your reps’ profiles.
4. Add reps to the call center for an Open CTI softphone or Salesforce Voice. In Setup, open the call center (under Call Centers, or Contact Centers for Salesforce Voice) and add users to its Call Center Users list. You can also set the Call Center field on each user record.
5. Put call buttons where reps work. An Open CTI softphone turns on click-to-dial for phone numbers (enableClickToDial()). A dialer app may instead give you a record action or a component to place on Contact, Lead, Account and Opportunity pages.
6. Decide what a logged call holds: the outcome, the duration and the notes. See how to log calls in Salesforce automatically for the Task fields to fill.
7. Test with one rep in a sandbox. Call from a Contact, a Lead and an Account, and check that each call appears as a Task on the right record.

Permissions reps and admins need

Who	What they do	Salesforce permission
Admin	Edit an app and its utility bar in App Manager	Modify All Data
Admin	Add or remove users from a call center	Manage Call Centers
Admin	Turn on Sales Dialer features	Customize Application
Rep	Make a call with an Open CTI softphone	Member of a call center
Rep	Use Sales Dialer	A Dialer permission set, from the add-on license

Manage Call Center Users explains the most common set-up gap: a user cannot use a softphone until an administrator assigns them to a call center. Each user can belong to only one call center at a time, so users already in one do not appear when you search to add them. Salesforce Voice users are added on the Contact Centers page in Setup instead, labeled Amazon Contact Centers or Partner Telephony Contact Centers depending on the provider.

What reps see when they click to call

With an Open CTI softphone, a rep finds the number on a contact, lead, activity, or account and clicks the phone button to the right of it. The number dials on the first open softphone line (Salesforce Help). Three details from the same page catch reps out:

• No phone button appears next to fax numbers.
• A number that was just clicked cannot be clicked again for 5 seconds.
• A rep who starts a call while set to Ready for Calls moves to Not Ready and must enter a Not Ready reason code.

With a utility-bar app, the call runs in the docked panel at the bottom of the page, and some utilities can pop out into their own browser window. Whichever phone you choose, show reps the contact’s local time before they press Call: legal calling hours are set in the contact’s time zone, not the rep’s.

How DialSavvy handles this

DialSavvy for Salesforce is in early access. DialSavvy Phone sits in the Lightning utility bar and follows the Contact, Lead, Account or Opportunity a rep has open, with their local time and calling hours. Outside calling hours, Call stays off. Reps call with the Call with DialSavvy record action or from the DialSavvy Numbers card, which lists each phone number with its own call button; an Opportunity calls its primary contact. Each conversation is logged as a Salesforce Task on the rep’s own user. During early access, we install the components in your org with you, and an AppExchange listing is coming. Calls use the caller ID and checks of the DialSavvy dialer.

Before you pick a phone, write down the Lightning app your reps use, the objects they call from, and the framework each vendor runs on. To see click-to-call in your own Salesforce org, book a demo.