Available Only Tally and how it changes drop-rate math

When VICIdial works out how many lines to open, it has to decide who counts as an agent. By default it includes agents who are already on a call, on the reasonable bet that they will be free again by the time a new call connects. Available Only Tally changes that bet. Switch it on and the dialer counts only the agents who are genuinely free right now, which quietly rewrites how your drop-rate math comes out.

What the setting changes

The field is a simple Y or N and defaults to N. With it set to Y, the dialer leaves out agents in INCALL and QUEUE status when it counts up how many calls to place. Only READY agents, the ones sitting and waiting, get calls dialed on their behalf. In effect, a call is only placed when there is someone actually free to take it, which is the strongest assurance you can give that a live answer will not turn into a dropped call.

This is a different mechanism from the Drop Percentage Limit. The limit lets the dialer overshoot and then corrects after the fact by measuring drops. Available Only Tally prevents the overshoot in the first place by never dialing ahead of free capacity. It is prevention rather than correction, which is why it has such a clean effect on Abandonment rate.

When to turn it on

Two cases call for Y. The first is a campaign with a very long pitch, where agents stay on each call so long that counting in-call agents would badly overestimate who will be free soon. The second is any campaign where you simply want the strongest possible guard against dropping a customer, perhaps because the regulatory or reputational cost of a Nuisance call is high for you. In both cases the safety is worth the trade.

That trade is throughput. Because the dialer only opens lines for agents free at this instant, it places fewer calls and your team will idle a little more between connections. For most short, high-volume Predictive dialing campaigns you will leave this at N and lean on the Drop Percentage Limit and Dial Level Difference Target instead. Our guide to explains when each of those is the right tool.

A few interactions to remember

Turning Available Only Tally on disables a couple of related features, because they only make sense when the dialer is allowed to count in-call agents. The Agent In-Call Tally Seconds Threshold, which stops counting an agent after they have been talking a while, only works when this tally is off. There is also an Available Only Tally Threshold that can flip this setting to Y automatically when your agent count falls below a number you choose, a handy middle ground for campaigns that are crowded most of the day but thin at the edges. For the full map of how Adaptive dialing settings interact, see the .

If you would rather not reason about any of this on day one, the managed boxes on come configured so a new campaign dials safely whether or not you ever touch this field.