Using Remote Agents for broadcast and survey campaigns

VICIdial has two recommended uses for Remote agent records. One is inbound — routing calls to an agent who is not sitting at a VICIdial computer. The other is outbound auto-dial: playing pre-recorded messages for Broadcast dialing or collecting responses for Survey dialing. This post focuses on the outbound scenario and explains why the Remote Agent multi-line design is a natural fit for it.

Why a Remote Agent handles this well

A standard VICIdial agent handles one call at a time. A Remote Agent record, by contrast, defines a Number of Lines — and when the system sees that record as ACTIVE, it creates one agent slot per line. So a remote agent record with ten lines appears to the Campaign as ten simultaneous agents: R/100, R/101, R/102, and so on up to R/109.

For a broadcast campaign this is exactly what you want. The dialer is placing many calls at once and needs somewhere to send the answered ones. Each of those R/### slots can accept a live answer independently, play the recorded message, and hang up — all happening in parallel.

How the call flow works

sequenceDiagram
  participant D as Dialer
  participant RA as Remote Agent slots (R/100–R/109)
  participant P as Called party
  D->>P: Auto-dial outbound call
  P-->>D: Answered
  D->>RA: Bridge to next available slot
  RA->>P: Play broadcast message or survey prompt
  P-->>RA: Key press (survey response via DTMF)
  RA->>D: Disposition and hang up

The Agent API still works on these calls: you can trigger hangups, transfers, and Disposition changes programmatically even though there is no human agent present. That makes it straightforward to pipe survey responses into a script or CRM.

Setting up the campaign side

There is no special campaign type for broadcast or survey — you use a standard outbound campaign and configure the dialing behavior (message file, key-press routing, etc.) on the campaign settings page. The Remote Agent just provides the slots the dialer uses to bridge answered calls. Assign the Remote Agent to the campaign using the Campaign field on the remote agent modification page.

• Set Number of Lines high enough to absorb your expected peak Concurrent calls.
• Set Status to ACTIVE before the campaign starts dialing.
• Make sure the External Extension (or Extension Group) points to a Dialplan entry that plays the right audio or IVR.

For the full Remote Agent feature set, see VICIdial Remote Agents explained. If you are evaluating whether to use a Remote Agent at all, what is a VICIdial Remote Agent is a good starting point.

If you want a managed VICIdial server provisioned in under 40 seconds and ready for broadcast campaigns from day one, visit our pricing page.