Cisco Cisco Computer Telephony Integration Option 8.5 Developer's Guide

The main decision point in choosing which API to use will depend on your workstation operating 
system, your existing applications, and the language skills of your developers.

ActiveX Controls. The CTI OS ActiveX controls are the appropriate choice for creating a rapid 
“drag-and-drop” integration of CTI and third-party call control with an existing desktop application. 
The CTI OS ActiveX controls are appropriate choice for developing a CTI integration with any fully 
ActiveX-compliant container, or any other container that fully supports ActiveX features (e.g. 
Powerbuilder, Delphi, and many third-party CRM packages). The ActiveX controls will be the 
easiest to implement in graphical environments, and will help achieve the fastest integrations by 
providing a complete user interface. All CTI OS ActiveX components are distributed via dynamic 
link library files (.dll), which only have to be registered once to work on any Microsoft Windows 
platform. These components are not appropriate for non-Windows environments. The CTI OS 
ActiveX controls can be used in Windows Forms  .NET applications only if the Runtime Callable 
Wrappers (RCWs) provided with the CTI OS Toolkit are a part of the project. For more information, 
refer to 

. 

COM. The CTI OS Client Interface Library for COM (Microsoft’s Component Object Model) is the 
appropriate choice for developing a CTI integration with any COM-compliant container, or any 
other container that supports COM features, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Visual Basic for 
Applications scripting languages. The COM CIL will be the easiest to implement in scripting 
environments, and will help achieve the fastest integrations requiring a custom or non-graphical user 
interface. All CTI OS components are distributed via dynamic link library files (.dll), which only 
have to be registered once to work on any Microsoft Windows platform. These components are not 
appropriate for non-Windows environments. The COM CIL can be used in Windows Forms  .NET 
applications only if the Runtime Callable Wrappers (RCWs) provided with the CTI OS Toolkit are 
a part of the project. For more information, refer to “Adding a Hook for Screenpops” on page 4-9. 

C++.  The CTI OS Client Interface Library for C++ is the appropriate choice for building a 
high-performance application running on a Windows platform in a C++ development environment. 
The C++ CIL is distributed as a set of header files (.h) that specify the class interfaces to use and 
statically linked libraries (.lib) that contain the compiled implementation code. 

Java. The CTI OS Java Client Interface Library (Java CIL) is an appropriate choice for 
non-Microsoft (typically UNIX) operating systems, as well as for browser based applications.

.NET Cil class libraries. This section covers the steps required to reference the .NET CIL 
components in a C# and Visual Basic .NET project files.

Testing is often characterized as the most time-consuming part of any application development process. 

Testing CTI applications requires a detailed test plan, specific to the business requirements set forth in 
the requirements gathering phase of the project. The test plan should list behaviors (test cases) and set 
requirements to prove that each test case is successfully accomplished. If a test case fails, it should be 
investigated and corrected (if appropriate) before proceeding to the next phase of testing.

It is recommended that you perform (at minimum) the following test phases: