Agent Search Method Override explained

When a call connects, VICIdial has to find a free agent to hand it to. The Agent Search Method Override lets you force how widely it searches, just for one campaign. It is a small dropdown with three letter codes, and one of them carries a warning. Here is what each does and when you would touch it.

What the override changes

Normally the search behavior comes from your dialplan. This field overrides that and forces a single method for this Campaign only. Leaving it blank keeps the dialplan default, which is what most setups want. It is closely related to the routing extension — routing decides where the connected call lands, and the search method decides how far the system looks for an Agent to answer it.

The three codes

• LB — look for the next agent on any server, wherever they are.
• LO — search the originating server first, then fall back to other servers if needed.
• SO — search only the originating server, and never look elsewhere.

The SO warning

SO is the one to be careful with. If you force the search to a single server and that server has no free agent at the moment a call connects, the customer is stuck with nobody on the line. That lands as a dropped call, and a string of them turns into a Drop rate problem and a Nuisance call compliance headache. Use SO only when you have a clear reason and you are confident agents are always available on that server.

When to set each one

If you run a single server — like most managed dialers — none of this matters much: there is only one server, so LB, LO, and SO all reach the same agents. The override exists for multi-server setups where you might want to keep a call near its origin to reduce cross-server media hops, which can help with audio quality. In that case LO is the sensible middle ground: it prefers local but still spills over so nobody gets stranded.

If you are not sure, leave it blank. The dialplan default is tuned to hand calls to whichever agent is free without painting you into a corner. The override is there for the rare case, not the everyday one.

How it differs from Next Agent Call

It is easy to confuse this with the Next Agent Call setting, but they answer different questions. The search method decides which servers are in scope when looking for a free agent. Next Agent Call decides, among the agents who are eligible, which one actually gets the call — the longest waiting, the fewest calls so far, the highest-ranked, and so on. Think of the search method as drawing the boundary of the pool, and Next Agent Call as picking a person out of that pool. You usually leave the search method blank and spend your tuning effort on Next Agent Call instead, because that is the one that shapes fairness and workload across your team.

Where it fits in your setup

Search method, routing extension, and pacing all decide whether a connected call reaches a person quickly. If you do go with SO or LO on a multi-server setup, change it on a quiet campaign first and watch the drop count for a full shift before rolling it wider — a setting that looks fine at low volume can fall apart at peak. To see how they fit together, read the VICIdial dialing strategies guide. And if changing this set off a wave of drops, how to lower your VICIdial drop rate covers the recovery steps.

Most single-server users never need to touch this. If you want a box where the sensible defaults are already in place, see our plans.