How to copy a VICIdial Chat Group instead of rebuilding it

If you have a Chat Group set up the way you like it and need a second one that is nearly identical, you do not have to re-enter every field by hand. VICIdial can copy all of an existing group's settings into a brand new group. You give it a new Group ID, a new Group Name, and tell it which existing group to copy from, and it clones the rest. This post covers when to reach for that and the one thing the copy does not change.

What the copy actually does

The Copy Chat Group page takes a source group and duplicates all of its settings into a new group. That means the color scheme, the Web Form addresses, the queue behavior, and the rest of the configuration come over without you retyping them. You only supply the three things that have to be unique or fresh: a new Group ID, a new Group Name, and the source group to pull settings from.

• New Group ID — the short name for the new group. It must be unique and cannot match any other in-group or Campaign.
• New Group Name — the full name of the new chat account.
• Source Group — the existing Chat Group whose settings you want cloned into the new one.

When copying beats building

Copying pays off any time the new group is a near-twin of an existing one. Spinning up a chat group for a second product line or a second brand that shares your CRM pops, your survey link, and your queue rules is the obvious case. You copy the working group, then change only the handful of fields that differ, instead of getting every Web Form and color right from a blank form.

If you have ever copied an inbound voice in-group, this is the same idea applied to chat. The mechanics line up, so the habit carries straight over.

The copy flow

flowchart TD
  A["Open Copy Chat Group"] --> B["Enter new Group ID"]
  B --> C{"ID unique and not a campaign?"}
  C -->|No| B
  C -->|Yes| D["Enter new Group Name"]
  D --> E["Pick source Chat Group"]
  E --> F["Submit"]
  F --> G["New group created with copied settings"]
  G --> H["Adjust the fields that differ"]

After the copy

Once the new group exists, open it and review the fields that should differ from the source. The Group ID is locked at this point, just like on a fresh group, so the only way to change it is to delete and recreate. Everything else, including the Queue priority and the Web form addresses, stays editable. Treat the copy as a head start, not a finished group.

That is the whole shortcut: new ID, new name, a source to copy, then tidy up the differences. For the wider chat picture see the VICIdial inbound email and chat guide, and for the matching email move read how to copy a VICIdial Email Group. If you would rather have the chat system handed to you ready to clone, our managed VICIdial plans set it up for you.