What the Inbound Groups setting on a Remote Agent does

In VICIdial, an Ingroup (inbound group) is the queue that an inbound call lands in after hitting a DID. When you set up a Remote agent for inbound routing, the Inbound Groups field is where you tell VICIdial which of those queues should offer calls to this agent. Without it, the agent record exists but never gets any inbound traffic — even if everything else is configured correctly.

When Inbound Groups is relevant

The Inbound Groups field is only relevant when the Campaign field on the same Remote Agent record is set to a Closer campaign. If the Campaign is set to an outbound campaign, the Inbound Groups selector on the screen doesn't do anything — outbound campaigns handle their own dialing, not in-group queues.

Once you have a CLOSER campaign selected, the Inbound Groups section becomes the final piece of the routing chain: DID → in-group → CLOSER campaign → Remote Agent. The Inbound Groups field is the explicit link between the in-group and this Remote Agent.

How the routing chain works end to end

sequenceDiagram
  participant Caller
  participant DID
  participant InGroup
  participant CloserCampaign
  participant RemoteAgent
  Caller->>DID: Dials in
  DID->>InGroup: DID route = IN_GROUP, selects support-queue
  InGroup->>CloserCampaign: Call queued, system looks for an agent
  CloserCampaign->>RemoteAgent: Finds RA with support-queue in Inbound Groups
  RemoteAgent->>Caller: External number dialed, customer bridged

Notice the matching step: the system checks that the Remote Agent's Inbound Groups list includes the same in-group the DID routed the call into. If that in-group is missing from the Remote Agent's list, the system won't offer calls from that queue to this agent, even if the CLOSER campaign is correct.

Multi-queue agents and skills-based routing

You can select more than one in-group in the Inbound Groups field. This means a single Remote Agent record can receive calls from several different queues — for example, both a general support queue and a billing queue. This is a simple form of Skills-based routing: agents with the right in-groups assigned get the right call types.

• Assign multiple in-groups to one Remote Agent when that agent can handle several call types.
• Create separate Remote Agent records pointing to the same external number but different in-groups if you want different routing logic per queue.
• Use Queue priority settings on the in-group itself to control which queued call this Remote Agent picks up first when multiple queues are active.

Common mistake: forgetting to match DID and Remote Agent in-groups

The most frequent misconfiguration is routing a DID to in-group A, but only adding in-group B to the Remote Agent's Inbound Groups. Calls queue in in-group A, the Remote Agent never gets offered them, and callers sit on hold forever. Always make sure the in-group assigned on the DID record matches at least one of the in-groups in the Remote Agent's Inbound Groups list.

For a full walkthrough of the entire inbound setup — DID, in-group, CLOSER campaign, and Remote Agent together — read VICIdial Remote Agents Explained. To see how Remote Agents are first added to the system, check How to Add a Remote Agent.

Running VICIdial on managed infrastructure means inbound routing and in-group configuration are ready to go out of the box. See VICIfast pricing to get your server in under 40 seconds.