The Fastcall softphone for Salesforce is a great option that uses your office internet connection to complete and receive phone calls. The Fastcall softphone replaces your office or mobile phone and maintains the entire conversation using your browser (Chrome is best.) Plug a quality, noise canceling headset, like this Jabra, into your USB port and you are ready to get started. No plugins or other software requirements other than Salesforce and a browser!
- Fastcall phone and caller ID menus are found in settings (gear icon)
- Edit using the drop down menus
- The default view in the widget shows recent calls
- The selected phone and caller ID are shown in text below recent calls
The Fastcall softphone for Salesforce is selected as a calling device under settings in the Fastcall widget (under the gear icon, upper right.) The other calling device options include an office phone, mobile or the “no dial” option: our call logger. The phones available to end users are set by the Fastcall admin. If you only want your user to see the softphone, you can remove the other phones (office, mobile) under Outbound Calls / Widget Settings.
TIP: Selecting the softphone for outgoing calls does not route inbound calls to the softphone.
You will also notice that once a call is in progress in Chrome a small red dot will illuminate when you are connected. If, for whatever reason, the connection was not made, there is no red dot. Try again.
The first time you complete a call with Fastcall (or if you clear your browser settings) you will see that the softphone in the browser will ask for your permission to complete the call. This typically only happens once but is easy to miss.
Speaking of tabs, see this important post on using the softphone with inbound call routing.
Ideally, your users are on a good wired Internet. Softphone + wifi are not always great together. The computer (MAC or PC) needs to have resources available (RAM etc). If the computer is generally slow and buggy, the call will be too. Last, a wired headset may be better than Bluetooth and noise canceling is best.
Softphones use the browser to communicate. It is essential that your browser meets the minimum standards given by Twilio here. The best option is the latest version of Chrome. The softphone will not work well in IE or Safari. Be mindful of open tabs in Chrome which will reduce available RAM and degrade call quality.
The Fastcall softphone for Salesforce has an icon to show users the quality of the call based on the connection to Twilio. You will want to email Twilio support to ask Voice Insights be enabled in the connected Twilio subaccount. Give Twilio your SID and connected account SID as found in Fastcall under Connect with Twilio.
We also give a link in the fastcall widget in the upper left menu to test the internet connection.
If you have network requirements – particularly with a home user on a residential router – keep in mind that these will be outside the scope of Fastcall support.
Advanced settings: Under Fastcall widget settings we give advanced audio settings including gain control, echo cancellation, high pass filter, and noise suppression, See here for more info.
While using the softphone and on a standard SFDC page, you cannot edit the browser session or this will end your call. Only in the softphone and only on a standard page. If you want to edit the record while on a call we suggest Salesforce Sales Console. On a standard Salesforce page, you will need to open another tab in Chrome.
NOTE: Fastcall uses a 3-way conference call with call transfer and listen-in. Twilio does not support Global Low Latency in a conference call outside North America by default. You may need to contact Twilio to be sure global conferencing is enabled on your Twilio account. When call transfer or listen-in are enabled, the FastCall softphone may have reduced call quality outside of North America unless this is enabled by Twilio. See here for more info.
TIPS:Twilio also provides a few tips:
- Twilio Client End User Troubleshooting. Check it here
- Need to test your Internet connection? …run a ping test to Wash DC
- http://www.speedtest.net/Of course, these are requirements with all softphones.. not just Twilio.
The Fastcall softphone for Salesforce – CALL QUALITY
Call quality indicator will provide information about Twilio connection health. It will be a green icon if no network problems detected, then will become yellow if a minor issue is detected, like choppy audio, and finally red if there are many issues or high severity issues, this will mean a very bad network condition to perform calls.
To customize this feature you have to enable on to your admin settings. Go to Widget settings > User Interface.
You will see some options as Call Notes, Task Subject and Call Quality. On Call Quality you have to enable the option to display the indicator on your widget screen.
NOTE: This feature requires Twilio insights to be enabled in your twilio account. Please contact Twilio support to enable insights on the sub-account used by Fastcall.
You would also find some audio settings to have better quality at your call.
