How to add an inbound Chat Group in VICIdial

A Chat Group lets your agents handle inbound website chat sessions the same way they handle inbound calls. When a visitor starts a chat, VICIdial pulls up the matching customer record on the agent screen and locks the agent so no call or other chat interrupts them. After they finish the conversation they disposition it and drop straight back into the rotation. This post walks through adding a new Chat Group from scratch and the one prerequisite people forget.

Turn the feature on first

Inbound chat is off by default. Before any group can receive a chat session, the feature has to be enabled in Admin under System Settings. Skip that step and the Chat Groups screen will still let you build a group, but no visitor chat will ever reach an agent. Enable it once at the system level and every Chat Group you create after that becomes routable.

Open the Add screen

In the Inbound section of the left menu, click the Add New Chat Group link. You get a short form with three required fields and a stack of optional ones. The three you have to fill in are Group ID, Group Name, and Group Color. Everything else can wait until the group exists.

• Group ID - the short name, 2 to 20 characters, no spaces. It cannot match any existing Chat ID, In-Group, or campaign in the system.
• Group Name - the full name of the chat account, 2 to 30 characters.
• Group Color - the color shown in the agent client app when a chat arrives on this group, 2 to 7 characters.

The decision flow

Here is the order the admin enforces when you submit a new Chat Group.

flowchart TD
  A["Click Add New Chat Group"] --> B["Enter Group ID"]
  B --> C{"ID 2-20 chars, no spaces, unique?"}
  C -->|No| B
  C -->|Yes| D["Enter Group Name"]
  D --> E["Enter Group Color"]
  E --> F{"All three required filled?"}
  F -->|No| D
  F -->|Yes| G["Click Submit"]
  G --> H["Group created, ID now locked"]

The ID is permanent

The Group Name and Group Color stay editable after submission, so only the ID is the one-shot field. Once the group exists you can layer on the optional pieces, including the Default List ID, the Web Form addresses, and the Queue priority that decides whether a chat or a call reaches the Agent first. Routing a chat to an Agent is the same idea as routing an inbound call to a Closer, so the Ingroup queue concepts carry straight over from your voice setup.

That is the whole add flow: enable the feature, fill the three required fields, and submit. Once the group is live an arriving chat pulls the matching Lead and waits for an agent to reply and Disposition it. To go deeper on the per-field options, read how to modify an existing VICIdial Chat Group, and for how chat slots in next to email and voice across your whole inbound setup, see the VICIdial inbound email and chat guide. If you would rather skip the server prep entirely, our managed VICIdial plans ship with the inbound modules already in place.