When to reset only active lists on a campaign

The Reset Campaign Lists page offers two modes: reset every list on the campaign, or reset only the active ones. On a clean campaign with all lists in active rotation, the two modes produce the same result. But most real campaigns accumulate inactive lists over time — old test batches, retired prospect pools, deactivated suppression lists — and for those campaigns the distinction matters a great deal. Choosing the wrong mode can silently re-introduce lists into dialing that you deliberately sidelined.

What active-only reset protects you from

When you deactivate a Lead list on a Campaign, you are telling the dialer not to pull leads from it on the next Hopper fill. The list still exists on the campaign; it is not removed. A full reset — all lists — clears the called flags on every list attached to the campaign, including those deactivated ones. If those deactivated lists have not been removed from the campaign's list mix, the hopper may start refilling from them again on the next cycle once their reset timestamps are cleared.

flowchart TD
  A[Trigger list reset on campaign] --> B{Which mode?}
  B -->|All lists| C[Clears called flags on ALL lists]
  B -->|Active only| D[Clears called flags on active lists only]
  C --> E{Any inactive lists present?}
  E -->|Yes| F[Inactive lists become dialable again]
  E -->|No| G[Same outcome as active-only]
  D --> H[Inactive lists stay untouched]
  F --> I[Unintended leads enter hopper]
  H --> J[Hopper only refills from active lists]

Scenarios where active-only is the right choice

Use active-only reset in any of these situations:

• You have deactivated older lists on the campaign but have not removed them from the campaign's List mix yet.
• Some lists on the campaign were test batches or QA leads that you do not want re-dialed under any circumstances.
• You are running a mid-campaign refresh — you finished a pass on your current active lists and want to re-open them, but the campaign is still live and inactive lists should stay dormant.
• You have a legal or compliance reason to keep certain lists out of rotation — for example, a list pending a DNC (do not call) scrub that has not completed yet.

When all-lists reset is appropriate

A full reset of all lists makes sense when you are doing a genuine campaign-wide restart: you have finished a complete dialing cycle across every list, you want all of them cleared at the same moment, and there are no lists on the campaign you want to keep sidelined. It also makes sense when you have already removed the inactive lists from the campaign entirely — in that case, "all" and "active only" cover the same ground anyway.

The practical takeaway is that active-only is the safer default for ongoing campaigns. All-lists is for clean restarts where you have already audited the campaign's list membership and confirmed that every attached list should be re-opened. If you are unsure which lists are currently active on a campaign, open the campaign's list assignments and review them before choosing which reset mode to run.

How to run an active-only reset

1. Open the Reset Campaign Lists page in VICIdial admin.
2. Select the target campaign from the drop-down.
3. Choose the "active lists only" option.
4. Submit and confirm the action.
5. Verify that hopper counts increase for the active lists and that your inactive lists were not touched.

What to check before and after

Before running any reset, it is worth taking a note of the list structure on the campaign: how many lists are active, how many are inactive, and roughly how many leads are in each active list. After the reset, the hopper should begin filling from those active lists on the next cycle. If the hopper stays empty or fills from unexpected lists, check whether the campaign's dialable statuses align with the lead statuses currently on those lists — a reset that clears flags is only effective if the hopper's status filters match what the leads carry.

The Lead recycling settings on the campaign also interact with list resets. If lead recycling is configured to re-present certain statuses automatically, resetting a list amplifies that effect — leads that were recycled but not yet re-dialed may flood back into the hopper all at once. Plan around that if your campaign has aggressive recycling enabled.

For a full breakdown of what the reset action itself does and how to run a campaign-wide reset in a single step, read our how to reset all lists on a campaign at once. For the wider context of all VICIdial admin bulk tools, read our VICIdial admin bulk tools guide.

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