Run Now Trigger: Running a VICIdial Drop List on Demand

A Drop List in VICIdial is a recovery tool. When an inbound caller hangs up in the queue before an agent picks up, that call is normally just a lost number. A Drop List gathers those abandoned callers on a schedule and inserts them into a list you can call back. The trouble is that a Drop List runs on its own timetable, so when you are setting one up you do not want to wait until 6 PM to find out whether you configured it correctly.

That is what the Run Now Trigger is for. It runs the Drop List process once, immediately, so you can confirm the leads land where you expect before you flip the whole thing to active. This post covers what the trigger does, how to fire it, and the small surprises that trip people up.

What a Drop List actually does

A Drop list watches your inbound queues for calls that were dropped, then copies those callers into a target list as fresh leads. You build one under Lists then Drop Lists, after enabling the feature in System Settings. The key fields are the Drop Statuses it looks for (DROP by default), the Ingroup queues to scan, the destination List ID, and the schedule of Run Times and Weekdays. Each run only gathers records since the last time the process ran, so it does not pull the same dropped call twice.

There is also a Gather Minutes field. If you set it above zero, the process looks back that many minutes from the run time instead of since the last run. That matters most on the very first run, when there is no prior run to measure from.

Firing the Run Now Trigger

On the Drop List modification page, set Run Now Trigger to Y and submit the form. The process does not start the instant you click submit. It can take up to one minute for the run to begin, because the trigger is picked up by a process that runs on a one-minute cycle. Default for this field is N, and after a run it returns to N on its own.

flowchart TD
  A[Set Run Now Trigger to Y] --> B[Submit form]
  B --> C[Wait up to one minute]
  C --> D[Process scans Drop Statuses in ingroups]
  D --> E{Duplicate Check set?}
  E -->|Yes| F[Skip dupes]
  E -->|No| G[Insert all matches]
  F --> H[New leads land in target List ID]
  G --> H

Duplicate checking before you go live

A Drop List can dump the same caller into your list more than once if the same person was dropped on multiple days. The Duplicate Check field guards against that. LIST checks for matching phone numbers inside the destination list only. LIST_CAMPAIGN_LISTS widens the check to every list on that destination's campaign. Default is NONE, which means no checking at all. The Run Now Trigger is the right moment to confirm your dedupe choice is working, because you can eyeball the result before any of it gets dialed. If you want the deeper mechanics, see duplicate checking on lead load.

Confirming the leads landed

After the run, open the destination list and check the lead count and the Disposition breakdown. Newly inserted leads will be at NEW status, ready to enter the Hopper once the list is active and assigned to a running Campaign. The list statistics give you a fast sanity check on whether the count climbed. For how to read those numbers, see VICIdial list statistics.

One more thing worth knowing: Drop Lists pull callers who were already trying to reach you, so contact rates on these leads tend to be high. They asked for you first. Recovering them is some of the cheapest pipeline you have, and the Run Now Trigger lets you prove the plumbing works in a minute instead of a day.

Wrap-up

Use the Run Now Trigger to validate a new Drop List before you trust it on a schedule: confirm the right ingroups, the right statuses, the dedupe setting, and the destination list. Once it lands the leads you expect, set it active and let it recover dropped callers on its own. For the bigger picture on how lists and leads fit together, start with the VICIdial lists and leads guide.

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