How to round-robin calls to Remote Agents

A Remote agent in VICIdial normally rings one fixed Extension. That is fine when an agent has a single endpoint, but what if you want calls spread across several Dialplan extensions — for example, a team sharing a call rotation across different lines? VICIdial's Extension Group feature handles exactly that, and when combined with the Extension Group field on the Remote Agent record it produces round-robin distribution.

How the round-robin mechanism works

When you set the Extension Group field on a Remote Agent record to anything other than NONE or empty, VICIdial overrides the plain "External Extension" field entirely. Instead, it looks up all the extension entries that belong to that group and distributes calls among them. The distribution method is round-robin: each successive call goes to the next extension in the group, cycling back to the start after the last one.

The Rank field on each entry still matters — it sets the base order the system cycles through. Lower rank numbers come first in the rotation.

Setup walkthrough

1. Go to Remote Agents → Extension Groups and create a new group with a descriptive name.
2. Add each extension you want in the rotation. Assign a unique Rank to each one (1, 2, 3, etc.).
3. Open the Remote Agent record and set the Extension Group dropdown to the group you just created.
4. Save the Remote Agent record. The External Extension field is now ignored for this agent.

flowchart LR
  A[Inbound Call] --> B[Remote Agent Record]
  B --> C[Extension Group: sales-rotation]
  C --> D[Rank 1: Ext 1001]
  C --> E[Rank 2: Ext 1002]
  C --> F[Rank 3: Ext 1003]
  D -- Call 1 --> G[Connected]
  E -- Call 2 --> G
  F -- Call 3 --> G
  D -- Call 4 loops back --> G

What this is useful for

Round-robin across extensions is useful when a single Remote Agent record represents a shared position (like a main support line) rather than one individual. Each extension in the group might ring a different physical device or route through a different DID route. The Ingroup that sends calls to this agent does not need to know about the rotation — the Extension Group handles that layer transparently.

For full context on Remote Agents and how they slot into inbound call flows, read VICIdial Remote Agents explained. You can also check Remote Agent vs Standard Agent to understand when a Remote Agent is the right choice in the first place.

Want a VICIdial environment where this kind of routing works from day one, without digging through Asterisk config files? See VICIfast plans.