What the Load Leads and Download Lists permissions control

Two permissions sit on opposite ends of the same pipe. Load Leads decides who can push contacts into VICIdial, and Download Lists decides who can pull a whole list back out. They are separate settings on purpose, because importing and exporting carry very different risks. A Lead is a single customer contact record, and a Lead list is the named bucket those records live in before an Agent calls them.

What Load Leads controls

Set Load Leads to 1 and the user can import contacts into the vicidial_list table using the web-based lead loaders. The default is 0, so a fresh manager cannot load anything until you grant this. The lead loader is the upload tool that maps the columns in your file to VICIdial fields and writes them into a target list.

This permission matters more than it looks. Whoever loads leads decides what gets dialed, which Campaign the contacts feed, and how clean your data is. A sloppy import can dump duplicates or stale numbers into a live list, so keep this with the people who own data quality rather than every supervisor.

What Download Lists controls

Set Download Lists to 1 and the user gets a link at the bottom of the List Modification page that pulls a file containing all lead data in a specific list. The default is 0. This is the export side of the pipe, and it is a bigger privacy decision than loading, because a download takes complete customer records out of the system in one click.

It is easy to confuse this with the Export Reports setting, but they pull different things. Export Reports gives call-level activity, while Download Lists gives the raw contact list itself, name and phone and all. Treat anyone with Download Lists as someone who can walk out with your contact database.

Setting them per role

Because each is its own toggle, you can give a data manager Load Leads without Download Lists, so they can feed the dialer but not extract it. You can also flip that around and give an analyst Download Lists without Load Leads, so they can pull data for review but never push untested contacts into a live list. Tie both to the right User group and you keep import and export power in separate hands, which is good hygiene for any team handling regulated contact data. The two settings together let you describe a role in plain terms: this person fills the dialer, that person extracts from it, and nobody does both unless you decide they should.

The two-direction flow

flowchart TD
  A[User action] --> B{Importing or exporting}
  B -->|Import| C{Load Leads set to 1}
  C -->|Yes| D[Use web lead loader]
  C -->|No| E[Blocked from importing]
  B -->|Export| F{Download Lists set to 1}
  F -->|Yes| G[Download full list file]
  F -->|No| H[No download link shown]

Splitting import and export across two permissions is exactly the kind of control that lets you build safe team roles. For the full picture of how these toggles combine, read our guide to VICIdial users and groups. If you want the call-data side of exports instead of the list side, see the Export Reports permission. VICIfast hands you a single-tenant box where these data controls are yours alone, never shared with another company. See our plans to get going.