How to change a user-only callback to anyone

There are two flavours of Scheduled callback in VICIdial. A USERONLY callback is locked to the agent who set it. An ANYONE callback goes back into the campaign Hopper when it goes live, so whoever is available can pick it up. If a callback is sitting reserved for one agent but you would rather any agent could handle it, you convert it from USERONLY to ANYONE.

This is a manager action in admin.php, and like the other callback edits it needs lead-modify permission on your VICIdial user account.

What changes when you convert

While a callback is USERONLY it never touches the hopper — the Agent dials it from their own Scheduled Callbacks link when convenient. Once you flip it to ANYONE, the next time it goes live the dialer puts it into the hopper and sets the lead Disposition status to CALLBK so it gets called quickly. That CALLBK status is what marks the lead as a callback waiting to be dialed. The flow below shows the difference.

flowchart TD
  A[USERONLY callback] --> B[Reserved for one agent]
  B --> C[Agent dials from callback link]
  A --> D[Manager converts to ANYONE]
  D --> E[Callback goes live]
  E --> F[Lead enters hopper]
  F --> G[Status set to CALLBK]
  G --> H[Any available agent dials it]

Doing the conversion

• 1. Open the user, campaign or list modification screen in admin.php and click the CallBack Holds link at the bottom.
• 2. In the listing, find the row whose type column reads USERONLY. Click the lead ID.
• 3. On the lead modification page, change the callback from USERONLY to ANYONE. Save the lead.
• 4. From now on, once this callback's date and time are reached it goes to the hopper for the campaign rather than staying with the original agent.

Going the other way, and bulk conversions

The same lead modification page also lets you go the other direction — turn an ANYONE callback into USERONLY and hand it to a specific user ID. And if you want this conversion to happen automatically for stale callbacks, the system has a campaign-level option that moves USERONLY callbacks to ANYONE a set number of minutes after their trigger time, so abandoned reservations do not rot. The mechanics of the hopper hand-off are covered in how anyone callbacks go back to the hopper, and the broader picture is in the scheduled callbacks overview.

One reminder: converting to ANYONE only helps if the campaign actually loads anyone callbacks into the hopper and the list is active. If a converted callback still does not get dialed, that is usually a campaign or list setting rather than the conversion itself.

Why convert in the first place? The usual reasons are agent turnover and load balancing. If the agent who set the callback is no longer around, a USERONLY callback is effectively dead — nobody else can reach it — so flipping it to ANYONE frees it up for the team. And if one agent has stacked up far more callbacks than they can work through in a day, converting some of them spreads the load instead of letting customers wait on one person's availability. Just be aware that once it is ANYONE, the original agent loses any special claim to it; whoever is free when it goes live gets the call.

Get a dialer that does this out of the box

Converting callback types is a built-in part of the VICIdial admin, no plugins required. On a managed box you get that admin and a running dialer in under 40 seconds. See VICIfast pricing to get one.