VICIdial Leads Not Dialing: List Causes

When a list of leads sits there and nothing dials, the cause is usually a setting on the list itself. Here is the checklist.

You loaded a list, the leads are clearly in there, and yet the dialer is not calling any of them. This is one of the most common VICIdial support questions, and nine times out of ten the cause is a setting on the list itself rather than anything wrong with the leads. The good news is that the list-level causes are a short, checkable list.

Work through them in order. Each one is a gate the leads have to pass before they can enter the dial queue, and any single closed gate stops everything.

Is the list active and assigned?

The Active field defines whether a list can be dialed at all. If it is set to N, the leads are invisible to the dialer no matter what else is correct. This is the first thing to check, every time. The list also has to be assigned to a campaign, and that campaign has to be one that is actually running. A list can only be dialed on a single campaign at a time. If you see the campaign name shown in red in the lists table, that campaign has been deleted, and the list is effectively orphaned. For the toggle itself, see the VICIdial list active toggle.

Changing the campaign a list is assigned to clears that list's leads from the hopper to prevent double-dialing. Reassign a live list and expect a short pause while the queue refills.

Has the list expired?

Every list has an Expiration Date, after which its leads will not be auto-dialed or manual-list-dialed. The default is far in the future, but if someone set a real date and it has passed, the dialer ignores the list. In the lists table this shows as a red EXP marker in the Active column. It is easy to miss because the list still looks active otherwise. For the field details, see the VICIdial list expiration date.

Have the leads already been called?

Once you call through a list, every lead is flagged as called since the last reset. Until you reset the list, those leads will not be called again even though they are still sitting there. A list that dialed fine yesterday and is silent today is very often just fully worked and waiting for a reset. See resetting lead called-status for how to clear that flag.

flowchart TD
  A[Leads in list] --> B{Active set to Y?}
  B -->|No| Z[Nothing dials]
  B -->|Yes| C{List expired?}
  C -->|Yes| Z
  C -->|No| D{Already called since reset?}
  D -->|Yes| Z
  D -->|No| E{Inside call time window?}
  E -->|No| Z
  E -->|Yes| F[Lead enters hopper]

Are the leads inside their call window?

A list can carry its own Local Call Time that narrows the campaign's calling hours. This setting can only tighten the campaign window, never widen it, but if it is set tighter than you remember, leads will simply not dial outside those hours. Layer time zone on top of that. If a lead's GMT offset (lead) is wrong, the system may believe it is the middle of the night in the lead's area and hold the call. The Hopper only loads leads that are inside their Call times right now, so a time problem looks identical to an empty list from the outside.

A list with a Local Call Time set will silently refuse to dial outside those hours even when the campaign window is wide open. If a list goes quiet at a predictable time of day, suspect this setting first.

Other gates worth a glance

If you use a Lead filter on the campaign, it can exclude a whole list's worth of leads based on field values. Heavy DNC (do not call) scrubbing can also remove most of a list before it reaches the hopper. And a list whose leads were never coded to a valid time zone at all can end up stuck. Each Lead has to clear every one of these checks, so when in doubt, walk the gates from the top.

Wrap-up

When a list will not dial, check active and campaign assignment, then expiration, then called-status, then call-time and time zone, then filters and DNC. It is almost always one closed gate. For the full picture of how lists feed the dialer, start with the VICIdial lists and leads guide.

On a managed VICIdial box the dialer, hopper, and maintenance scripts are configured correctly out of the gate, so list problems are settings you can fix, not infrastructure you have to debug. New servers provision in under 40 seconds. See our pricing.