What the Number of Lines field on a Remote Agent does

Every Remote agent record in VICIdial has a field called Number of Lines. It's a small field that has a big effect on how many calls VICIdial thinks it can safely send to that remote destination. Getting this number wrong — either too low or too high — directly affects Campaign throughput and can cause calls to be dropped or left unrouted. This post breaks down exactly what the field does.

The basic definition

Number of Lines defines how many remote-agent entries the system creates for this record, and tells VICIdial how many concurrent calls it believes it can safely send to the number. If you set it to 1, VICIdial creates one entry and will send at most one call at a time. If you set it to 4, VICIdial creates four entries and treats the destination as capable of handling four simultaneous calls.

Each line maps to its own user ID slot. The slots are numbered sequentially starting at the User ID Start value. A remote agent with User ID Start 200 and Number of Lines 3 creates slots for user IDs 200, 201, and 202. You only need one real VICIdial user account (for ID 200); the additional slots are created automatically by the remote-agent system. This is explained in more detail in the VICIdial Remote Agents guide.

Why it matters for outbound and inbound use cases

For outbound auto-dial broadcast and survey Campaigns, remote agents are often set up with multiple lines so the dialer can push several calls at once to an IVR or a message-playing system. In that scenario, Number of Lines should match (or not exceed) the actual capacity of the receiving system — if the destination can only handle two simultaneous calls, setting Number of Lines to 10 won't help and may cause Disposition failures when calls can't connect.

For inbound routing — where a remote agent forwards calls to a person who doesn't want to be tied to the VICIdial agent screen — a Number of Lines of 1 is common. You're routing one customer at a time to one phone. Raise it only if the destination is a hunt group or a phone system that can handle multiple simultaneous calls.

Validation and overlap checking

The Number of Lines field must be digits only — no text or punctuation. After passing that check, VICIdial calculates the full user ID range (User ID Start through User ID Start + Lines − 1) and verifies it doesn't overlap the range of any other Remote agent already in the system. Overlapping ranges would mean two remote-agent records claim the same user ID slot, which confuses routing. Also read how to add a remote agent for the full add-flow context including this overlap check.

How Number of Lines affects the real-time view

flowchart LR
  A[Number of Lines = 1] --> B[1 slot created
R/200]
  C[Number of Lines = 3] --> D[3 slots created
R/200, R/201, R/202]
  B --> E[Max 1 concurrent call]
  D --> F[Max 3 concurrent calls]
  E --> G[Visible in real-time report as R/200]
  F --> H[Visible as R/200, R/201, R/202]

The Real-time report Campaign screen shows each slot as a separate R/ID entry. Lines per agent is the underlying concept — the remote agent record is the single configuration point, but each line appears as its own visible slot in live monitoring. The ra_call_control API can interact with individual slots for hangup or Disposition setting during automated flows. If you want Call recording on a remote agent, set Campaign Recording to ALLFORCE and enable recording on the user's profile — the Number of Lines setting doesn't affect recording behaviour directly. Ready to run VICIdial without managing the infrastructure yourself? See VICIfast pricing.