ISO/IEC 18051:2012 specifies the Services and Event Reports for Computer-Supported Telecommunications Applications, Phase III (CSTA).

It is focused on providing application service interfaces to a Switching Function, Computing Function and a Special Resource Function. A CSTA application interface is disassociated from the various user-network interfaces and network-network interfaces CSTA applications serve, observe or manipulate. Because CSTA operates with existing telecommunications interfaces indirectly, it operates generically so that differences among various existing interfaces are hidden from CSTA applications. Support of user-to-network interfaces is outside the scope of CSTA. Although most terminal equipment (TE) is suitable for use with CSTA, there will be instances of TE that will not be suitable in certain circumstances.

ISO/IEC 18051:2012 defines services that allow functional integration between a computing network and a telecommunications network. Computing platforms (i.e., Application Programming Interfaces - APIs) that support such functionally-integrated applications are outside the scope of ISO/IEC 18051:2012.

Communication between the computing and switching (i.e., telecommunications) networks can take place via intervening networks ranging from simple point-to-point connections to local- or wide-area telecommunications networks.

ISO/IEC 18051:2012 is part of a suite of CSTA Standards and Technical Reports that provides a comprehensive description of the architectural and practical issues involved in applying, implementing, and utilizing CSTA-based CTI applications.