Previewing a Lead File Before Importing It Into VICIdial

Loading leads is one of the few VICIdial actions that is hard to undo cleanly. Once a file is in, the records are in your list, mapped to whatever columns you told the loader to use. If you guessed wrong and put email addresses into the comments field, you now have cleanup work. The way to avoid that is to preview the mapping before you commit, and the loader is built to let you.

There is no single "preview" button labeled as such, but the custom-layout path effectively gives you one: it shows you each file column next to a dropdown of VICIdial fields before anything is written. Used right, it is your last checkpoint.

Pick custom layout, not standard

The standard format loads immediately with no review; it just expects your file to match the prescribed column order. Custom layout is the one that pauses and asks you to map fields. After you upload, the Lead loader reads your file's columns and presents a dropdown per field so you can see and set where each piece of data lands before submitting. Any field you leave undefined is simply left blank for every Lead you load, which is itself a useful preview signal: if a column has no home, you will notice.

Let auto-detect do the first pass

If your file has a header row, the auto-detect feature pre-fills the mapping for you. It compares each header name against the columns in the list table using the Levenshtein distance string metric (a measure of how many edits turn one word into another) and auto-selects the best match when it scores at or above the minimum, which defaults to 70. Header names that exactly match a table column score highest. You can then eyeball its choices and correct anything it got wrong before you submit.

Auto-detect only runs when the custom-layout File Layout option is selected and only when the file has a header row, so include headers in your export if you want this help.

The preview-then-load flow

flowchart TD
  A[Choose file] --> B[Select custom layout]
  B --> C[File uploads and parses]
  C --> D{Header row present?}
  D -->|Yes| E[Auto-detect maps columns]
  D -->|No| F[Map columns by hand]
  E --> G[Review mapping]
  F --> G
  G --> H{Mapping correct?}
  H -->|No| F
  H -->|Yes| I[Submit and load]

Step G is the preview. Spend your time there. Confirm the phone column maps to phone_number, that names line up, and that no important column is sitting unmapped. Submitting is the point of no easy return.

Clean the data first; the loader will not

Previewing the mapping is not the same as validating the data. The loader does no validation beyond stripping non-digit characters from the phone and alt_phone fields. So the preview tells you where columns go, not whether the values are sane. Do your deduping and formatting before the upload, and use the loader's own Duplicate check options if you want it to catch overlaps during import.

If you load files in the same layout often, save your reviewed mapping as a custom template so the preview step starts pre-filled every time. For the file format rules, see lead loader file formats, and for the basics see loading leads into VICIdial.

For how lists, leads, and loading connect, start with the VICIdial lists and leads guide.

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