What is the most important tip for working with Call?

The global Log a Call action keeps its own layout under Setup, Global Actions, separate from the per-object one. Calls logged from the global publisher arrive with both lookups empty.

Core CRMBeginner

Call

Q: When do organizations use Call?

A mid-market manufacturer: Logs every quote follow-up as a Task with Related To pointed at the opportunity, so pipeline reviews show which deals actually got worked.

Q: A rep clicks Log a Call after a phone conversation. What record does Salesforce create?

Log a Call writes a completed Task. TaskSubtype set to Call is what gives it the phone icon in the activity timeline and separates it from an ordinary to-do. VoiceCall records exist too, but telephony creates those without anyone pressing a button.

Q: Why do reps in an org with no telephony adapter find the standard Call Type field on Task unusable?

Salesforce reserves that field for Call Center and CTI. With no adapter installed there is nothing to populate it and no picklist to choose from. Most orgs add their own direction field to Task and put it on the Log a Call layout.

Q: A logged call has the contact in Name but nothing in Related To. What happens in reporting?

Nothing errors, which is exactly the problem. The call sits on the contact timeline and inflates volume counts while contributing nothing to account or pipeline rollups. Salesforce does not backfill Related To, so make it required on the layout or set it with a flow.

A Call in Salesforce is a phone conversation between a user and a customer.

Hear it

§ 01

Definition

A Call in Salesforce is a phone conversation between a user and a customer. Where it gets stored depends on how it got there. When a rep types it up after hanging up, it is a Task with TaskSubtype set to Call. When telephony creates it automatically, it is a record on the VoiceCall object.

Both read the same way to a human scanning a timeline. They behave nothing alike in Setup or in a report. A logged Task inherits everything Tasks already support: an owner, a subject, comments, custom fields, validation rules, flows. A Voice Call carries detail nobody typed, including start and end times, duration in seconds, queue name, hold counts, and a pointer to the recording.

Which shape your org has is decided by your phone setup, not by preference. No telephony means logged Tasks only. Salesforce Voice or a supported connector means both, running side by side on the same customer timeline.

§ 02

In plain English

👋 Study buddy

“Every time someone at the company talks to a customer on the phone, Salesforce keeps a small card about it. Sometimes a person fills that card in by hand afterwards. Sometimes the phone system fills it in by itself.”

§ 03

Worked example

scenario · real-world useCall

Nadia sells packaging equipment for a mid-market manufacturer. She calls a plant manager at 2:40 p.m., talks for eleven minutes, and hangs up. Her org has no telephony connector, so she clicks Log a Call on the contact. She sets Subject to Quote follow-up, with the contact in Name and the open opportunity in Related To. Salesforce saves a Task with TaskSubtype set to Call and a closed status, so it lands under Past Activity instead of her open work. Her colleague Marcus works the same account from a Salesforce Voice contact center. His call to that plant creates a VoiceCall record on its own, with CallDurationInSeconds saved as 664 and a transcript attached.

§ 04

Where a call actually lands, and why that decides your reporting

A logged Task and a Voice Call are different records

Salesforce Help describes the Log a Call button plainly: it creates a completed task or activity record. Customizing it means editing the Task object and its layouts. TaskSubtype is what makes that Task read as a call, drawing the phone icon in the activity timeline. The field is write-once. Salesforce documents TaskSubtype and EventSubtype as settable only on record creation. That stings the first time you try to repair a data load. A VoiceCall record is a separate object the telephony layer creates when the call connects.

The standard Call Type field is a trap

Task ships with a Call Type field that looks exactly like the place to record inbound versus outbound. It is not. Salesforce documents it as controlled by Salesforce CRM Call Center and CTI. It cannot be edited or given picklist values unless a CTI integration is active. Reps with no adapter get a field they can neither fill nor choose from. The usual answer is a small custom picklist on Task, dropped onto the Log a Call layout. Decide that before rollout. Retrofitting direction onto six months of logged calls means guessing, and guessed data is worse than missing.

What the phone system writes into a Voice Call

VoiceCall is where telephony detail lands without a person involved. The Data 360 mapping guide lists its source fields, among them CallStartDateTime, CallEndDateTime, CallDurationInSeconds, CallOrigin, CallType, QueueName, NumberOfHolds, LongestHoldDuration, CustomerHoldDuration, DisconnectReason, ConversationId, and VendorCallKey. When a provider creates the record through the Voice REST API, the required parameters are callCenterApiName, vendorCallKey, to, from, initiationMethod, startTime, and participants. The initiationMethod value separates an inbound call from a transfer, and callSubtype separates PSTN from WebRTC. Handle time, hold behaviour, and abandon patterns become ordinary report fields.

