When Odoo rebranded VoIP to “Phone” earlier this year, it signaled that the module was getting more than a name change. That signal has now materialized into a substantial interface rebuild that touches every part of the calling experience — from how the widget is organized to what happens during an active call.
The headline feature is the ability to move a live call between devices, but the surrounding changes to navigation, call controls, and CRM integration are equally worth understanding.
Move a Call to Another Device Without Hanging Up
This is the feature that sales teams and support agents have been asking about since the Phone rebrand: the ability to transfer a live call from your desktop to your mobile phone (or vice versa) without dropping the connection.
The use case is straightforward. You’re on a call at your desk and need to step away — maybe to check something in the warehouse, or head into a meeting room, or simply leave the office. Previously, you’d either end the call and dial back from your mobile, or awkwardly carry your laptop. Now, there’s a device switch option in the active call controls that hands the connection off to your other device smoothly.
For organizations where customer-facing staff move between fixed and mobile workstations throughout the day, this eliminates the most common source of dropped conversations. The call continues, the timer keeps running, and the CRM logging stays intact.
A Rebuilt Navigation Structure
The Phone widget’s internal organization has been restructured around four tabs: Keypad, Recent, Contacts, and Activities. This replaces the previous layout where these sections existed but were organized less consistently, with some functionality hidden behind non-obvious UI elements.
The Keypad tab is the dialer. Recent shows call history. Contacts provides searchable access to your Odoo contacts database. Activities surfaces pending phone call activities from CRM and other modules, so agents can work through their call queue without leaving the widget.
Each tab now uses clear iconography rather than relying on text labels, which matters for the widget’s compact form factor. When the phone panel sits in a sidebar alongside your main work area, every pixel of clarity counts.
Seven Active Call Controls
During an active call, the widget now presents seven control buttons, up from the more limited set in previous versions:
- Mute/Unmute— toggle microphone
- Hold/Resume— place the call on hold
- Transfer— hand the call to another user or number
- Device Switch— move the call to another device
- Keypad— DTMF tone input for navigating automated systems
- Record— start or stop call recording
- Hang Up— end the call
The call transfer control deserves its own mention. It now offers three modes: Direct Transfer sends the call to the target immediately, Ask First lets you speak with the target before completing the transfer (attended transfer in telephony terms), and Cancel Transfer aborts a pending transfer and returns to the original call.
Smarter Record Management From the Widget
The Phone widget has always been connected to CRM, but the integration was fairly passive — calls got logged, and you could see contact information. The rebuilt interface adds a set of action menus that let you manage records without leaving the call screen.
Four action categories are now available from the widget:
- Create— generate a new lead, contact, or other record directly from the call
- Go to— navigate to an existing related record (the lead, the contact, the opportunity)
- Log— add a note or log entry to the associated record
- Activity— schedule a follow-up activity linked to the call
For sales development reps who spend their days making calls, this means the entire lead qualification workflow can happen inside the widget: call the prospect, qualify them during the conversation, update the lead, schedule a follow-up, and move to the next call — without opening a single new browser tab.
Configuration and Troubleshooting
The rebuilt documentation now starts with a Configuration section that covers microphone and speaker access permissions. This seems basic, but browser-based VoIP has a persistent problem where first-time users can’t figure out why their calls don’t work — and the answer is almost always that their browser hasn’t been granted microphone access.
The troubleshooting section at the end addresses the common failure modes: calls not connecting, audio quality issues, and device detection problems. Having this in the primary documentation rather than buried in a knowledge base article reflects a realistic understanding of how VoIP deployments actually go.
What Changed Under the Hood
The interface rebuild also cleans up some legacy patterns. The old documentation had sections about forwarding calls through email and manual VoIP dialing procedures that reflected an earlier iteration of the module. These have been removed in favor of the cleaner call handling workflow.
Three outdated screenshots were also removed entirely rather than replaced, suggesting the new interface is designed to be self-explanatory enough that it doesn’t need as many visual guides. Whether that confidence is justified will depend on how intuitive the actual widget feels in practice, but it’s a good sign when a documentation rewrite needs fewer images, not more.
For organizations already using the Phone app, the interface changes will appear automatically with the 19.3 update. The device switching feature may require provider-side support depending on your VoIP infrastructure, so it’s worth confirming compatibility before advertising the capability to your team.