What the Status (ACTIVE / INACTIVE) field on a Remote Agent does

The Status field on a Remote agent record has two values: ACTIVE and INACTIVE. It is the on/off switch. When a remote agent is ACTIVE, the dialer treats it as available and will route calls to it. When it is INACTIVE, the dialer does not. That is the core of it — but there are a few specifics worth knowing so you are not caught off-guard.

What ACTIVE means

The moment you set a remote agent's Status to ACTIVE and save the record, the system assumes the agent is reachable and ready to take calls. It does not run a test call first. It does not check that the Extension is registered or the phone is off-hook. It just starts sending calls to the External Extension as soon as the Campaign has leads to dial and the dialer decides this agent is next in rotation.

This is why testing the External Extension manually — before you activate — matters. The system will optimistically send live calls the instant you flip this switch.

What INACTIVE means — and the delay to know about

Setting the Status to INACTIVE tells the system to stop sending calls to this remote agent. However, the change does not take effect instantly. It can take up to one minute after you save the record for the dialer to actually stop routing calls to it.

The reason is that the dialer's background processes re-read remote agent status on a short polling cycle rather than reacting to individual database writes in real time. Until the next cycle completes, the agent is still considered eligible to receive calls. Any calls already in flight when you flip the status may still complete normally.

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> INACTIVE : Record created
    INACTIVE --> ACTIVE : Admin sets Status = ACTIVE, saves
    ACTIVE --> INACTIVE : Admin sets Status = INACTIVE, saves
    note right of ACTIVE : Dialer sends calls immediately
    note right of INACTIVE : Up to 1 min lag before calls stop

How Status shows up in the remote agents list

The Remote Agents list in the admin panel includes an active flag column for every record, so you can see the current status of all your remote agents at a glance without clicking into each one. You can also monitor activity in the Real-time report — ACTIVE remote agents show up as logged-in agents in the campaign view, labeled with an R/ prefix and their agent ID.

The ra_call_control interface gives you a programmatic way to see call state on a remote agent during an active session — useful if you are building tooling around remote agent management rather than doing it by hand in the admin panel.

For the complete picture on what a remote agent record contains and how each field works, see the VICIdial remote agents overview. If you are still deciding whether a remote agent setup is right for your situation, remote agent vs standard agent lays out the comparison.

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