How to connect a POP3 inbox to VICIdial

VICIdial can pull email out of an external mailbox and drop it onto an agent's screen the same way an inbound call would. To do that it needs an email account record that tells it how to log in and how often to look. POP3 is one of the two protocols it can speak, and if your provider only offers POP3, this is the route you take.

An email handled this way behaves like a call: it pulls up the matching customer record, locks it so the Agent won't get pulled onto something else mid-reply, and waits for a Disposition when the agent is done. So the setup below is really about getting messages into that pipeline cleanly.

What you need before you start

Have these four things from your email provider ready: the incoming mail server hostname, the account login (usually the part of the address before the @ symbol), the password, and the reply-to address you want agent replies to appear to come from. Make sure you already have an email group built, because the account has to point at one.

Fill in the email account

Add a new email account and work through the fields in order:

1. Email Account Protocol: choose POP3. VICIdial supports IMAP and POP3 only, so this is one of two choices.
2. Email Reply-to Address: the address of the mailbox you are connecting. Agent replies will read as coming from here.
3. Email Account Server: the mail server the account lives on.
4. Email Account User: the login for the mailbox, usually the bit before the @ sign.
5. Email Account Password: the password set when the mailbox was created.
6. Email Frequency Check Rate: how many minutes between checks. Five is the fastest allowed, but ten is the safer floor for most providers.
7. In-Group ID: the email group these messages get sent to.
8. Default List ID: the list new leads get inserted into when one needs to be created.

How a POP3 message reaches an agent

sequenceDiagram
  participant M as "POP3 mailbox"
  participant P as "VICIdial parser"
  participant L as "Lead list"
  participant Q as "Email group"
  participant A as "Agent"
  P->>M: "Log in at check rate"
  M-->>P: "New messages"
  P->>L: "Find or insert lead"
  P->>Q: "Queue email to in-group"
  Q->>A: "Pop record on screen"
  A->>A: "Reply and disposition"

Once the account is saved, the parser starts logging in on your chosen interval, hands each message to the right Ingroup, and a free agent picks it up. From there it is the same flow as any call: read, reply, disposition, move on. The matched record carries whatever you already hold in your CRM fields, so the agent has context before they type a word.

If your provider also offers IMAP, you may prefer that path, which keeps the server copy of each message; see how to connect an IMAP inbox. For the whole picture of email and chat groups and how they sit alongside voice, start with the inbound email and chat guide. And if you would rather not stand up parsers and mail modules yourself, our pricing page covers managed hosting with the email stack already in place.