What to export before leaving your current dialer

Dialer migrations fail in a predictable pattern: the new system goes live, and then someone asks for a report on last quarter's dispositions, or a DNC number shows up that was only in the old platform, or an agent wants to hear a recording from four months ago. None of these are recoverable if the old platform access has lapsed.

This checklist covers what to pull before you cancel the subscription or lose admin access. It applies to any cloud dialer — Five9, Convoso, or any similar platform. For the full migration context, see the VICIdial migration guide.

Lead and contact data

Export every Lead list in CSV format, including all custom fields your team populated. Check that the export includes the Disposition status column — this tells you which leads were contacted, which are still open, and which reached a terminal outcome. An export without disposition status is just a phone list, not a working Lead database.

• All lead lists, including inactive and archived ones
• Custom field values (notes, lead source, owner, etc.)
• Disposition status and last-call timestamp per record

Open the CSV in a spreadsheet and check the encoding before you trust it. Exports that mangle accented names or drop leading zeros from phone numbers are common, and a phone number that lost its leading zero will not dial. Confirm the column headers are stable too, because you will map them to VICIdial fields during import and a renamed column breaks that mapping.

DNC lists

Your DNC list is arguably the most legally critical export. Numbers on your internal DNC represent people who opted out or filed complaints. Losing this list and accidentally calling one of those numbers later creates real compliance exposure. Export the full Internal DNC list as a flat file. If the platform separates DNC by campaign, export each one and merge them — apply the most conservative set to VICIdial's system DNC table.

Call recordings

Call recording archives are large and slow to export. Start this process weeks before cutover, not the day before. Most cloud dialers offer a bulk export API or a download-by-date-range option in the reporting portal. Pull recordings in batches — by month or by campaign — and verify the download is complete before moving to the next batch. Store them in a location your compliance team can access for at least 12 months after migration. Keep the metadata that ties each file to a call: the phone number, agent, and timestamp, so a recording can actually be found when someone requests it.

Export sequence before cutover

flowchart TD
    A[Start export 3 to 4 weeks before cutover] --> B[Pull call recordings in monthly batches]
    B --> C[Export all lead lists with disposition status]
    C --> D[Export full DNC list]
    D --> E[Export disposition codes and descriptions]
    E --> F[Export agent list and performance reports]
    F --> G[Export phone number inventory and DIDs]
    G --> H[Verify all exports complete and readable]
    H --> I[Begin VICIdial import and configuration]

Additional exports worth pulling

• Disposition code list with descriptions — you will need this for the VICIdial mapping exercise
• Agent roster with extension assignments — useful reference when setting up VICIdial agents
• Historical call reports by campaign — needed for before-and-after performance comparison after migration
• Inbound DID (direct inward dialing) numbers — needed for porting or forwarding to VICIdial inbound groups

Verify before you cancel

Do a row-count sanity check on every export. If the platform reports 240,000 leads and your CSV has 190,000 rows, something truncated the export — often a per-file row cap that silently split the data across multiple downloads. The same caution applies to recordings: confirm the file count against the call-volume report before you assume the archive is complete. Only when every export is verified should you schedule the subscription cancellation, and even then keep read access for the rollback window described in your cutover plan.

Once you have the exports, see migrating recordings to VICIdial for how to handle the recording archive specifically.

If you want a VICIdial environment ready to receive the imports before cutover, VICIfast managed plans provision a dedicated server in under 40 seconds.