VICIdial lists and leads: the complete guide

Every outbound call your dialer makes starts with one thing: a phone number sitting in a list. Get your lists and leads right and the dialer hums. Get them wrong and you call the same person five times, dial numbers outside legal hours, or wonder why the dialer sits idle while a list full of records goes untouched. This guide walks the whole picture, from what a list actually is to how a single lead becomes a live call.

It is written for someone fairly new to the dialer. Each section is short and points to a focused walkthrough if you want more depth on one topic. Two terms up front: a Lead is a single customer record (a name, a phone number, and whatever else you loaded), and a Campaign is the dialing program a list runs under. A list ties those two together.

What a list actually is

A list is a labelled bucket of leads. It has an ID number, a name, and exactly one campaign it belongs to at any moment. The Lists screen shows every list in the system with its ID, name, the campaign it is attached to, and whether it is active. You can also pull a count of leads per list from there.

A list lives on a single campaign at a time. Move a list to a different campaign and any of its leads waiting in the queue are cleared out, so the same person is not dialed twice from two campaigns. For the full picture of what a list is and how leads sit inside it, start with what a VICIdial list is, and for the ID number itself see what the list ID means.

Creating and naming a list

To make a list you set two things at minimum: the list ID and the list name. The rules on the ID are strict and worth memorizing, because you cannot change them later.

• The ID is numbers only, no spaces, letters, or punctuation.
• It must be between 3 and 8 characters long, greater than 99, and cannot start with a 0.
• It must be unique, and once created it is permanent. The only way to change a list ID is to delete the list and rebuild it.
• The name is just a description, between 2 and 20 characters.

There is a step-by-step for this in adding a new list. When you eventually need to retire one, follow deleting a list carefully, because removing a list also removes every lead inside it.

The settings on a list

Open any list and you see a screen full of options. Most you will never touch, but a handful decide whether a list dials at all. The one that catches people most often is the Active flag: it decides whether the list can be dialed or not. A list with leads but Active set off will dial nothing. See the list active toggle for why that single switch trips up so many new operators, and modifying a list for the full field tour.

A couple of others matter for compliance and timing. The Expiration Date stops a list from being dialed after a chosen date (the default sits far in the future, in 2099). The Local Call Time setting narrows the hours this specific list can be dialed, on top of whatever the campaign already allows. It can only tighten the campaign hours, never widen them, and it leans on the lead time zone. There are focused reads on the list expiration date and on the list time zone setting.

List overrides

Several settings on a list quietly override the campaign for any lead that belongs to that list. This is handy when you run a few different lists on one campaign but want each to behave a little differently. You can override the agent script, the inbound script, the caller ID, the Dial prefix (the digits dialed before the number, which can route calls to a different trunk), the answering-machine message, and more. For the why and how, see list overrides explained.

Two of the most common in practice are the Caller ID spoofing controls and the script swap. Walk through the caller ID override and the agent script override when you need one list to present a different number or show agents a different pitch.

Loading leads into a list

An empty list does nothing. You feed it through the web lead loader, which takes a tab, comma, or pipe delimited file, typically up to about 8MB, and drops the records into the list table. Create the list first, then either put the list ID in every row of the file or use the loader override to stamp one list ID onto every record as it imports.

The loader does almost no validation on its own (it strips non-digits from the phone field, and that is about it), so clean data before you upload. There are three file layouts: a fixed Standard format, a Custom layout where you map columns by hand, and a saved Custom Template. Start with loading leads into VICIdial, then the lead loader file formats. For repeat imports, set up a lead loader template so you never re-map columns by hand again.

At load time you get a few protective options. You can check for duplicates within one list, across all of a campaign's lists, or system-wide, and even limit the dedupe to the last 90 days. You can validate USA and Canada area codes and prefixes. And you can scrub against your internal DNC (do not call) (do-not-call) list. See duplicate checking on load and DNC scrubbing on load.

Time zones get set when you load

Each lead gets a time zone stamped on it at load time, and that stamp is what keeps you inside legal calling windows. By default the dialer works it out from the country code and the area code. For US records with zip codes you can pick postal code first for a more accurate result, or feed a time zone abbreviation in the owner field. Get this wrong and leads call at the wrong hours or fall to time zone zero. See the lead time zone lookup, and if records are dialing at odd hours, leads in the wrong time zone.

