How to Set Bulk-Inserted Phones as Webphones

A Webphone is a browser-based phone that loads right inside the agent screen, so an Agent does not need a physical handset or a separate softphone app. That makes onboarding far simpler: an agent opens the agent screen, logs in, and a working phone is already there. When you create phones in batches, you can flip a whole team to webphone mode in one submit. Here is how each of the relevant fields on the Bulk Phone Insert page works.

Set As Webphone

Setting this to Y tells VICIdial to load the web-based phone when the agent logs into the agent screen. The default is N, which assumes the agent registers a normal device against the Extension - a desk handset or a standalone softphone. There is also a Y_API_LAUNCH value: that one works with the agent API to launch the webphone in a separate iframe or window instead of embedding it inline, which is handy when you are building a custom agent interface and want the phone to live in its own frame.

Webphone Dialpad

This controls whether the on-screen dialpad shows. Your options are:

• Y - dialpad always visible (the default).
• TOGGLE - the agent can show or hide the dialpad with a link.
• TOGGLE_OFF - hidden on first load, but the agent can reveal it with the link.

The toggle behavior is not available on every webphone version, so test on your build before rolling it out wide.

Auto-answer, external IP, and template

Webphone Auto-Answer set to Y answers incoming calls automatically - the right choice for predictive Campaign work where every second of ring delay is wasted talk time and an agent should be connected the instant the dialer hands off a live call. Set it to N if you want the phone to ring first, which suits inbound or manual styles where the agent decides whether to pick up. The default is Y.

Use External Server IP set to Y makes the webphone register to the server's external IP instead of the internal one - the setting to reach for when agents connect from outside your network and the internal address is not routable to them. Default is empty. Template ID lets you assign a phone template to every entry created in the batch, so shared settings come from one place instead of being repeated on each phone. Default is empty too, meaning no template is applied unless you name one.

How the login flow decides

flowchart TD
  A[Agent logs in] --> B{Set As Webphone}
  B -->|N| C[Expect external device]
  B -->|Y| D[Load webphone in agent screen]
  B -->|Y_API_LAUNCH| E[Launch webphone via agent API]
  D --> F{Auto-Answer}
  E --> F
  F -->|Y| G[Calls answer automatically]
  F -->|N| H[Calls ring first]

Apply it across a batch

On Bulk Phone Insert these settings apply to every phone in the run, so a single submit can stand up a whole team of webphones. As always, there is no UNDO, so test with a couple of phones first. For the full field-by-field tour of the page, read the Bulk Phone Insert explainer.

One thing the form will not do is rebuild your Asterisk config. After the insert you have to rebuild the Conf file entries manually - the steps are in why bulk phone insert needs a manual conf rebuild.

Webphones are one of many batch admin shortcuts. See the whole set in our VICIdial admin bulk tools guide.

Prefer a hosted dialer where webphones come ready to use? See VICIfast pricing.