Calling · 3 min
Why Call works on your phone but not always on your computer
Tap Call on your phone and it dials. Click the same button on your laptop and sometimes nothing happens at all. That is not a bug in Chumley, and once you understand why, the fix takes about two minutes.
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Chumley is not a phone
Here is the one idea the rest of this rests on. Chumley does not place calls. It never touches a phone network. What the Call button does is hand the number to your device and say, you handle this.
That handover is a standard thing on the web. It is the same mechanism that makes a phone number clickable on any website you have ever visited. Your device then looks around for a program that has volunteered to answer phone calls, and gives it the number.
So the question is never whether Chumley can call somebody. The question is what is installed on that particular device that has put its hand up for the job.
On a phone, something always answers
This is why it feels effortless on mobile. An iPhone has the Phone app and an Android has its dialer, they are built in, and they cannot be removed. There is always something with its hand up.
On an iPhone you get a small confirmation, then it dials. On Android the dialer opens with the number already in it and you press the green button. Either way it takes one tap and nothing had to be set up.
If you do most of your calling from your phone, you can stop reading here. This all just works.
On a computer, it depends what is installed
A desktop or a laptop has no dialer, because a computer is not a phone. So whether the Call button does anything at all comes down to whether some program on that machine has claimed phone calls for itself.
A Mac usually has one, because FaceTime claims the job. Windows very often has nothing at all, which is why a brand new Windows laptop can click Call and produce complete silence.
This is the full picture. Find your row.
| Built-in dialer | Apple FaceTime | Windows Phone Link | Microsoft Teams | RingCentral, Aircall, Dialpad | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone | |||||
| Android | |||||
| Windows laptop or desktop | |||||
| Mac |
Reading that table
Two things in it need a sentence each, because a tick on its own would mislead you.
Microsoft Teams ticks every row, and that is true in the sense that Teams will open. Whether it can then ring an ordinary phone number is a licensing question. Plain Teams, the kind that comes with Office, cannot. You need Teams Phone and a calling plan on top. If your Teams opens and then refuses to dial a customer, that is what is missing, and it is a conversation with whoever runs your Microsoft account rather than with us.
The Mac row is the one people are most often pleased about. FaceTime can place a real call to any phone number, not just to other Apple users, but only by relaying it through your own iPhone. The phone has to be switched on, nearby, on the same Apple ID, with Calls from iPhone turned on. Leave the phone at home and the Mac row quietly becomes the Windows row.
What to do if your computer does nothing
You have three honest options and there is no wrong answer.
One, use your phone for calling and your computer for everything else. Most reps do this and it costs nothing. Chumley works on both and it is the same pipeline.
Two, if you are on a Mac, turn on Calls from iPhone. Open FaceTime, go into settings, and switch on the option to make and receive calls through your iPhone. Keep the phone on the same wifi and it will place real calls from your desk.
Three, if you are calling all day from a desk, get a proper VoIP seat. RingCentral, Aircall, Dialpad and the rest all install a desktop app that claims phone calls, and after that our Call button works exactly like it does on your phone. That is the setup a serious desk-based sales team wants anyway, because it also gives you recording and a real business number.
What Chumley does when nothing answers
We assume this will happen, so we watch for it. If nothing takes over your screen within about half a second, Chumley stops waiting and just shows you the number, big, with a button to log the call yourself.
That means the worst case is not a dead button. The worst case is you read the number off the screen, dial it however you normally would, and tap to log it. You lose the convenience, you do not lose the record.
We are also careful about what gets written down. If your dialer opens and you are gone for a while, we log a call. If you come straight back after a few seconds, we ask you rather than guessing, because a call that never happened sitting on a customer record forever is worse than no record at all.
The one that catches people out
Firefox asks permission the first time, and the wording is easy to dismiss. It says something like, this link needs to be opened with another application. If you click cancel, or tick the box that says always ask and then refuse, Firefox quietly remembers that answer.
From then on the Call button appears to do nothing, forever, and there is no message telling you why. People report this as the button being broken. It is not broken, it is a permission you turned down weeks ago.
The fix is in Firefox settings, not in Chumley. Go to Settings, General, and scroll to Applications. Find the entry for tel and set it to ask you again, or point it at the program you want. If you would rather not go digging, just use your phone for calls, or install one of the VoIP apps from the table.
So, the short version. Chumley hands the number to your device. Phones always have something ready to catch it, computers often do not, and a VoIP app or Calls from iPhone is what fixes that. If nothing catches it, we show you the number so you are never stuck.
Read it as a script · Still stuck? Ask us and we will come back to you the same day.
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