How to point a DID at a specific agent

Sometimes you want one number to reach one person. A salesperson's direct line, a manager's hotline, a single point of contact. VICIdial handles this with the AGENT route on a DID (direct inward dialing), which sends the call to a named Agent as long as they are logged in. It is the right choice when a number belongs to an individual rather than a team, and it comes with a built-in fallback for the times that person is away.

Set up the DID

1. Click Add A New DID, enter the DID Extension that matches your carrier digits, add a description, and submit.
2. Set DID Route to AGENT.
3. Set User Agent to the user ID of the person who should get the calls.
4. Leave User Route Settings In-Group as AGENTDIRECT. This in-group supplies the queue settings while the caller waits for the agent.
5. Set User Unavailable Action for when the agent is not logged in or not free. VOICEMAIL with a mailbox is a common choice, but you can send the call to another in-group or extension instead.

flowchart TD
  A[Inbound call hits DID] --> B[Route is AGENT]
  B --> C[Wait in AGENTDIRECT queue]
  C --> D{Agent ready before timeout}
  D -->|Yes| E[Agent answers]
  D -->|No| F[Unavailable action]
  F --> G[Voicemail]
  F --> H[Another in group]

The AGENTDIRECT in-group in step four is the key to how this works. The call does not go straight to the agent's phone; it waits briefly in that AGENTDIRECT queue, which is where the hold behaviour and the drop timeout live. If the agent picks up before the timeout, they get the call. If not, the unavailable action takes over. So you are really configuring two things at once: who the call is for, and what happens when they are not there.

What the agent has to do

Pointing the DID is only half of it. The agent must be logged into a campaign that has Allow Inbound and Blended set to Y, and that campaign must list an AGENTDIRECT in-group as an allowed group. On the agent screen they select the AGENTDIRECT in-group and sit in READY or CLOSER Status (lead status), never paused, or the call will not reach them.

This is the most common reason a direct number seems broken: the route is fine, but the agent is paused, or they forgot to select the AGENTDIRECT group, or the campaign was never set inbound-capable. Walk those three checks before you blame the DID itself.

One more detail: the unavailable action is worth setting thoughtfully. Sending it to a voicemail box means the caller can leave a message when the agent is out, but you could just as easily route the overflow to a backup in-group so a colleague picks it up instead. Pick whichever matches how you want that number to behave when the named person is not at their desk.

Test and confirm

Dial the number and watch it route to the agent. If no one is logged in, the call still shows in the real-time view waiting in the AGENTDIRECT queue, which tells you the route works even before anyone is online. For routing a number to a whole team instead of one person, compare with pointing a DID at an Ingroup in our ring-all in-group guide, and see the wider flow in our inbound call handling guide.

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