What the DNC Flag on a VICIdial Status Actually Does

Every system status in VICIdial carries a row of flags that quietly change what happens to a lead after an agent picks a disposition. The DNC flag is the most consequential of them. Get it wrong and you either keep dialing people you should never call again, or you suppress leads you meant to keep working. This post walks through exactly what setting DNC to Y on a status does.

Where the DNC flag lives

You set it on the System Statuses screen in the Admin section, the same place you add, modify, or delete any system-wide status. A status code is 1 to 6 characters with a 2 to 30 character description, and alongside it sits a column of behavior flags: Agent Selectable, human_answered, Sale, DNC, Customer Contact, Not Interested, Unworkable, Callback, Completed, and Answering Machine. DNC is one switch in that set. A Disposition is just an agent-set Status (lead status), so flagging a status flows straight through to whatever leads get that code.

Three things DNC=Y does

Setting DNC to Y on a status does three distinct jobs at once:

• It marks the lead as not to be called again, so the dialer stops working it.
• It includes the lead in the calculation of DNC totals across your reports.
• Depending on the campaign setting, it can add the phone number to the internal and campaign-specific DNC lists.

That third behavior is the one operators miss. Whether a DNC-flagged disposition pushes the number onto a list is governed by the campaign, not the status alone. With the campaign DNC option on, a Lead dispositioned to a DNC status lands in both the system-wide VICIdial DNC list and the campaign DNC list for that campaign.

How a DNC disposition propagates

flowchart TD
  A[Agent picks DNC status] --> B{DNC flag = Y?}
  B -->|No| C[Lead just gets the status code]
  B -->|Yes| D[Lead marked not callable]
  D --> E[Counted in DNC totals]
  D --> F{Campaign DNC setting on?}
  F -->|No| G[Stays internal to this lead]
  F -->|Yes| H[Number added to internal DNC list]
  F -->|Yes| I[Number added to campaign DNC list]

The default DNC statuses

VICIdial ships with several DNC-related status codes so you can see at a glance why a number is suppressed. DNC is the plain do-not-call code, and when it is defined the lead also goes into the VICIdial DNC list. DNCL marks a lead whose phone number matched one already on the system DNC list, and DNCC marks one that matched the campaign-specific DNC list. Those last two are set automatically when the dialer finds a match while building the Hopper, not by an agent.

When to flag a status DNC

Reach for DNC only when a contact has genuinely asked never to be called, or when compliance demands it. Do not use it as a catch-all for bad outcomes. A caller who simply was not interested should get a different flag, because Not Interested keeps the lead off DNC lists while still stopping further calls. If you build a custom code for a withdrawn-consent request, this is the flag to turn on. For a step-by-step on creating one, see how to add a custom disposition.

DNC is one of many flags that shape lead handling. For the full picture of how the agent screen and its statuses fit together, read our VICIdial agent screen configuration guide. A correctly flagged DNC status protects you from re-dialing the wrong numbers, keeps your DNC totals honest, and feeds the list logic that keeps a campaign compliant.

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