When to use EMAILLOOKUPRC and EMAILLOOKUPRL for email matching

When an email account checks its mailbox and finds a new message, VICIdial has to decide which customer record that email belongs to. The In-Group Call Handle Method on the email account controls that decision. EMAILLOOKUP, the broad version, searches every list for the sender's address and attaches the email to whatever matching record it finds. That is fine for a small system, but once you run several lists and several campaigns it can attach an email to the wrong place. EMAILLOOKUPRC and EMAILLOOKUPRL exist to narrow that search.

Both modes do the same matching job as EMAILLOOKUP, looking up the sender's address against the email column on your records. The difference is how much of your data they are allowed to look at. One limits the search to a single Campaign, the other to a single list.

EMAILLOOKUPRC: search one campaign

EMAILLOOKUPRC restricts the lookup to the lists that belong to one campaign. You tell it which campaign by filling in the In-Group Campaign ID field on the email account. When a message arrives, VICIdial only checks the records inside the lists tied to that campaign for a matching email address. If the sender exists in some other campaign's data, that record is ignored.

This is the right pick when one mailbox feeds one campaign, and you do not want a customer's email accidentally landing on a Lead from an unrelated effort. It keeps a sales mailbox's traffic attached to sales records and a support mailbox's traffic attached to support records, even if the same person appears in both.

EMAILLOOKUPRL: search one list

EMAILLOOKUPRL is tighter still. It searches a single list, the one you name in the In-Group List ID field on the email account. Nothing outside that list is considered. Use it when a mailbox is dedicated to one batch of records, for example a single import you want to keep self-contained, and you never want matches bleeding in from anywhere else.

How the mode decides the search

flowchart TD
  A["New email found in mailbox"] --> B{"Call Handle Method"}
  B -->|EMAILLOOKUP| C["Search every list"]
  B -->|EMAILLOOKUPRC| D["Search lists in In-Group Campaign ID"]
  B -->|EMAILLOOKUPRL| E["Search only In-Group List ID"]
  C --> F{"Match found"}
  D --> F
  E --> F
  F -->|yes| G["Attach email to that record"]
  F -->|no| H["Insert as new lead in Default List ID"]

In all three cases, a found match attaches the email to that existing record. When nothing matches, the email becomes a fresh record in the list named by the Default List ID. So narrowing the search does not lose the email; it just changes where a match is allowed to come from, and falls back to creating a new record when there is no hit.

A quick way to choose: use EMAILLOOKUP when your data is small and you want any match; EMAILLOOKUPRC when a mailbox maps cleanly to one campaign; EMAILLOOKUPRL when it maps to one specific list. The narrower modes pay off most when the same address can appear in more than one place and you care which record the Agent sees on screen.

If you want the full menu of handle methods first, read the email call handle method options. For how email groups sit alongside calls and chats, see the inbound email and chat guide. The right match keeps the Disposition history clean, since an email lands on the record an agent expects. If you would rather skip wiring up parsers and mailboxes yourself, our managed hosting plans handle the setup for you.