What the External Extension field on a Remote Agent does

The External Extension field on a Remote agent record is the number that VICIdial dials when it wants to connect a call to that agent. Think of it as the forwarding destination — the actual phone number or Extension that rings when a lead is being delivered. Getting this field right is the difference between calls that connect and calls that silently fail.

What goes in this field

The External Extension must be a complete Dialplan number — exactly the digits Asterisk needs to route the call, no more, no less. The field accepts digits only. Letters, spaces, hyphens, or parentheses will cause the form submission to be rejected.

The most common mistake is forgetting the access code. If your site requires dialing a 9 to reach an outside line, that 9 must be part of the External Extension value. VICIdial passes this string directly to Asterisk as-is, so whatever prefix is needed in the dialplan needs to be in here.

• Internal extension (SIP phone on the same server): just the extension number, e.g. 1005
• Outside line with access code: 915551234567 (9 + country code + number)
• Direct outside line without access code: 15551234567

How the External Extension interacts with Extension Group

There is one important override to be aware of: the Extension Group field. If you set Extension Group to anything other than NONE or leave it empty, the system ignores the External Extension entirely and instead uses the set of Dialplan extensions assigned to that group, distributing calls round-robin across them. The External Extension field only applies when Extension Group is set to NONE.

flowchart TD
    A[Dialer ready to send call] --> B{Extension Group set?}
    B -- Yes --> C[Use Extension Group entries round-robin]
    B -- No / NONE --> D[Use External Extension field]
    C --> E[Call dialed]
    D --> E

Always test before going live

Before you activate the remote agent, pick up a phone that is already connected to your VICIdial server and manually dial the same number string you put in the External Extension field. If it rings the right destination, you are good. If it gives you dead air, a fast busy, or a wrong number, fix the value before you flip the status to ACTIVE.

Remote agents support Call recording the same way standard agents do — the Campaign recording settings and the user's recording flag both apply. The external extension is just the delivery path; what happens to the audio after the call connects is controlled by those campaign-level settings.

For the full picture on how remote agents are set up and used, read our VICIdial remote agents overview. If you want a walkthrough of the entire add-remote-agent form, what is a VICIdial remote agent covers the basics.

If you want a hosted VICIdial environment where the dialplan is already configured for outbound calls out of the box, check out VICIfast pricing — your server is provisioned and ready in about 40 seconds.