Adding a server in VICIdial Admin

Before VICIdial will dial from a machine, that machine needs a server record in the admin interface. Adding one is quick, but the form is strict about a few fields and the server ID in particular. Here is exactly what the Add a New Server screen asks for and what the system does once you save.

Getting to the screen

From the admin pages, the Servers link shows the list of every server VICIdial knows about, with each one's ID, name, IP address, Asterisk version, and active status. To create a new one, click Add a New Server in the left-side menu. The add form is deliberately short. It only asks for the minimum needed to make a valid record, and the rest of the settings appear after the record is first saved.

The five required fields

The submission will not be accepted unless you fill in all of these.

• Server ID — a short nickname that identifies the box to admin users. It does not have to be a real domain name, but it must contain only letters and numbers. No spaces and no punctuation, or the form rejects it.
• Server Name — a short descriptive phrase so people can tell the box apart in lists.
• Server IP Address — the IPv4 network address of the machine.
• Asterisk Version — the version of Asterisk running on the box, such as 13.X or SVN. This matters because some versions handle Local channels differently, and VICIdial branches its behavior on what you set here.
• Active — whether the server is active or inactive.

flowchart TD
  A[Open Add a New Server] --> B[Enter server ID letters and numbers only]
  B --> C[Enter server name]
  C --> D[Enter server IP]
  D --> E[Set Asterisk version]
  E --> F[Set active]
  F --> G{All five present}
  G -- yes --> H[Record saved full settings appear]
  G -- no --> A

What happens after you submit

Once the record saves, you can open it again with the Modify link and the full set of options appears. This is where the box really gets configured: trunk limits, calls per second, the local GMT offset (lead) that tells VICIdial how the server's clock relates to GMT, and the toggles that control whether VICIdial generates and rebuilds the Conf file entries Asterisk reads at startup. The bottom of the modify page also lists the phones, conferences, and VICIdial conferences that belong to this server, each with a link to edit them.

A new server record is also what later lets you attach a Server trunk to it, so you can reserve outgoing lines for specific campaigns on that box. None of that is on the add form, though. The add step exists only to create a valid record you can then flesh out.

A small thing that catches people: the server ID is not the same as the IP address or a hostname. It is just an internal label, so a name like dialer01 is fine, while dialer-01 or dialer 01 is not because of the dash and the space. Pick the ID carefully, because other records and reports refer to the server by it, and renaming later is more disruptive than choosing well the first time.

One more thing the add step quietly sets up: by registering the IP, you tell VICIdial which box the dialing scripts and conf-file generation should target. Until a record exists with the correct IP, the system has no way to associate phones, carriers, or Conf file output with that machine. So even though the form feels trivial, it is the anchor everything else hangs from.

This article is part of our complete guide to installing VICIdial. Once the record exists, the next step is modifying the server settings to tune trunks, calls per second, and conf-file generation.

If creating and tuning server records by hand is more than you want to take on, VICIfast hands you a ready VICIdial server in under 40 seconds with the server record already configured for you.