How to add a DID in VICIdial

Adding a DID (direct inward dialing) is the step that connects a phone number to your dialer. A DID, short for Direct Inward Dialing, is the record that catches an inbound call and decides where it goes. The process is two short stages: create the entry, then set its route. Before you start, find out one thing from your Carrier: what digits will it send when a call arrives. Some carriers forward all ten digits, others send only the last four. Whatever they send is what you must type as the extension.

Step one: create the entry

1. Open the inbound section of the admin site and click Add A New DID.
2. Set the DID Extension. This must match the digits your carrier sends, with no spaces or punctuation, and it must be 2 to 20 characters long.
3. Give it a DID Description so you can recognise it in the list later.
4. Click submit. The extension and name are both required, or the form will refuse to save.

Step two: set the route

After you save, the screen expands with the routing fields. The key one is DID Route. For most inbound work you want IN_GROUP, which sends the call straight to an Ingroup so a pool of agents can answer. You then pick the In-Group ID, a call handle method that controls how the lead record is matched (CID adds a new record using the caller ID), and an agent search method such as LB for load balanced across servers.

The other routes are EXTEN to a raw Dialplan extension, AGENT to one logged-in agent, CALLMENU to a recorded menu, and VOICEMAIL to a mailbox. Leave the rest of the fields at their defaults unless you have a reason to change them.

While you are on this screen, two more fields are worth a glance. Record Call sets whether calls to this number are recorded: Y records the whole call, N records nothing, and a queue-stop option records up to the moment the call enters the queue. There is also an Active flag that lets you turn the number off later without deleting it, and an Admin User Group field that controls which admin users can see the entry. Everything else can stay on its default the first time around.

If you ever need a second number that behaves exactly like this one, you do not have to repeat the whole form. There is a copy feature that clones an existing DID into a new extension, which saves time once you have one configured the way you like.

flowchart LR
  A[Add A New DID] --> B[Set DID Extension]
  B --> C[Set DID Description]
  C --> D[Submit]
  D --> E[Pick DID Route]
  E --> F[Choose In Group]
  F --> G[Set Handle Method]
  G --> H[Save]
  H --> I[Call routes live]

Once saved, the routing is live and you can test it by dialing the number. If you have not built the in-group yet, follow our walk-through on how to add a VICIdial in-group first, then come back and point the DID at it. The full inbound flow is covered in our inbound call handling guide.

If you would rather skip the server build entirely, our managed VICIdial hosting hands you a running dialer in under a minute so you can go straight to adding DIDs.