How to Set Up Phone Aliases, Step by Step

Setting up a phone alias is two jobs in order: first build one ordinary phone per dialer, then create the alias that ties them together. Get the field discipline right and an agent can log in once and be load-balanced across your whole cluster. This walkthrough uses a two-server example with alias 101.

Step 1 — Add a phone on the first dialer

In the admin area, open Phones and click Add A New Phone. For the first dialer, set the phone extension to 101, the dialplan number to 101, and the voicemail box to 101. Set the server IP to the first dialer's address. Give it an agent screen login of 101a, a login password of test, and a registration password of test, with phone type SIP. Submit.

That single entry registers one SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) line for the Agent on the first server.

Step 2 — Repeat on each other dialer

Make a second phone for the second dialer. Keep the extension, dialplan number, voicemail box, login password, and registration password identical to the first. Change only two things: the server IP, which points at the second dialer, and the agent screen login, which becomes 101b. Add more dialers the same way, incrementing the letter each time — 101c, 101d, and so on.

• Same across all phones: extension, dialplan number, voicemail box, login password, registration password
• Unique per phone: server IP and agent screen login

Step 3 — Create the alias

Back on the Phones tab, click Add A New Phone Alias. Set the Alias ID to 101x — the convention is the shared extension followed by an x. Set the Alias Name to anything readable, like 101. In the Phones Logins List, enter the agent screen logins comma-separated: 101a,101b. Submit, and the alias is live.

flowchart TD
  A[Add phone 101a on dialer A] --> B[Add phone 101b on dialer B]
  B --> C[Open Add A New Phone Alias]
  C --> D[Set Alias ID 101x]
  D --> E[Set Phones Logins List 101a 101b]
  E --> F[Submit]
  F --> G[Alias ready for login]

To log in, the agent uses Phone Login 101x, Phone Password test, and their normal user login. After they pick a Campaign and submit, VICIdial places the call from whichever active server has the fewest local agents.

For the underlying phone fields and how registration works, start with the phones and aliases guide, and see how to add a new phone for the underlying phone form.

VICIfast provisions the cluster and keeps every registration healthy, so alias setup is mostly filling in two forms — see pricing.