Definition
In Salesforce Computer Telephony Integration (CTI), an event handler that receives and processes telephony events (like incoming calls, hold, transfer) from the phone system and triggers corresponding actions.
Real-World Example
a business analyst at Clearwater Inc. uses Event Sink, CTI to improve how the organization tracks relationships and interactions. By setting up Event Sink, CTI properly, the team gains better visibility into their customer base, which leads to more informed decisions and stronger customer relationships across the board.
Why Event Sink, CTI Matters
An Event Sink in Salesforce Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) is an event handler that receives and processes telephony events from the phone system and triggers corresponding actions in Salesforce. Common events include incoming calls, outgoing calls, calls being placed on hold, calls being transferred, and calls ending. The event sink listens for these events and reacts: opening a screen pop on incoming calls, logging call activity when calls end, updating call duration, and so on.
Event sinks are part of the Open CTI framework, which is the modern JavaScript-based API for building CTI integrations with Salesforce. The CTI adapter (provided by the telephony vendor) calls Open CTI APIs to communicate events to Salesforce, and Salesforce handles the events through configured event handlers. The pattern lets telephony vendors build integrations that work consistently with Salesforce without each vendor having to implement everything from scratch. For most Salesforce admins, event sinks are an implementation detail of their CTI integration; the vendor handles the event handling code.
How Organizations Use Event Sink, CTI
- •ShieldGuard Security — Uses a vendor-provided CTI integration that handles event sinks behind the scenes. Admins configure which Salesforce actions fire on which events through the integration's configuration interface.
- •QuickAssist — Built a custom Open CTI integration where their developers wrote event sink code in JavaScript to handle events from their proprietary phone system.
- •NovaScale — Treats event sinks as an implementation detail and focuses on the business outcomes: screen pops, call logging, call routing, that the underlying event handling enables.