Salesforce has set an end-of-life date for its Open CTI JavaScript framework: February 28, 2028. Open CTI has been the foundation for softphone integrations inside Salesforce since 2012, and it is already unavailable for new Agentforce Service orgs. The deadline reads as distant, but any org running embedded telephony through an Open CTI adapter, meaning click-to-dial, screen pops, call logging, or in-console calling, should start planning the move now.
The work is bigger than the telephony system. It reaches your Salesforce architecture, your licensing model, and your provider strategy.
Why Salesforce teams should care
Open CTI has been wired into daily workflows for years in a lot of orgs, and pulling it out ripples further than people expect:
- The embedded softphone itself.
- Click-to-dial and inbound screen pops.
- Task and activity logging, which is what keeps your call history in the CRM.
- The sales and service agent workflows built on top of those.
- Supervisor visibility into calls and CRM activity.
- Any custom automation or logic that fires on telephony events.
The question stopped being whether you use Open CTI. It is what your Salesforce telephony strategy looks like after it.
Key paths for teams to evaluate
1. Map your Open CTI dependency
Whatever you end up choosing, start here. Find where Open CTI is implemented, which teams depend on it, and which business processes break if it disappears.
Then get specific:
- Which telephony provider powers your current adapter?
- How are calls logged today?
- What logic drives your screen pops?
- Do sales and service users share one Open CTI setup, or have their needs diverged?
Treat 2028 as a hard deadline rather than a starting gun. Budgeting, roadmap planning, vendor evaluation, integration build, testing and deployment each take real lead time, and none of them compress well.
2. Evaluate Salesforce Voice
Salesforce has named Salesforce Voice as its strategic direction for telephony integration. That covers Amazon Connect integration, Bring Your Own Telephony (BYOT) partner models, and a native voice option that comes with Agentforce Contact Center.
The upside is real: a more native Salesforce experience, closer alignment with Omni-Channel and Agentforce, and features like real-time transcription inside the Salesforce UI. It is still not a drop-in replacement. Moving to Salesforce Voice changes who owns routing, how agents work, what you can report on, how your channels fit together, and what you pay in licensing.
Scope it as a change to your operating model rather than a softphone upgrade and you will be about right.
3. Consider a decoupled API-based model
Not every telephony provider will follow Salesforce down the Voice path. Some will deliver the telephony experience through custom Lightning components, a browser extension, or an interface outside Salesforce entirely, then sync call data in over APIs and events.
That is attractive if you want to stay off Salesforce Voice licensing, and it gives the provider more room to design the agent experience. The trade-offs land in predictable places. Logging behaves differently from native Salesforce Voice, screen interaction is looser, supervisor workflows need rework, reporting shifts, and the agent experience rarely feels as tight as a native one.
Common pitfalls to avoid
1. Assuming provider portability
Do not assume your current telephony provider can carry you to the next model. A vendor with a solid Open CTI adapter may have a thin Salesforce Voice offering, or support it only in limited configurations. Others will push you toward a decoupled model that changes the agent experience more than they let on.
2. Underestimating costs
Open CTI itself usually carried no separate Salesforce licensing fee. Salesforce Voice can add one, on top of the telephony and CRM spend you already have. Then the add-ons arrive: AI, analytics, quality management, workforce tools, premium support. Total cost of ownership moves a long way from where it started.
3. Treating it as a technical swap
This is an architectural decision. It sets where call routing logic lives, how voice and digital channels interoperate, how presence is managed, how call data lands in Salesforce, and where future AI capabilities plug in.
Scope an Open CTI to Salesforce Voice migration accordingly. In some orgs the retirement will simply surface something that was already true: the telephony setup outgrew the Salesforce architecture around it some time ago.
Navigating provider selection
If your current provider is not the long-term answer, the evaluation gets messy fast, and usually for one reason. Nobody prepared.
Without written requirements, vendors fill the gap with their own story. Every provider claims Salesforce integration; the depth of it and the specific workflows it supports vary enormously. And without an evaluation framework, demos default to the happy path, so the Salesforce-specific workflows and the licensing detail stay vague until you are deep into the process.
Requirements first, architecture second, demos last.
Why a Salesforce-focused advisor can help
Most communication vendors know their own platform inside out and Salesforce architecture rather less well. An independent advisory firm that specializes in Salesforce integrations can help you write the requirements, work out which post-Open CTI paths are viable for your org, vet providers against Salesforce-specific needs, pressure-test the demos, compare options without a stake in the answer, and negotiate with market context behind you.
Act before the deadline forces the decision
February 28, 2028 is a long way off, and that is exactly why it is worth looking now. Assess your current state, whether your provider is the right long-term partner, what the licensing actually costs, and what a future state looks like, while you still have the option of choosing rather than reacting.
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