How to use a Lead Filter on a campaign

A Lead Filter is how you tell a VICIdial campaign "only dial leads that look like this." Maybe you want to call just Florida numbers, or skip anyone already called more than twice, or hit a specific zip range. The filter is a small fragment of a database query attached to the campaign, and the dialer applies it every time it goes looking for leads to dial. Powerful, and a little sharp-edged, so let's walk through it carefully.

What a Lead Filter does

Think of your campaign as already deciding which statuses to dial. The Lead Filter adds one more condition on top, evaluated against each Lead before it goes into the Hopper. If the lead matches the filter, it is eligible; if not, it is skipped. Nothing is deleted, the lead just doesn't get pulled while the filter is on.

The default is NONE, meaning no extra filtering. Once a filter is selected, its name on the campaign screen becomes a link, click it to read the exact condition being applied so you are never guessing.

Attaching one to a campaign

Filters live in their own admin area where you write the condition once and name it. Common building blocks are by state, by phone area code, by zip, or by called count. After you save a filter there, open the campaign, find the Lead Filter setting, and pick your filter from the menu. Submit, and the next time the hopper runs it uses the new rule.

A few filters worth knowing:

• Restrict to one or two states so a daytime crew only calls within legal calling hours for their region.
• Skip leads above a certain called count so you stop hammering numbers that never pick up.
• Carve a single big list into smaller segments different teams can work without copying data around.

A filter is a clean alternative to maintaining a dozen separate lists. Rather than physically splitting your data, you keep one list and let several campaigns each apply a different filter over it. One crew dials the eastern states, another the western, and you never have to shuffle records between Lead list tables to keep them apart.

The mistake that bites people

Use this feature with caution. One stray character can change the condition so it matches no leads at all, and the dialer won't warn you. It just quietly stops loading the hopper while your agents sit there waiting. If your room suddenly goes idle after a filter change, the filter is the first thing to check. Watch the dialable lead count on the campaign screen right after you apply one, and test new filters on a copy of a campaign before trusting them in production.

A filter pairs naturally with sensible dial status choices and the List order you have set, and it sits inside the bigger picture covered in the VICIdial dialing strategies guide. If your goal is just to stop dialing dead numbers, it also helps to keep your Disposition hygiene tight, which feeds straight into which dial statuses get redialed.

If hand-writing query fragments isn't how you want to spend your day, a managed VICIdial setup takes that burden off you. See our pricing to get a box that's ready to dial.