Routing a call menu option to an in-group

A menu by itself doesn't do much. The useful part is what happens when someone presses a key. Most of the time you want that keypress to drop the caller into a live queue. In VICIdial that means setting a menu option's route to INGROUP. There are a few fields to get right, and this post walks through the ones that actually matter.

Pick the option and the route

Inside your Call menu, each option has a value (a key like 1, 2, or the star key) and a route. The route is the destination type. Set it to INGROUP and a block of queue settings appears. The target Ingroup is the inbound queue agents log into, and that is where the caller will wait for the next free agent.

The key the caller presses is read as DTMF, the touch-tone the phone sends down the line. As long as the carrier passes those tones cleanly, the match is instant. If callers report that pressing a key does nothing, the problem is usually the carrier dropping the tones rather than anything in your menu setup, so test from a second line before you start changing options.

The in-group settings that come with INGROUP

When the route is INGROUP, VICIdial asks for several extra values. Here is what each one is for, in plain terms.

• In-Group: the queue the call goes to. This is the main choice.
• Handle Method: how the call is treated. CID is a common default that keeps the caller's number with the call.
• Search Method: how the queue finds the next agent. Leaving this on LB (load balanced) is the safe choice and is a basic form of Skills-based routing when paired with how you staff queues.
• List ID: the list a new caller record lands in if no existing record is found.
• Campaign ID and Phone Code: used by certain lookup methods to find the right Lead and tag the record.

flowchart TD
  A[Caller in menu] --> B[Presses key 1]
  B --> C[Option route INGROUP]
  C --> D[Apply handle method]
  D --> E[Search method finds agent]
  E --> F{Agent free}
  F -->|Yes| G[Connect call]
  F -->|No| H[Hold in queue]

For most setups you only really touch In-Group, Handle Method, and List ID. The rest can stay on their defaults unless you are doing a lead lookup or a survey transfer. Don't over-tune fields you don't understand yet. A good habit is to change one field, test the call, and confirm the behavior before moving to the next. That way, when something routes oddly, you know exactly which change caused it instead of having to undo five edits at once.

Save and test

Submit the menu and wait a minute. Call in, press the option, and confirm you land in the right queue with an agent able to pick up. If you are new to inbound queues, read what a VICIdial inbound group is first, then come back to wire up the menu. The full picture lives in our inbound call handling guide.

If you would rather not build queues and menus from scratch on a raw server, our managed VICIdial hosting gives you a working dialer with these screens ready to use.