Click to Dial from Salesforce

I was playing around with a thought the other day. When my iPhone rings, it shows up on my Apple Watch, my iPad, and my MacBook Pro. I can answer that call from any of those devices. That got me thinking, I wonder if I could click a link on my laptop, that would make an outbound call. The answer is, YES, you can dial from your browser and here’s how.

It turns out there is a universal URL schema called “tel:”. It works like the “mailto:” command. If you type: tel://5155555555 into the browser’s URL, it will use your default calling app to place that phone call.

I took it step further and created a link within Salesforce and voila (or wa-lah for us non-French people), I have a free and simple click to dial. Here’s how to do it.

Step 1: Create a Formula Field

· Go to Setup and to the Contact Object Manager

· Create a new field of Type Formula:

o Output Type: Text

o Field Label: “Call w/Facetime”

o Formula: HYPERLINK(“tel://” + Phone, “Click to Dial”, “_blank” )

Step 2: Add the field to the Page Layout

Step 3: Open a Contact and test it out

When I click the “Click to Dial”, Facetime is launched, and a confirmation message appears.  The first time I did this, I received an additional prompt asking me to confirm it was okay to open the link.  I clicked the checkbox to Always open these links and proceeded. 

Press the Call button and voila, the computer called my contact.

Now on Microsoft Windows

Since the “Tel:” schema is universal, I thought I’d try this out on my windows computer.  In theory, it should work too.  Here’s what happened on Windows.

First, I had to confirm the opening of the “tel:” link.  That was the same as on my Mac but my Mac already knew what App to use. 

On Windows, I had to select my calling app.  You should be able to use Skype or Microsoft Teams.  Once I selected my app, I received the prompt to place the call.

Closing

Hope you have fun as much fun with this I did.  This isn’t a perfect solution but for a simple and free solution, you might want to give it a try.

If you have questions or need some help, just yell.  You can reach me using my contact form here.