How to compare the settings of two campaigns side by side

When one Campaign is dialing correctly and another is not, the fastest path to the answer is the Settings Compare Utility: select both campaigns, and the highlighted differences in the output table tell you exactly which field to fix.

The problem this solves

VICIdial campaigns have dozens of fields — Dial method, Hopper size, Dial timeout, Drop percentage limit, AMD settings, time zone filters, and more. When something stops working, the instinct is to open both campaign admin screens in separate tabs and scan them manually. That takes time and it is easy to miss a single checkbox difference buried in the middle of the form. The Settings Compare Utility eliminates that guesswork by reducing the comparison to a list of highlighted rows — most of the time, just one or two.

This is especially useful when a campaign that worked yesterday stops working today and no one is sure what changed. The comparison against yesterday's working campaign — or a sibling campaign that is still active — surfaces the change without needing a change log.

Step-by-step: comparing two campaigns

Open the Settings Compare Utility from Admin Utilities at the bottom of the Reports page, then follow these steps:

• Step 1: select CAMPAIGNS from the type drop-down. This scopes the tool to campaign settings only.
• Step 2: choose the working campaign as the first entry and the broken campaign as the second. The order affects only which column is on the left — the highlighted rows are the same either way.
• Submit the form. The utility returns every campaign field in a table. Scan the highlighted rows — those are the differences.
• Open the broken campaign's admin screen, update the field to match the working campaign, and save. Use RESET in the compare utility to re-run the same comparison and confirm the highlighted row is gone.

What to look for in the results

Most working-versus-broken campaign comparisons surface one of a small number of recurring differences. These are the fields most often highlighted:

• Campaign active status — the broken campaign was set to N while the working one is Y. Easy to overlook when toggling campaigns during shift changes.
• Dial method — RATIO vs ADAPT_HARD_LIMIT vs INBOUND_MAN behave very differently. A copy-paste setup that changed the method without reviewing the rest of the pacing fields is a common source of broken campaigns.
• Hopper level — a minimum set to a number higher than the remaining available leads will stall auto-dialing silently.
• Drop percentage limit — a value of 0 disables the drop protection logic entirely on some builds, which can cause unexpected behavior in Predictive dialing mode.
• Dial prefix — a missing or incorrect Dial prefix means calls route to the wrong trunk or fail to route at all, while the campaign itself appears active and the hopper is full.

flowchart LR
  A["Working campaign"] --> C["Settings Compare — CAMPAIGNS type"]
  B["Broken campaign"] --> C
  C --> D["Full field table"]
  D --> E{"Row highlighted?"}
  E -->|No| F["Fields match — look elsewhere"]
  E -->|Yes| G["Difference found"]
  G --> H["Update broken campaign field"]
  H --> I["Re-run compare to verify"]

When the compare comes up clean

If the utility shows no highlighted rows, the campaign settings are identical and the problem lies elsewhere. The most common next stops are the lead list — check that the Lead list tied to the broken campaign still has dialable records in the right status — and the server itself. Check the Real-time report to confirm the dialer process is running and not showing error flags for that campaign. A clean compare is actually useful information: it tells you to look at the list, the server, or the carrier connection rather than spending more time in campaign configuration.

For deeper server-side diagnostics beyond what the compare utility covers, see the full guide to monitoring VICIdial server health and capacity. If the issue points to resource pressure on the server, how to read the Server Performance Report explains what the load and channel graphs tell you.

Need a clean slate to test campaign configurations without risk to your production data? Start a VICIfast trial — your managed VICIdial box is ready in under 40 seconds, giving you a dedicated environment to test and compare settings safely.