Why a Remote Agent shows up as R/111, R/112 and R/113

If you open the Real-time report Campaign screen after activating a multi-line Remote agent and see entries labeled R/111, R/112, and R/113 — when you only created one remote agent record and one VICIdial user — you're not seeing a bug. That's VICIdial working exactly as designed. This post explains what those R/ entries are, why VICIdial creates them, and what happens when a call lands on each one.

How VICIdial creates the R/ slots

When you set Number of Lines to a value greater than 1 on a Remote agent record, VICIdial doesn't just make a note of the capacity — it actually inserts multiple agent-login entries into the system, one per line. Each entry is assigned a user ID that increments by one from the User ID Start value. A remote agent with User ID Start 111 and Number of Lines 3 produces entries for user IDs 111, 112, and 113.

In the Real-time report these entries are displayed with the prefix R/ to distinguish them from standard Agent logins. So you see R/111, R/112, R/113 — not the user's actual name, just the R/ prefix plus the ID. Each slot represents one available line that VICIdial can send a call to at the same time.

Importantly, you do NOT need to create a real VICIdial user account for IDs 112 and 113. Only the base user (111) needs to exist as a proper account. The additional entries are synthetic — they exist only inside the remote-agent system for routing purposes. For the full walkthrough of setting this up from scratch, see how to add a remote agent.

Why this design exists

VICIdial's Campaign dialer tracks capacity and availability per agent slot. By modelling each line of a remote agent as a separate slot with its own user ID, the dialer can treat each line independently — checking whether it's busy, sending a call to it, and updating its Disposition after the call ends. This is what allows one remote-agent record to handle multiple concurrent calls during an outbound auto-dial broadcast or survey Campaign, or to accept multiple simultaneous inbound calls forwarded from an Ingroup.

It's also how a single external phone number pointing at a hunt group of phones on a traditional phone system can be handled — the remote agent record represents the whole hunt group, and the lines represent the individual paths within it. For the comparison with standard agent logins, see the VICIdial Remote Agents explained post.

What the slots look like in the real-time Campaign screen

stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> INACTIVE : RA record created
  INACTIVE --> ACTIVE : Status set to ACTIVE
  ACTIVE --> SlotsFilled : VICIdial inserts R/111 R/112 R/113
  SlotsFilled --> CallRouted : Inbound or auto-dial call assigned
  CallRouted --> SlotsBusy : All 3 lines occupied
  SlotsBusy --> SlotsFilled : Call ends, line freed
  ACTIVE --> INACTIVE : Status set to INACTIVE
  INACTIVE --> [*] : Up to 60s drain

Interacting with R/ slots via the API

The ra_call_control and Agent API interfaces can address individual R/ slots. You can hang up a call on R/112 without touching R/111 or R/113. You can set a Disposition on a specific slot. This per-slot API access is what makes remote agents usable in automated broadcast flows where there's no human operator watching the screen. Call recording applies at the campaign level — set Campaign Recording to ALLFORCE and enable recording on the base user's account (111 in this example) and recordings are collected across all lines. If you want fully managed VICIdial hosting where multi-line remote agents and capacity planning are handled for you, take a look at VICIfast pricing.