What QC Expire Days does to unclaimed calls

Not every call that qualifies for review will ever get reviewed. Some sit in the queue while the team works through more recent ones, and at some point an old call is no longer worth grading. VICIdial handles this with the "QC Expire Days" system setting, which puts a shelf life on unclaimed review calls. Understanding it stops you from being surprised when the number of reviewable calls quietly shrinks.

What the setting controls

QC Expire Days is the number of days an unclaimed call stays available to be claimed. After a call passes that age, if nobody has claimed it, it drops out of the review queue and stops counting toward the calls available to grade. The clock runs from when the call was made. It lives in Admin, then System Settings, alongside "QC Features enabled" and "QC Claim Limit".

Claimed calls are exempt

Here is the part people miss. Once a call is claimed, it does not expire. A reviewer can hold a claimed call past the expiry window and still finish grading it. The age limit is purely about whether an untouched call is still offered to the team, not about whether a call already in someone's hands is still valid.

There is one wrinkle. If a reviewer claims a call and then releases it back to the pool after the expiry date has already passed, that call is now an old, unclaimed call again, so it falls out of the queue like any other expired call. Releasing it does not reset its age. Holding it keeps it alive; letting it go after expiry sends it over the edge.

The two paths a call can take

stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> Unclaimed: call qualifies for QC
  Unclaimed --> Claimed: reviewer claims it
  Unclaimed --> Expired: passes Expire Days, still unclaimed
  Claimed --> Held: stays claimed, will not expire
  Held --> Finished: reviewer scores and finishes
  Held --> Expired: released after expiry date
  Held --> Unclaimed: released before expiry date
  Expired --> [*]
  Finished --> [*]

An unclaimed call either gets claimed in time or it ages out. A claimed call is safe from the clock for as long as a reviewer holds it. The only way a claimed call rejoins the expiry logic is by being released, and whether that release is harmless or fatal depends on whether the expiry date has already passed.

Why the count of available calls changes on its own

When you open a QC call list, VICIdial shows how many qualifying calls are available to claim. That number is shaped by two things: which call results you marked as reviewable, and the Expire Days window. So if the available count is lower than you expected, it is not always a sign that fewer calls got the right Disposition. Some may simply have aged out before anyone claimed them. The Called status of the original call decided whether it ever entered the queue; Expire Days decided how long it stayed.

Setting a sensible window

Pick a window that matches how quickly a review still has value to you. If grading a call a week after it happened is useful for coaching an Agent, a longer window makes sense. If a call is stale after a couple of days, a short window keeps the queue focused on recent work and stops reviewers wading through old Lead records that no longer matter. Tune it against your real review pace.

Expire Days works hand in hand with the setting beside it. Where this one ages out untouched calls, the QC Claim Limit caps how many calls one reviewer can hold at a time. To see how both fit the wider review process, read the guide to VICIdial Quality Control.

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