Salesforce Invented the CTI Category. Now It Is Retiring the Framework.
Call Centers, softphone layouts, the Open CTI JavaScript API: the vocabulary of connecting a phone system to a CRM is largely Salesforce vocabulary, and an ecosystem of phone vendors, Vonage and RingCentral among them, built their Salesforce integrations on it. That era now has an end date. Salesforce has announced that Open CTI is deprecated and in maintenance mode, that newly created Agentforce Service orgs cannot implement it at all, and that Open CTI implementations will stop functioning after February 28, 2028.
The recommended path is Salesforce Voice (formerly Service Cloud Voice), a separate per-seat add-on. Salesforce’s published add-on pricing at the time of writing lists partner telephony starting at $50 per user per month and bundled Agentforce Contact Center packages at $125 per user per month, with telephony usage purchased on top. Meanwhile Sales Dialer (formerly Lightning Dialer) carries its own retirement notice. If the lineup of Voice Calls, Service Cloud Voice, Sales Dialer, Agentforce Contact Center, and Salesforce Voice reads like a mess, practitioners on r/salesforce agree, in exactly those words. Underneath the naming churn, what a sales team wants from a Salesforce CTI has not changed: click-to-dial, a screen pop, and calls that log themselves.
Click to Dial Everywhere in Salesforce
Kixie PowerCall is a browser extension that syncs with Salesforce through the API. Its documented setup needs Salesforce Professional edition or higher with API access and a ten-minute admin checklist, and it touches none of the components the retirement targets: no Call Center definition, no softphone layout, no installed package. Once it is running, reps click a number on a Lead, a Contact, a filtered list view, a task queue, or a deal page, and Kixie dials. With DirectSync, each of those calls logs to the exact record that was clicked instead of being matched by phone-number search afterward. Feed a whole list view into the multi-line Salesforce PowerDialer and outbound calling becomes a session, not a series of copy-pastes.
A Screen Pop With Lead, Contact, and Opportunity Context
On every inbound and outbound call, the dialer works as a Salesforce-driven caller ID: it pops the matching Lead or Contact along with the most recent Opportunity, with direct links into the Salesforce record. The rep answering knows who is calling and what deal is attached before saying hello. During the call, the record’s basic information can be edited right in the dialer, a note can be composed that syncs to the contact and its opportunity, and a follow-up task can be scheduled in Salesforce before the next call starts.
Auto-Logged Calls, the Salesforce Way
Every call logs as a completed Task of type Call on the matching Lead or Contact, and the activity syncs upward to the Account and the most recent Opportunity. Outcomes log as Disposition activities that can trigger Salesforce Flows, and an unknown caller automatically becomes a new Salesforce Lead whose history survives conversion to a Contact. The full object mechanics, from the Task Type field requirement to duplicate-number handling, live on the automatic call logging page. Recordings attach to every logged call with included cloud storage, so they never compete with your org’s file storage; details are on the Salesforce call recording page.
Migrating Off an Open CTI Softphone
Switching is mostly subtraction. Kixie’s support team publishes a step-by-step guide to removing an existing CTI, such as Vonage or RingCentral, from Salesforce: reset the default softphone layout, uninstall the old package, and click-to-dial routes through Kixie without leftover conflicts. Kixie’s documented Salesforce setup uses none of the Open CTI components being retired, so the 2028 deadline does not add a rebuild to your Kixie rollout. For the full picture of calling, texting, and workflow automation, see the complete Salesforce integration, then start a trial and dial from your own list views the same afternoon.