Orphan calls are invisible, not obviously wrong

Attribution on a logged Task runs through two lookups. Name points at a Contact or Lead. Related To is the wide one: WhatId takes an Account, Opportunity, Case, Campaign, Contract, Quote, Asset, or an activity-enabled custom object. Leave it empty and the call still saves. It sits on the contact and counts in a call-volume report, then drops out of anything grouped by account or opportunity. Design against it. Nothing errors, and nobody notices until a pipeline review comes up short. Make Related To required on the layout wherever the parent is knowable, or set it with a flow. On the Voice Call side the telephony layer matches the caller instead.

Recordings, transcripts, and the software reading them

A Voice Call gets useful the moment audio and text hang off it. On Amazon Connect, Amazon Transcribe and Contact Lens do the transcribing inside the contact flow. With partner telephony the provider transcribes on its own side and pushes text in through the Create Transcript API, so support depends on your vendor. Conversation Intelligence, still labelled Einstein Conversation Insights across plenty of Salesforce docs, reads that transcript for sentiment, mentioned topics, and next steps. Agentforce Voice sits at the other end of the same pipe, answering with an AI agent that hands off to a person. The common failure is ordering. Teams switch on Conversation Intelligence, skip transcription in the Voice deployment, then open a support case because the panels are empty.

The plumbing under calls is being replaced

The data model is stable. What carries calls into it is not. Service Cloud Voice is now Salesforce Voice, and the developer guide warns that the old name still turns up across applications and documentation. Open CTI is the browser JavaScript API behind most partner softphones. It is deprecated, closed to newly created Agentforce Service orgs, and scheduled to retire on February 28, 2028. Salesforce names Salesforce Voice as the migration target, with native Omni-Channel integration instead of an adapter bolted into the browser.

§ 05

Make Log a Call capture something worth reporting on

Out of the box the action captures a subject, a comment, and a date. Anything you want to group by later has to be added deliberately.

Open the action on the right object
From Setup, go to Object Manager and pick the object reps log calls from, such as Contact or Account. Open Buttons, Links, and Actions.
Edit the Log a Call layout
Find Log a Call in the list and click Edit Layout beside it. Add, remove, and reorder the fields a rep sees when using the action.
Add your own outcome and direction fields
Create short picklists on Task first, then drag them on. Keep values mutually exclusive and resist a catch-all Other.
Put Related To above the comments box
Reps fill a form top down. A lookup under a long text area is a lookup that stays empty.

Key options

Log a Call action layoutremember

The fields a rep sees after hanging up, set per object.

Custom direction picklistremember

Your own field, because standard Call Type is locked to CTI.

Related To placementremember

Whether the parent gets filled before the comments do.

Gotchas

TaskSubtype cannot be changed after creation, so a data load that omits it leaves imported calls looking like plain tasks.
Standard Call Type stays empty without an active CTI integration, so never build a report on it.

Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Call in Salesforce, step by step

§ 06

How organizations use Call

A mid-market manufacturer

Logs every quote follow-up as a Task with Related To pointed at the opportunity, so pipeline reviews show which deals actually got worked.

A 200-seat insurance service centre

Reports on Voice Call duration and hold counts by queue, which surfaced a routing rule sending renewals to the wrong team.

A regional software reseller

Runs one dashboard combining logged Tasks and Voice Call records, because half its reps use a softphone and half dial from a desk phone.

Trust & references

Sources

Cross-checked against the following references.

Log a Call button (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Set Activity Timeline Icon for Imported Task and Event Records Using Data Loader or API (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Standard 'Call Type' Field Not Editable and Has No Picklist Values (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Salesforce CRM: VoiceCall Mappings (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Salesforce Voice with Telephony Providers Implementation Guide (opens in new tab)Salesforce
API Support | Get Started with Open CTI (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Salesforce Open CTI Retirement in February 2028 (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Transcribe Longer Calls with Contact Lens (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Transcribe Calls in Real Time (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Review Conversation Intelligence Setup Requirements (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Archived Activities (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Enable Shared Activities (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Add Actions to Global Publisher Layouts (opens in new tab)Salesforce

Official documentation

Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Call.

Create a Voice Call Record (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Manage Activities with the Activity Timeline (opens in new tab)Salesforce
Examples of Common Use Cases | Salesforce Voice (opens in new tab)Salesforce

Keep learning

Hands-on resources to go deeper on Call.

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About the Author

Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He writes and edits salesforcedictionary.com, published by KineticBit Inc., to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.