Click-to-dial from a computer using the tel: URL (URI)

Overview

Spoke Phone supports an extended version of the  industry method for dialing phone numbers from a webpage, known as the tel:URI.

This URI allows users on a web page to click-to-dial on a number and have that number called by the Spoke Phone app.

Usage

Any website or web application (such as a CRM) that supports standard tel: format for their phone numbers, should work fine with the Spoke Phone app.

To see this in action, visit https://spokephone.com/contact and click on any of the phone numbers.

Using the tel: pattern in your website or application

In your HTML code for your website, follow this pattern:

tel:e164
tel:+1555456789

This example URI points to a phone number in the United States. The hyphens are included to make the number more human readable; they separate country, area code and subscriber number.

e164 Format

To ensure your tel: format works correctly, numbers must be in valid e164 formats that include the + symbol and country code. As an example, the number 555-123-45678 in the United states would need to be either:

• +1-555-123-45678
• +155512345678

Setting the CallerID (ANI) displayed to customers

When implementing click-to-call in your CRM or custom app, you can control what CallerID (ANI) Spoke shows to the customer.  This allows you to programatically set the CallerID on a contact by contact or use-case basis, by adding the optional "?callerid=" parameter to the tel:URI

URI Schema: tel:e164?callerID=e164

Example: <a href="tel:+1555456789?callerID=+44208898724">Call this customer</a>

Allowing or restricting which CallerIDs can be used in the tel:URI 

As an administrator you can create lists of allowable CallerIDs (ANI) that employees to use when making outbound calls. You do this to restrict specific groups of people to only display certain number/s when making calls. When you implement the tel:URI, you can choose to:

1. Limit CallerIDs dialable in the tel:URI to only those CallerIDs allowed to be used by this User
2. Allow all the companies value CallerIDs to be dialable by any user when clicking a tel:URI

Our recommendation is to go with option 2, and allow any CallerID to be used with the tel:URI. 

If you go with options 1 (restricting CallerIDs to those allowed by the specific user), then if the specific CallerID you pass in your code is not allowed to be used by that Spoke user, then the call will fail.  

So set your default tel:URI CallerID behavior, go to:

• Login to the Account Portal
• Go to Advanced -> Call Routing
• Go to the Allowable CallerID (ANI) Lists section
• Turn on the switch: Allow any CallerID to be specified via the tel:URI