How to set up dial-in agents with one Call-In phone

Setting up dial-in agents is one of the smaller jobs in VICIdial once you know the shape of it. You create a single shared phone record, hand your agents a number to call, and make sure their user IDs are keypad-friendly. The point of the Call-In feature is that agents dial into the system to connect their audio instead of the system calling them, so a whole team can share one phone entry.

Step 1: create the shared phone record

Open the Admin section and add a new phone the same way you would for any seat. The convention is to give this record the phone login callin so it is obvious what it is for. You only need one of these per server, because every dial-in Agent on that server will log in with this same phone login. Fill in the required fields the add screen asks for, including the Extension, the dialplan number, the server IP, the login, and the password.

Unlike a per-agent phone, this record is not tied to a registered device on each desk. The shared phone login carries audio for whoever dialed in, so there is nothing to register on the SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) side for each individual agent. If you need a refresher on the fields a phone record expects, the required-fields walkthrough covers them.

Step 2: prep your agent user accounts

This is the step people forget. Agents who call in have to type their user ID and password on a phone keypad after the call connects, so those credentials must be digits only. No letters, no special characters. When you create or edit the user accounts for your dial-in agents, set numeric user IDs and numeric passwords. If you reuse accounts that already have letters in them, the dial-in prompt will not accept them and the agent will be stuck at the keypad.

Step 3: hand out the call-in number

Your system administrator sets up a phone number that has call-in capability. Give that number to your agents. When an agent dials it, the system answers and connects their audio through the shared phone record. They then enter their own user ID and password to identify themselves, and they land on the dialer.

sequenceDiagram
  participant M as Manager
  participant A as Agent
  participant S as VICIdial System
  M->>S: Create one shared callin phone
  M->>S: Set numeric user IDs and passwords
  M->>A: Hand out the call-in number
  A->>S: Dial in and connect audio
  A->>S: Enter numeric user ID and password
  S->>A: Agent is live on the dialer

What the agent sees

On the agent web interface, the dial-in agent enters the shared callin phone login where a normal agent would enter their own personal phone. Everything after that, the campaign they join and the calls they take, works the same as any other seat. Behind the scenes, Asterisk is holding the dial-in leg open as the audio path, so the rest of the dialer does not care how the audio got connected.

• One shared phone record per server, login named callin by convention.
• Numeric-only user IDs and passwords for every dial-in agent.
• A call-in number from your administrator that the agents dial.

That is the whole setup. The bulk of the effort is the user-account prep, not the phone record. For the broader context of how phone records, logins, and registration all relate, the VICIdial phones pillar guide ties it together.

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