How to email an agent when their callback triggers

A blinking line on the agent screen only helps if the agent is looking at the screen. VICIdial can also send an email when a reserved callback comes due, so the owner gets a notification they can act on. Setting it up takes two pieces: a campaign option and a small settings container that defines what the email looks like.

What Send Callbacks Email does

Send Callbacks Email is a campaign option that tells the dialer to email the owner of a USERONLY scheduled callback when that callback's time arrives. USERONLY means the callback was reserved for one specific agent, so the system knows exactly who to notify. Turn the option on at the campaign level and the dialer will attempt the email whenever one of those callbacks triggers.

The two preconditions

Two things must be true or no mail goes out. First, the owning Agent must have a valid email address saved on their user profile, since that is where the notification is sent. Second, there must be a Settings container named AGENT_CALLBACK_EMAIL in the Settings Container section of the admin portal. The container is what defines the message; without it, the option has nothing to send.

• A valid email on the agent's user profile
• A settings container named AGENT_CALLBACK_EMAIL
• Send Callbacks Email turned on for the campaign

Defining the AGENT_CALLBACK_EMAIL container

Inside the container you declare the parts of the email. The variables it expects are:

• email_from - the address the notification appears to come from
• email_subject - the subject line on the email
• email_body_begin - everything between this and email_body_end becomes the body
• email_body_end - marks the end of the body text

Anything you place between email_body_begin and email_body_end is treated as the message body, so you can write a few lines of plain text reminding the agent which customer is due. Keep the container clean: stray blank lines at the bottom can trip up this kind of feature.

Merging lead values into the email

You can pull fields from the Lead (the vicidial_list record) straight into the subject or body using the same --A--field--B-- merge style the scripts feature uses. Wrap a column name in that notation and the dialer swaps in the real value for that callback. So --A--first_name--B-- becomes the customer's first name, --A--phone_number--B-- becomes their number, and so on. That turns a generic reminder into a useful one the agent can act on without opening anything.

This is the same merge language used elsewhere in VICIdial, so if your team already writes agent scripts the syntax will feel familiar. It works for any column available in the lead record for that Scheduled callback.

How the send flow runs

sequenceDiagram
  participant CB as Callback timer
  participant D as Dialer
  participant C as AGENT_CALLBACK_EMAIL
  participant A as Agent mailbox
  CB->>D: USERONLY callback triggers
  D->>D: Check agent is logged in
  D->>C: Read email_from subject body
  D->>D: Merge lead fields A--B
  D->>A: Send notification email

One catch worth remembering: these emails are only sent while the agent is logged into the agent screen. If the agent is clocked out when the callback triggers, the dialer will not fire the message. So treat the email as a nudge for working agents, not a guaranteed catch-all for callbacks that come due overnight.

For how callbacks are reserved and dialed end to end, see our scheduled callbacks guide. To understand which callbacks count as due, read live vs active callbacks.

VICIfast gives you a managed dialer with email notifications ready to configure, live in under 40 seconds. See our pricing to get started.