How to add an inbound Email Group in VICIdial

An Email Group lets your agents handle inbound email the same way they handle inbound calls. When a message arrives, VICIdial pulls up the matching customer record, locks the agent so no call interrupts them, and after they reply they disposition it and go back into the rotation. This post walks through adding a new Email Group from scratch and the one prerequisite that trips people up.

Turn the feature on first

Before any group can receive mail, two things have to be in place. First, the inbound email feature must be enabled in Admin / System Settings. Second, an "E" keepalive has to be added to exactly one of your servers, and the email parser cron line has to run on that same single box.

With the parser running on a single server, every inbound mailbox you point at a group gets checked once a minute and routed to an available Agent just like a queued call.

Open the Add screen

In the Inbound section of the admin, click the "Add New Email Group" link. You will get a short form with three required fields and a handful of optional ones. The three you must fill in are Group ID, Group Name, and Group Color. The rest can wait until later.

• Group ID — the short name, 2 to 20 characters, no spaces. It cannot match any other in-group or campaign ID.
• Group Name — the full name of the email account, 2 to 30 characters.
• Group Color — the color shown in the agent app when mail arrives on this group, 2 to 7 characters.

The decision flow

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

flowchart TD
  A["Click Add New Email 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

Once you submit, the Group ID is locked. The only way to change it is to delete the group and create it again, so pick something clear like sales-email or support-email on the first try. The Group Name and Group Color stay editable later. For a deeper look at how these two fields are used, read what the Email Group ID and Group Name do.

After the group exists you can layer on the optional pieces — Web Form addresses, Queue Priority, and the Ingroup rank that decides who gets mail first. Routing this email is the same idea as routing an inbound call to a Closer, so the queue concepts carry straight over from your voice setup.

That is the whole add flow: enable the feature, run the parser on one box, fill the three required fields, and submit. Once the group is live an arriving message pulls the matching Lead and waits for an agent to reply and Disposition it. For how email slots in alongside voice and chat 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 parser and modules already in place.