How to Bulk-Update Lead Status Across a List

Restatusing leads in bulk is one of the most useful housekeeping moves in VICIdial. Maybe you want to reopen a stale block of leads for another pass, clean up after a campaign change, or push a set of bad numbers to a final status so the dialer stops touching them. Whatever the reason, doing it lead by lead is not realistic at scale. Basic Lead Management Tools does the whole batch in one pass. Here is how.

What status means here

Every Lead carries a Status (lead status) - the disposition of its last call attempt, such as NEW, NA for no answer, or a sale code. The dialer leans on that Called status to decide whether and when to dial a lead again. Some statuses are dialable and keep the lead in rotation; others are final and take it out. Bulk-updating status rewrites that field across a whole selection of leads at once, which is far faster than touching them one at a time and far safer than editing rows directly in the database.

The same two rules

The gating rules are identical to the other operations on this page:

1. The Lead list must be inactive. You cannot restatus a list that is being dialed.
2. It must hold fewer than 100,000 leads, or you move to the advanced tools.

If you have used the move or delete operations on this page, this will feel familiar - the same inactive-and-under-100k gate applies before any change can be made.

Step by step

1. Deactivate the list so the dialer is no longer working it.
2. Open Basic Lead Management Tools and choose update status.
3. Sub-divide the selection by current status and called count, so you only touch the intended subset - for example, only leads currently set to NA.
4. Pick the new status to apply.
5. Submit and verify the status counts on the list afterward.

Because there is no UNDO, the verify step is your safety net. Check that the number of leads now carrying the new status matches what you expected from your filter, and that nothing outside the intended subset moved. A quick look at the list's status breakdown before you reactivate it will catch most mistakes while they are still cheap to fix.

Status and recycling

flowchart TD
  A[Want to restatus leads] --> B{List inactive?}
  B -->|No| C[Deactivate first]
  B -->|Yes| D{Under 100k leads?}
  D -->|No| E[Use advanced tools]
  D -->|Yes| F[Filter by current status and called count]
  F --> G[Set new status]
  G --> H{New status dialable?}
  H -->|Yes| I[Lead re-enters hopper]
  H -->|No| J[Lead removed from dialing]

The status you set drives what happens next, so choose it with the downstream effect in mind. Move leads to a dialable status and they re-enter the Campaign hopper on the next list reset, which is the heart of Lead recycling - a clean way to give old leads another shot without re-importing them. Set them to a final status and the dialer leaves them alone for good. Get this wrong in bulk and you can either flood agents with leads you meant to retire, or quietly stop calling leads you wanted to keep working, so verify the counts after every run.

Related reading

Restatusing pairs naturally with moving leads around - if you are reorganizing lists, see how to bulk-move leads between lists. For the full set of batch admin utilities, read our VICIdial admin bulk tools guide.

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