How to assign screen colors in VICIdial

Building a screen color template and assigning it are two separate steps. Assigning is the part that actually changes what people see, and it happens on the System Settings modification page rather than inside the color form itself. This separation is handy, because one User group of admins can craft palettes while another decides where they get applied.

It is a common point of confusion, so it is worth saying plainly: saving a template never themes anything. A template you just built will sit quietly in the system, invisible to your agents, until you go to System Settings and pick it. That is by design, since it lets you stage and review palettes before they go live in front of people who are on calls.

The three pulldowns

On the System Settings page you will find three pulldown menus: Admin Screen Colors, Agent Screen Colors, and Chat Screen Colors. Each one lists every active Screen Colors template. To assign a theme, open the relevant pulldown and pick the template you want for that surface. You can mix them freely, for example a muted admin palette and a bolder agent palette, because each pulldown is independent. The selection takes effect for that screen, and any custom Web Logo defined in the chosen template comes along with it.

Because assignment is a pulldown choice rather than a fresh form, switching themes is genuinely fast. If a client rebrands, you build the new template once and re-point the relevant pulldown, and every screen on that surface picks up the change. There is no per-agent or per-page setting to chase down, which is what makes screen colors so easy to roll out across a busy floor.

How the assignment decides what renders

flowchart TD
  A[Open System Settings page] --> B{Which screen}
  B -->|Admin| C[Admin Screen Colors pulldown]
  B -->|Agent| D[Agent Screen Colors pulldown]
  B -->|Chat| E[Chat Screen Colors pulldown]
  C --> F[Pick active template]
  D --> F
  E --> F
  F --> G[Screen renders palette and logo]

The flow makes the rule clear: each pulldown maps to one screen, and only active templates are selectable. If a template you expect is missing, it almost always means its Active flag is off, or its Admin User Group restricts it from your view. Set the Active flag on the template itself, or widen its Admin User Group back to --ALL--, and it returns to the list. For how assignment fits the broader setup, the agent screen configuration guide ties it all together.

Common gotcha

Admins sometimes assign a template and then wonder why agents still see the default. Double-check you set the Agent Screen Colors pulldown specifically, not just Admin, since the two are separate assignments. Another frequent surprise is a logged-in agent who keeps seeing the previous theme; a fresh login or a hard browser refresh clears the cached look. Colors are cosmetic and never affect dialing or a Disposition, so a wrong choice is harmless and easy to revert. If you are also wiring scripts to campaigns at the same time, our guide on assigning a script to a campaign covers a similar assign-where-needed pattern that helps keep each Campaign consistent.

Prefer to skip the manual assignment and run a managed instance that is themed for you? See VICIfast pricing for the details.