How to modify a Remote Agent record

A Remote agent in VICIdial is a routing entry that forwards calls to an external phone number — a landline, a mobile, a hunt group — without requiring the recipient to sit at the VICIdial agent screen. Once you've created one, you'll occasionally need to update it: change the destination number, swap the Campaign it belongs to, add lines, or simply toggle it off. This post walks through the Modify Remote Agent screen field by field so you know exactly what you're changing.

Getting to the modification page

Log into the VICIdial Admin screen and click Remote Agents in the left menu. The listing shows every remote agent with its Agent ID, number of lines, client server IP, outgoing phone number, extension group, active flag, and the campaign it belongs to. Click the modification link next to the entry you want to edit. For a fuller picture of what remote agents are and when to use them, see our complete guide to VICIdial Remote Agents.

Field reference

• User ID Start — the base VICIdial user account. Must be digits only and must match an existing user in the system. When Number of Lines is greater than 1, VICIdial increments this ID by one for each additional line (111, 112, 113, …). See the post on what a VICIdial Remote Agent is for background on why that base user needs a level-4 account.
• Number of Lines — how many Lines per agent entries the system creates. Digits only. Controls how many concurrent calls VICIdial thinks it can safely route to this number.
• External Extension — the destination number. Must be digits only. Include any prefix your Dialplan requires (for example, a leading 9 to get an outside line). Test it by dialing from a phone on the dialer before saving.
• Extension Group — when set to anything other than NONE or blank, this overrides External Extension and distributes calls round-robin across the extensions in that group. Leave it at NONE if you just want a single destination number.
• Status — toggles the remote agent on (ACTIVE) or off (INACTIVE). Once active, VICIdial immediately treats this entry as available to receive calls.
• Campaign — the Campaign the remote agent is logged into. For inbound routing, choose a CLOSER campaign and then select the inbound groups below.
• Inbound Groups — visible only when a CLOSER campaign is selected. Pick every ingroup whose calls should ring this remote agent.

Validation rules and what trips people up

Three fields — User ID Start, Number of Lines, and External Extension — reject anything that isn't pure digits. Letters, dashes, spaces, or a leading plus sign will cause the form to refuse the submission with no changes saved. VICIdial also checks that the User ID Start belongs to an active user and that the line range (User ID Start through User ID Start + Lines − 1) doesn't overlap another remote agent already in the system. Fix overlaps by choosing a User ID range that doesn't clash.

How the modification flows

flowchart TD
  A[Open Modify Remote Agent page] --> B[Edit fields]
  B --> C{Digits-only check}
  C -- Fail --> D[Form rejected, no changes saved]
  C -- Pass --> E{User ID Start is active user?}
  E -- No --> F[Validation error]
  E -- Yes --> G{Line range overlaps another RA?}
  G -- Yes --> H[Validation error]
  G -- No --> I[Record saved]
  I --> J{Status changed to INACTIVE?}
  J -- Yes --> K[Up to 60s before calls stop routing]
  J -- No --> L[Change live immediately]

The Call recording setting for a remote agent is controlled at the campaign level (set Campaign Recording to ALLFORCE) and on the user's profile page — not on the Modify Remote Agent screen itself. The Agent API can also hang up or transfer calls routed to a remote agent and set Disposition codes, which is handy for automated broadcast flows. If you're running VICIfast and want to explore remote-agent provisioning alongside managed hosting, take a look at our pricing page.