Ring-all in-group: ringing every agent at once

A normal VICIdial in-group sends each call to exactly one agent, picked by the next-agent rule, and that agent's phone does not even ring; the call just lands. Ring-all does the opposite. Every agent's phone rings at once and whoever grabs it first takes the call. It feels like a small office line where everyone hears the bell and someone reaches over to answer. It is a nice fit for a low-volume support or reception line, but it comes with a clear ceiling. Here is how to turn it on.

Flip the in-group into ring-all mode

Open the in-group you want to convert and change three fields. Set Next Agent Call to ring_all; this is the switch that makes calls ring everyone instead of routing to one person. Set On-Hook Ring Time to the number of seconds the call should ring at each desk, thirty is a sensible start. Set On-Hook CID to CUSTOMER_PHONE so the caller's number shows on the ringing phones. Submit and the queue is ready.

Tell each phone to actually ring

The in-group setting alone is not enough. Each agent's phone has to be told to ring rather than pass the call straight through. In the admin phones section, open every phone that will staff this group and set On-Hook Agent to Y, the default is N. Do this for each agent. If you also use Remote agent logins, you can set the same On-Hook Agent and ring time on the remote agent record so they can join the ring-all group too.

Once both halves are set, the behavior changes. When an Agent logs in to this Ingroup their phone will not ring on the initial connection like a normal session. Instead, each time a call arrives, every staffed phone rings together and the first to answer wins. It is worth a quick test call before you point a real customer line at it, just to confirm every desk actually rings.

Know the limits before you commit

Ring-all is built for light traffic, not a busy contact center. Keep the group to no more than thirty agents. The on-hook phone feature routes calls more slowly and puts much more load on the system than the standard queue does, because it is ringing many phones at once instead of handing one call to one ready agent. There is one more rule: agents should staff either a Ring-all group or a normal in-group in a session, never both at the same time, because the on-hook phone behavior conflicts with normal call delivery.

If your volume is higher than ring-all comfortably handles, the normal queue with a sensible Next Agent Call setting is the better tool, and it spreads work fairly across your team. For the bigger picture of how in-groups route calls, the inbound call handling guide covers every routing mode in one place. When you want a host that runs all of this without you babysitting the server, you can get a managed VICIdial box from our pricing page in under a minute.