phone

The phone widget turns a char field into a callable phone number. In readonly contexts, list rows and readonly forms, the whole value becomes an anchor with a tel: href, which desktops hand to a configured softphone and phones hand to the dialer. In edit mode on forms, the form.phone variant renders a text input plus a separate Call link so the number stays editable and callable at the same time.

A precise source detail: the href is built as tel: plus the value with every whitespace character removed, while the displayed text keeps the value exactly as typed. Users can format numbers for humans (+91 98765 43210) without breaking the link.

The input itself is type="tel", which mobile browsers answer with the numeric keypad. The widget performs no number validation and no formatting of its own in 19.0; what you type is what is stored.

For any team that lives on the phone, sales, recruitment, field service dispatch, the difference between a text column and a tel link is measured in seconds per call and errors per day. No copying numbers into a dial pad, no misdials from misread digits.

The widget also plugs into telephony infrastructure. Because it emits standard tel: hrefs, whatever handles that protocol on the user's machine picks up the call: a VoIP softphone, a browser extension, or Odoo's own VoIP module in Enterprise. Pairing Odoo with an Asterisk or other PBX so that clicks dial through the company system is exactly the kind of integration we build.

The SMS side matters for volume workflows: order confirmations, interview reminders. The button next to every number makes ad hoc SMS a two-click action, and because it is an option (enable_sms), you can switch it off on screens where texting a customer would be wrong.

Studio documents this widget for Text fields.

1. Open the form in Studio and select the field holding the number (a Text field).

2. In the Properties tab, set Widget to Phone.

3. Tick Enable SMS if the Send SMS action should appear next to the number (it is on by default).

4. Click Close to leave Studio.

Studio exposes the widget and the SMS toggle, which in 19.0 is the entire option surface. What Studio cannot do is anything beyond the widget itself: number normalization on save, click-to-call through your PBX instead of the OS handler, or call logging back into the chatter. Those are server and integration work.

List view: clickable numbers

<field name="phone" widget="phone"/>

Each cell renders as a tel link; clicking hands the whitespace-stripped number to the OS.

Form without the SMS button

<field name="phone" widget="phone"
       options="{'enable_sms': false}"/>

Placeholder from another field

<field name="work_phone" widget="phone"
       options="{'placeholder_field': 'company_phone'}"/>

The empty input shows the company number as gray placeholder text, a 19.0 addition.

Reading only phone_field.js in web, there is no SMS anywhere. The button arrives through a patch: the sms module imports the widget and extends it in place, adding the SendSMSButton component, an enableButton prop defaulting to true, and the enable_sms option that controls it. Both the base and the form.phone variant are patched.

This layering explains two things that otherwise look odd. First, why the option does not appear in the base widget's source: it genuinely is not there. Second, why the button exists on every database anyway: sms is flagged auto_install, so it is present unless someone deliberately removed it.

One more layer exists in Odoo Enterprise, where the VoIP module adds its own click-to-call handling on top of the same widget. That is out of scope for this Community-source page, but it is the same extension pattern: the base widget stays a clean tel link, and modules stack behavior onto it.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. The changes below are read from the public development branch and are not final until release.

Two new options appear: formatted_field, naming a char field that holds a pre-formatted display version of the number, and dial_field, naming a char field whose value is used for the actual dial link instead of the displayed one. Store E.164 in the dial field, show a human format on screen.

The registration model changes. The separate form.phone registration is gone; a single phone registration decides internally to show its action buttons only on form views, and the buttons move into a dropdown component. XML using widget="phone" is unaffected; JavaScript patches targeting form.phone will break. The sms patch and its enable_sms option carry over. We re-verify after release.