Export Calls vs Export Leads: which one to use

VICIdial ships two exports that look almost identical on the setup screen but produce very different files. Export Calls returns one row per individual call. Export Leads returns one row per contact. Both download a tab-delimited text file you open in a spreadsheet, and both let you filter by date range, status, list, and campaign. The difference that matters is the grain of the data, and picking the wrong one wastes an afternoon of cleanup.

What each one returns

Export Calls joins each Lead to its vicidial_log and vicidial_closer_log rows, so a contact dialed five times becomes five rows. You see every call_date, status, agent, and call length. It is the right export when you care about the calls themselves: auditing agent activity, counting attempts, or reconciling a billing dispute over how many times a number was reached.

Export Leads shows each contact once, no matter how many times it was dialed during the period. It is the right export when you care about the people, not the dials: building a re-dial list, a suppression file, or a distinct-contact count for a compliance report. The repeat-dial noise is collapsed for you before the file is written.

• Calls: one row per dial, full call history, ideal for activity audits and attempt counts.
• Leads: one row per contact, deduplicated, ideal for list management and distinct-person counts.

What they share

Both exports carry the same option set, so the only real decision is which utility you open. Date Field switches between call log date and lead entry date. Header Row writes the column names. Recording Fields attaches the latest Call recording per record, pipe-delimited when there is more than one. Custom Fields and Per Call Notes come along when enabled at the campaign and list level. Both expose the Vendor lead code so you can trace records back to their Lead source, and both offer Standard versus Extended field sets, with Extended adding entry_date, called_count, last_local_call_time, modify_date, and called_since_last_reset. Both also let you tick Search Archived Data to reach older rows.

Choosing in one decision

You almost never need both files for the same task. Ask whether your question is about dials or about people, and the report picks itself.

flowchart TD
  A[What do you need?] --> B{Per call or per contact?}
  B -->|Every dial and disposition| C[Use Export Calls]
  B -->|One row per person| D[Use Export Leads]
  C --> E[Activity audit]
  D --> F[Re dial or suppression list]

As a rule of thumb, if a sentence in your request contains the word every, you probably want calls; if it contains the word each, you probably want leads. When you genuinely need both views, run them as two separate exports rather than trying to force one to do the other's job.

For the step-by-step on each, read how to use the Export Calls Report and how to use the Export Leads Report. The reports overview puts both in context with the rest of your reporting.

Both exports are built into every managed VICIdial server we run. See our pricing to spin one up.