How to set a phone's Outbound CallerID

Every VICIdial phone entry has a field called Outbound CallerID. It holds the number you want the called party to see when this phone places a call from the web client. The default is blank, which means the system falls back to whatever your trunk or carrier sends. If you want a specific number on the receiving end's screen, this is one of the places you set it.

The catch is that this field does not always win. It applies to calls placed from the phone directly, but the moment an agent logs into a Campaign, the campaign's own Caller ID setting takes over. That single detail confuses a lot of new operators, so it is worth knowing exactly where the phone-level value matters before you go editing it.

Where to find the Outbound CallerID field

Open the phone entry from the admin Phones list. The Outbound CallerID field sits in the same group as the voicemail box and the Server IP. Type the number you want displayed, with no dashes or formatting, then save. That value is the caller ID, often shortened to CID (caller ID), that the system attaches to outbound calls from this device.

If you are not sure how to open and edit a phone record, the walkthrough on modifying an existing entry covers it step by step.

• Enter digits only, no dashes or spaces, the same way you would enter an Extension.
• Leave it blank to let the trunk decide what number is sent.
• There is also an Outbound Alt CallerID field for special cases, but that one needs custom Dialplan entries to do anything.

When the phone's CallerID actually applies

The phone-level value is used for calls the phone places on its own, outside of a campaign. The clearest example is direct Manual dialing (click to dial) from the web client before an agent has joined any campaign. In that situation the system reaches for the Outbound CallerID on the phone record and uses it.

One more limit worth knowing: this field does not work on older RBS, non-PRI, or POTS lines. On a modern VoIP trunk it works fine, but on legacy hardware the carrier controls the displayed number regardless of what you typed here.

Which CallerID wins

Here is the order the system follows when it decides which number to send.

flowchart TD
  A[Outbound call placed] --> B{Agent logged into a campaign}
  B -- Yes --> C[Campaign Caller ID is used]
  B -- No --> D{Phone Outbound CallerID set}
  D -- Yes --> E[Phone Outbound CallerID is used]
  D -- No --> F[Trunk or carrier default is used]

So the phone field only matters in the bottom branch, where no campaign is in play. If your agents spend their day inside a campaign, editing this field will look like it does nothing, because the campaign value is overriding it on every call.

If your change does not stick

If you set the Outbound CallerID and the called party still sees a different number, the most common reason is the campaign override. The fix is to change the displayed number in the campaign settings instead. That behavior is explained in why the Campaign Caller ID overrides your phone's CallerID, which is the companion to this one.

VICIdial runs on Asterisk, and the number it ultimately presents also depends on the trunk and any custom rules your carrier applies. So treat the phone field as one input among a few, not the final word. For the full set of phone fields and how they fit together, start with the VICIdial phones guide, and review modifying a record in how to modify a VICIdial phone.

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