How a lead becomes a call

Loading a lead does not call it. Between the list and the agent sits the Hopper, a short staging queue the dialer keeps topped up with eligible leads. The dialer pulls a lead from the list, screens it against time-zone rules, DNC, and filters, places it in the hopper, then dials from there. A lead is eligible when its status matches what the campaign is set to dial and it has not been marked as called since the last reset.

stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> NEW
  NEW --> Hopper: eligible status and not called
  Hopper --> Dialing
  Dialing --> Answered: live person
  Dialing --> NoAnswer: ring no pickup
  Dialing --> Busy: line busy
  Answered --> Disposition
  NoAnswer --> Recycle: try again later
  Busy --> Recycle
  Recycle --> Hopper
  Disposition --> [*]

When a list has no eligible leads, the dialer goes quiet. That is usually a Status (lead status) or reset problem rather than a missing list. If a list seems full but nothing dials, work through why leads are not dialing, and if the count itself reads zero, when a list shows zero leads.

Resetting versus recycling

Once you call through a list, every lead is flagged as called since the last reset, and the dialer will not call them again until you reset it. A reset flips that flag back so the leads become callable again for whatever statuses the campaign dials. A recycle is different: it re-queues only certain non-answer statuses, like busy or no answer, after a delay, without touching the rest. People mix these up constantly, so start with reset versus recycle.

You can reset on demand from the list screen, or schedule it. Reset Times let you list times in 24-hour format separated by a dash, so 0800-1700 resets at 8am and 5pm every day. A Weekday Resets Container lets you set different times per day of the week. A Daily Reset Limit (admin-only) caps how many resets a list can take in a day, which is your guard against over-calling. Recycling is set up on the campaign side. The focused reads are resetting lead called status, scheduled list resets, and campaign lead recycling.

Custom fields per list

The standard lead has a fixed set of fields: name, address, phone, alt phone, email, and a few others. When you need more (an account number, a survey answer, a product interest) you add a Custom field to the list. These show on the agent Web Form tab and travel with the lead. They come in many types, from plain text boxes to dropdowns, date pickers, and hidden fields. Begin with what list custom fields are, then the custom field types.

One quiet trap: certain words are reserved by the database and cannot be used as a field label (for example status, which a disposition can overwrite). Stick to plain names with underscores instead of spaces. When you are ready to build one, follow adding a custom field.

DNC: internal and campaign

VICIdial keeps an internal do-not-call list and per-campaign DNC lists. A number is added automatically when an agent dispositions a call with a DNC status, and you can add or remove numbers by hand from the Lists section. Numbers are filtered out as leads move into the hopper, so a scrubbed number simply never dials. Compliance-wise this is not optional, especially with rules like TCPA in play. Read internal versus campaign DNC and how DNC scrubbing works. If you are choosing how to stay compliant in the first place, the 2026 TCPA update is worth a read.

Drop lists

A drop list is a scheduled job that builds a new list from inbound calls that dropped out of a queue, so you can call those people back automatically. You enable the feature in system settings, then create a drop list with a schedule, the source Ingroup (the inbound queue), the drop statuses to gather, and the target list to drop them into. There is a run-now trigger for testing. See what a drop list is and creating a drop list.

Reading list statistics

The list screen carries several breakdowns of what is inside. Two numbers matter most. Dialable counts the leads that are not flagged as unworkable or completed, so it is roughly how much work is left. Penetration is the share of leads you have either dialed up to the campaign's call-count target or finished off (DNC, not interested, unworkable, completed). Together they tell you whether a list is fresh, half-worked, or burnt out. There are also breakdowns by time zone, owner, rank, and by status crossed with how many times each lead has been dialed. Dig into list statistics and the dialable count.

Day-to-day list management

A few habits keep lists healthy. Assign a list to a campaign before you load, so leads land somewhere that can dial them. Keep one numbering scheme. Dedupe on load every time. Reset on a schedule that respects your callers' time, not just your throughput goals. And when a list is worked out, archive or download it rather than letting it clutter the screen. Pull these together in list best practices, and when you need to assign or move one, assigning a list to a campaign.

You can pull a list back out at any time. The download link on the list screen exports every record with all of its fields, which is handy for archiving or moving data elsewhere. See downloading a list. And when you just need one record, the search tool finds a Lead by phone, name, vendor code, or ID. Walk through searching for a lead and adding a single lead.

Lists are easier on a clean box

None of this is hard once the dialer underneath is set up correctly, with the right scripts running for time-zone updates and resets. That is where a self-hosted box quietly eats your time. If you would rather skip the server admin and just load leads, our managed VICIdial hosting gives you a ready dialer with a Branded subdomain over HTTPS in under 40 seconds, so the first thing you do is upload a list, not patch an operating system.

If you are weighing that against running your own server, the hidden cost of self-hosted VICIdial lays out what the DIY route actually costs once you add up the hours. When you are ready, pick a plan and have a dialer waiting for your first list today.