How to search for a lead in VICIdial

Sooner or later you need to find one specific Lead in VICIdial, maybe a customer called back, maybe a manager wants to check a record. The Search For A Lead screen is how you do it. You reach it from the SEARCH FOR A LEAD link at the top of the LISTS section.

What you can search by

The screen gives you several ways to track a record down. You can search by any of these:

• Phone number or alternate phone number
• User ID, or the Vendor lead code you assigned at load time
• The system lead ID, the lead Status (lead status), or the list ID it lives in
• Owner, or the customer's first and last name

You do not have to fill in everything. A phone number alone usually pins down the record. If you only know roughly who it is, a name plus a list ID narrows things fast. The system lead ID is the surest match of all, since it is unique to one record, so if a colleague gives you a lead ID from a report you can jump straight to it. The more criteria you combine, the tighter the result set, which is handy when a common name would otherwise return a wall of rows.

Searching by status is its own kind of useful. If you want to eyeball every record sitting on a particular disposition in a list, you can search by that status alone. It is a quick way to spot-check how a list is being worked without pulling a full report, and it pairs well with searching by owner when you want to see what one agent has been handling.

The search-to-edit path

flowchart LR
  A[LISTS section] --> B[Search For A Lead]
  B --> C{Enter criteria}
  C --> D[Results summary]
  D --> E[Modify lead]
  D --> F[New search]

When leads are found, you get a summary of each one's information along with two links: one to modify the lead, and one to start a fresh search. The modify link is your jump into the full lead detail page, where you can change status, set a callback, or update phone numbers.

Tips for cleaner searches

If a search returns too many rows, add a list ID or a status to tighten it. Hunting for a record that should be in a specific Campaign? Filter by the list IDs assigned to that campaign. And if a number turns up nothing, double-check formatting; a stray leading digit or country code can make an exact match miss. When in doubt, search by name or vendor lead code instead, since those are less sensitive to how the phone number was stored on the way in.

Searching is the gateway to editing, so it pairs naturally with the lead-modify workflow. For the wider context on how leads live inside lists, see the lists and leads guide, and if lists themselves are still fuzzy, read what a VICIdial list is.

Want a fully managed VICIdial where the search and edit tools are ready out of the box? See our plans and pricing and spin one up in under 40 seconds.