Salesforce has announced the retirement of Open CTI, its legacy telephony integration framework, with a definitive end date of February 28, 2028. If your contact center operations run on that framework, you have an architectural shift to plan, and the direction Salesforce is pointing is towards more integrated, AI-native customer interaction platforms.
As of February 28, 2028, Open CTI goes into maintenance mode. That puts the telephony infrastructure back on the desk of IT leaders and customer service directors. AI adoption in customer service is projected to handle 50% of cases by 2027, which is the other half of why the timeline matters.
What the legacy framework could not do
Open CTI was built to bridge Salesforce CRM with external telephony systems: a browser-based integration, no desktop plugins, custom JavaScript allowed. Its limits showed up in where the data sat. Salesforce could see basic call metadata, while audio streams, recordings, IVR logic and routing all stayed outside the CRM.
That decoupled architecture caused a few recurring operational problems.
Salesforce could only process call events the external provider pushed to it, so proactive, real-time routing decisions were off the table. Every telephony vendor brought its own APIs, so minor changes often meant custom code and a growing maintenance bill. Agents got a fragmented softphone interface that looked different depending on the vendor underneath. And real-time voice AI is hard to support across that disconnect, which matters more now that 93% of service professionals report AI saves them time and reduces routine case handling by 20%.
Salesforce Voice and Agentforce Contact Center
These two native offerings are the successors Salesforce points Open CTI integrations at.
Salesforce Voice is a fully managed, native platform. Call data, transcripts and analytics live directly inside Salesforce, so transcription is automatic and real-time, and voice interactions behave like native CRM data when you report on them.
Agentforce Contact Center goes further, unifying voice, digital channels and AI in a single context. During a live call it assists human agents by surfacing relevant knowledge base articles, analyzing customer sentiment and suggesting next-best actions, with no transfer and no hold. Agentforce has reportedly managed over 2 million conversations on Salesforce Help.
Open CTI against Salesforce Voice and Agentforce
| Feature | Legacy Open CTI | Salesforce Voice & Agentforce |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | API framework connecting third-party systems | Native, built-in telephony and AI solution |
| Setup/Maintenance | Development-heavy, custom adapters required | Configuration-driven, managed by Salesforce |
| Call Data/Audio | Stored externally; metadata in CRM | Captured natively (full audio, transcripts) |
| AI Integration | Limited to post-call analysis by third parties | Real-time assistance, live transcription, automated routing |
| Vendor Flexibility | Works with any compatible external system | Optimized for the Salesforce ecosystem |
The enterprise voice control layer
Plenty of large enterprises cannot rip and replace. There is money already sunk into the telephony estate, compliance requirements to satisfy, carrier contracts still running. For them, an enterprise voice control layer sits in the middle as the critical piece of middleware.
It connects the existing telephony platform, Microsoft Teams or Avaya or Cisco, to the Salesforce intelligence engine. The DaVinci Voice Toolkit for Salesforce is one example, enabling a 'Bring Your Own Telephony' strategy: Salesforce becomes the system of intelligence and runs the AI workflows, while the existing infrastructure keeps handling voice delivery. That hybrid gets you real-time AI and automated identity authentication without writing off the telecom investment, and it keeps you in range of the highly personalized service that 76% of customers expect.
Migration blueprint
- Audit the current state. Document every existing workflow, every custom JavaScript adapter and every compliance requirement tied to the legacy Open CTI setup.
- Decide the target architecture. A purely native Salesforce Voice environment, or a hybrid with an enterprise orchestration layer.
- Stand up the middle layer if you need one, so the existing voice providers connect securely to the CRM.
- Activate the intelligence. Roll out native features like real-time transcription and Agentforce sentiment analysis to a pilot group.
- Run in parallel. Keep the legacy integration alongside the new system for that pilot group and validate the routing logic before full deployment.
The date is fixed, so the planning is the part you control.
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