Agent In-Call Tally Seconds Threshold explained

Agent In-Call Tally Seconds Threshold is one of the more obscure pacing fields in a VICIdial campaign, but it earns its keep on campaigns with long, unpredictable calls. In plain terms: it stops counting an agent toward placing more outbound calls once they have been on a single call longer than the time you set. That small change keeps the dialer from over-dialing when several agents get stuck on marathon conversations.

The pacing problem it addresses

A predictive dialer guesses how many calls to place based on how soon agents will be free. It assumes calls wrap up at a typical pace. But on some campaigns, a handful of agents get into long calls that run far past the average. The dialer keeps counting those busy agents as if they are about to free up, places calls in anticipation, and then nobody is actually available. The result is more drops.

This threshold tells the dialer to stop trusting that assumption past a certain point. Once an Agent has been on a call longer than your set seconds, they drop out of the math the dialer uses to decide how many new calls to place.

How the threshold behaves

You set a number of seconds. While an agent has been in-call for less than that time, they count normally toward dialing. The moment they cross it, the dialer stops counting them as a soon-to-be-free agent. The agent is still on their call and still working; they just no longer drive the dialer to place additional calls. The default is 0, which means the feature is off and every logged-in agent counts regardless of call length.

There is one important condition: this feature only works when Available Only Tally is not active. Those are two different ways to decide which agents the dialer should count, and they do not stack. If you rely on Available-only tally, this threshold simply will not apply.

When to use it

Reach for this on campaigns where talk times vary widely and you see drop spikes that line up with a few agents getting stuck on long calls. Set the threshold a bit above your normal call length so routine conversations are not affected, only the genuinely long ones. The payoff is fewer calls placed into a floor that is busier than the dialer thinks, which shows up as a lower Drop rate.

If your talk times are tight and consistent, you probably do not need this at all; leaving it at 0 keeps the dialer's normal math in play. It is a targeted fix for a specific pattern, not a setting everyone should turn on.

This threshold is one of several pacing knobs that interact, so change one thing at a time and watch the result. For the full set of levers that move drops, read how to lower your VICIdial drop rate, and see where it all fits in the VICIdial dialing strategies guide. If you would rather start from a tuned, managed box, check our pricing.