Salesforce CTI Deprecation: Migration Guide for IT and RevOps Leaders
Salesforce Open CTI is being phased out. This guide covers transition options, migration strategy, and how to avoid common pitfalls when moving to modern telephony integration.
Salesforce is deprecating Open CTI in favor of newer telephony integration methods. If your org uses Open CTI for click-to-dial, screen pops, call logging, or softphone interfaces, you'll need to migrate — and soon.
This isn't a "wait and see" situation. Open CTI will stop working, which means your sales and support teams will lose the telephony integration they rely on daily. The good news: you have options. The bad news: each path has tradeoffs around cost, flexibility, and implementation complexity.
This guide walks through the migration process step-by-step: how to choose the right replacement path, validate your integration works, pilot with a small team, and roll out without disrupting call workflows. We'll also cover the most common failure modes and how to avoid them.
The problem
This is a forced migration. Open CTI will stop working, which means your sales and support teams lose the telephony integration they rely on daily. Call logs, recordings, and disposition codes must survive the move. And you're doing this with limited engineering bandwidth, budget pressure, and zero tolerance for broken call flows.
Most 10–200 person orgs face the same constraints: IT teams handle multiple systems (not just telephony), new solutions must justify their cost, and you can't afford to add yet another vendor to an already sprawling tool stack.
Success looks like this: users click-to-dial, log calls, and route contacts without noticing the change. Call metadata (duration, disposition, recording links) still writes to Salesforce. And you gain improved reliability—fewer dropped calls, better call quality, faster screen pops—treating the migration as an upgrade opportunity rather than just a forced change.
Migration success metrics
Target these benchmarks during pilot and rollout phases
Months typical migration timeline
Target CRM sync success rate
Minimum call connection rate
Recommended approach (opinionated defaults)
Pick the right replacement path
You have three main options for replacing Open CTI. Each has clear tradeoffs around cost, flexibility, and implementation time.
Default recommendation for most orgs
- Start with Service Cloud Voice if workflows are: inbound/outbound calls, click-to-dial, basic call logging
- Choose third-party CTI if you need: advanced IVR, workforce management integration, multi-channel (voice + SMS + email)
- Build custom integration if: you're automating parts of the call workflow with AI agents, need non-standard routing, or current CTI setup is heavily customized
Instrumentation (log from day 1)
Capture these metrics during and after migration to validate success and catch issues early:
- Call connection rate — (successful calls / attempted calls) × 100. Detect telephony provider issues.
- CRM sync success rate — (calls logged in Salesforce / total calls) × 100. Ensure call metadata writes to Salesforce.
- Screen pop latency — Time from call start to contact record display. User experience indicator.
- Call quality (MOS score) — Voice clarity from telephony provider dashboard.
- User adoption rate — Active users / total licensed users, measured weekly.
Critical
Set up alerting for CRM sync failures before go-live. Silent failures = lost call data.
Step-by-step implementation
Migration breaks down into four phases: scope definition, data integration, pilot validation, and full rollout. Each phase has clear gates—don't proceed until criteria are met.
Risks & failure modes
These are the most common ways CTI migrations fail. Each has a mitigation strategy—implement them before go-live, not after issues appear.
References / further reading
These resources provide additional context on the topics covered in this guide.
Need help with your CTI migration?
Migrating off Open CTI isn't just a technical upgrade—it's an opportunity to rethink how voice fits into your customer workflows. Whether you're evaluating Service Cloud Voice, third-party CTI adapters, or building a custom voice agent integration, we can help you scope the project, define success metrics, and ship a reliable first release.
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