Using the NANPA Exclusion Field and Value in VICIdial

When you run a NANPA cellphone scrub, the default behavior is to check every record in the list. The Exclusion Field and Exclusion Value settings let you carve out records that should be skipped instead. They work as a pair, and understanding how they fit together is the whole trick.

What each setting names

The Exclusion Field names which list field holds a previous scrub result. Because a scrub writes its answer into a field on each Lead, a record you scrubbed before already carries that stamp. The Exclusion Field is how you point VICIdial at that stored answer.

The Exclusion Value names which result to skip. Its choices are the same three a scrub produces: Cellphone, Landline, or Invalid. Whichever one you pick is the classification VICIdial leaves alone. So the pair reads as a sentence: in the field I name here, skip any record whose value is the result I name here.

flowchart TD
  A[Scrub starts on list] --> B{Read Exclusion Field on lead}
  B -- Value matches Exclusion Value --> C[Skip this lead]
  B -- Value does not match --> D[Send to filter service]
  D --> E[Write new result to Field to Update]
  C --> F[Lead left unchanged]
  E --> G[Scrub continues to next lead]
  F --> G

Why you would skip records

The DNC.COM batch filter behind a scrub is a paid service, and every record you send to it costs something. If you scrubbed a Lead list last month and most of those records have not changed, re-sending the ones you already classified is wasted spend. The exclusion pair is effectively a Filter that says do not bother re-checking these.

A common case: you ran a first scrub that stamped every record as Cellphone, Landline, or Invalid. You then loaded a batch of new leads into the same list. On the second scrub you only care about the new records, so you set the Exclusion Field to the field your first scrub wrote into and the Exclusion Value to Landline. Every confirmed landline is skipped, and the service only spends on records that are not yet known to be safe landlines.

Pairing it with a custom field

The Exclusion Field can point at one of VICIdial's standard lead fields, but it is often cleaner to dedicate a Custom field to scrub results. That keeps the classification separate from data you use for other purposes and makes the exclusion logic obvious to whoever runs the next scrub. Decide on that field once and reuse it for both the Field to Update and the Exclusion Field so the two scrubs line up.

It is worth being precise here for the same reason you are precise with any Cellphone calling rule: an exclusion that points at the wrong field will either skip records you meant to check or check records you meant to skip. Confirm the field name and value before you start the scrub.

The exclusion pair sits inside the NANPA batch updater, which is one of several admin utilities for working on whole lists at once. For the wider context of where this page fits, see our overview of VICIdial's admin bulk tools. And if you want to act on the scrub results across a list afterward, our guide to bulk updating lead status shows how.

Configuring a scrub service and tuning exclusions is detailed work. If you would rather start with a managed VICIdial that is live in under 40 seconds and skip the setup, see VICIfast pricing.