How VERM decides a call was answered or unanswered

VERM's most important rule is also its simplest: a call is answered when the user id on its log record is anything other than VDAD or VDCL. If the user id reads VDAD or VDCL, the call is counted as unanswered. Understanding this one rule explains the entire answered ratio and why your numbers sometimes look different from what you expected.

What VDAD and VDCL mean

VDAD and VDCL are internal VICIdial system user ids, not real people. When a call ends up logged against one of them, it means no human Agent ever took the call — the dialer placed or received it but it was never connected to an operator. Every other user id on a log record belongs to an actual agent who handled the call, which is why VERM treats the presence of a real user id as proof the call was answered.

What gets counted in the first place

Before the answered test even runs, VERM decides which calls are in scope. It sums inbound and outbound calls from the call log tables for your report parameters, then excludes any disposition listed in the exc_addtl_statuses variable of the VERM_REPORT_OPTIONS settings container. By default only AFTHRS calls are excluded. Whatever survives that filter is the Total calls processed, and the answered-versus-unanswered split is applied to that pool.

The decision, step by step

flowchart TD
  A[Call in inbound or outbound log] --> B{Disposition in exc list}
  B -->|Yes default AFTHRS| C[Excluded from report]
  B -->|No| D[Counted in total processed]
  D --> E{Log user id value}
  E -->|VDAD| F[Unanswered]
  E -->|VDCL| F
  E -->|Any real agent id| G[Answered]
  G --> H[Feeds answered detail stats]
  F --> I[Feeds unanswered ratio]

Why this changes how you read other stats

Because only answered calls feed the detail metrics, things like average call length and wait time describe agent-handled calls exclusively. Wait time is doubly specific: it comes only from inbound calls (the queue_sec value), since outbound calls have no wait at all. So a purely outbound queue can show a healthy answered count with zero total wait time, and that is correct, not a bug. Keep this in mind when you compare an Answer rate across an inbound Ingroup and an outbound Campaign — they are measuring different journeys.

This same VDAD/VDCL rule is what drives the donut ratio and every per-agent breakdown, so once you trust it you can read the whole Answered report quickly. For the full layout of that report see our all-campaigns summary report guide for the volume side, and the reports overview to see how VERM relates to the rest of VICIdial reporting. Tracking Abandonment rate alongside the answered count gives you the cleanest read on a busy queue.

VICIfast ships VICIdial with VERM and its answered counting ready to run on a branded subdomain over HTTPS in under 40 seconds — see our pricing and bring your own carrier.