"If you know your party's extension": AGENTDIRECT dialing

Most phone systems have that classic line: "if you know your party's extension, you may dial it at any time." VICIdial can do the same thing. A caller types a few digits, and the call goes straight to that agent instead of waiting in a general queue. The piece that makes this work is a special in-group called AGENTDIRECT, paired with an option on your Call menu.

What AGENTDIRECT does

An AGENTDIRECT in-group is a routing target built for one job: send a caller to a single named agent rather than to whoever is free first. When the caller enters an agent ID from your phone menu, the system looks up that agent and connects them. If the agent is busy or not logged in, the call can fall through to the agent's own Voicemail drop box, as long as that box is set on their user account.

You also get to decide who counts as reachable. The system can transfer only to agents that are currently logged in, or to any active agent the dialer knows about. That choice matters when half your team is offline and you don't want callers landing in silence.

How the call flows

The caller hears your prompt, presses the option you set aside for dial-by-extension, then types the agent's user ID on the keypad. That keypad entry is DTMF, the touch-tone signaling every phone menu reads. From there the routing script takes over.

flowchart TD
  A[Caller in call menu] --> B[Presses dial by ext option]
  B --> C[Types agent user ID]
  C --> D{Agent reachable}
  D -->|Yes| E[Connect to agent]
  D -->|No| F[Agent voicemail box]
  F --> G[Leave message]

Two ways to wire it up

There are two paths to the same result. One adds a small custom dialplan entry that catches a four-digit pattern and hands it to the routing script. The other sets a call menu option's route to AGI and points it at the agent routing script directly. AGI is the AGI (Asterisk Gateway Interface) interface Asterisk uses to pass a call out to a helper script for a decision. The AGI route is the cleaner choice because you configure everything inside the call menu screen instead of editing dialplan text.

1. Open the call menu and add a dial-by-extension prompt to the menu audio so callers know the option exists.
2. Pick the option key for that choice and set its route to AGI.
3. Point the AGI value at the agent routing script, set the number of digits required for the ID, and choose whether to match active agents or only logged-in ones.
4. Save, wait a minute for the change to take effect, then test by calling in and entering a known agent ID.

The agent ID a caller types is just an Extension in everyday terms, the short number that reaches one person. Keep these IDs short and consistent so the menu prompt stays easy to follow.

When this is the right tool

Dial-by-extension shines for account managers, named reps, or a small support team where repeat callers know who they want. For general traffic, a normal queue is still better. You can run both: a sales option, a support option, and an "if you know your party's extension" option all inside the same menu. To see how the rest of the inbound picture fits together, read our guide to VICIdial inbound call handling, and if you are still deciding whether a menu is even the right front door, start with what a VICIdial call menu is.

Setting all of this up by hand assumes a working server, the right permissions, and an audio prompt ready to go. If you would rather skip the plumbing, our managed VICIdial hosting gives you a ready dialer where the call menu and in-group screens are already in place.