VICIdial scheduled callbacks explained

A scheduled callback is a promise. The customer asked you to call back Thursday at 2pm, the agent agreed, and now the system has to remember that and bring the lead back at the right moment to the right person. VICIdial handles this with a feature called Scheduled Callbacks, and once you understand the two flavors and the handful of options that control them, it stops being mysterious and becomes one of the most useful tools in your call center. This guide walks through the whole picture: what a callback is, the difference between the two types, how an agent sets one, the campaign and user options that have to be on, and how managers and admins keep the whole thing tidy.

If you only want the short version of any single piece below, follow the in-line links to the focused articles. This page is the map; the spokes are the detail. A Scheduled callback is just a Lead that an Agent flagged to be contacted again at a specific future date and time, and everything else is plumbing around that idea.

What a scheduled callback actually is

When an agent finishes a call where the customer wants to be reached later, the agent ends the call with a disposition of CALLBK and picks a date and time. That single action creates a callback record tied to the lead. The lead is no longer in the normal dialing flow; it is parked, waiting for its trigger time. When that time arrives, VICIdial does something with the lead, and exactly what it does depends on the type of callback that was set.

If the whole concept is new to you, start with what a scheduled callback is in VICIdial. The act of choosing CALLBK on the wrap-up screen has its own walkthrough in how to disposition a call as CALLBK, and the status code itself is broken down in the CALLBK status explained. The key thing to hold onto: the Disposition is what creates the record, and the Status (lead status) CALLBK is what marks the lead as reserved.

The two types: ANYONE and USERONLY

This is the single most important distinction, and almost every other setting hangs off it. There are two kinds of scheduled callback.

ANYONE callbacks go back into the campaign Hopper once their callback date and time is reached. The hopper is the queue of leads the dialer pulls from, so an ANYONE callback rejoins normal dialing and can be handled by whichever agent is next available. When an ANYONE callback becomes LIVE, the system puts it back in the hopper and changes its status to CALLBK so the dialer can pick it up quickly. Nobody is reserved for it; the next free agent gets it.

USERONLY callbacks belong to the agent who set them. Only that agent can call the lead, and they do it from a Scheduled Callbacks link on their own screen, when it suits them. A USERONLY callback that has not yet hit its trigger time is ACTIVE; once its trigger time passes it becomes LIVE. Either way it stays attached to that one agent until a manager intervenes.

The full comparison, including when to pick each, lives in ANYONE vs USERONLY callbacks. For the mechanics of each path, see how ANYONE callbacks go back to the hopper and how USERONLY callbacks get dialed. The LIVE-versus-ACTIVE wording trips people up constantly, so there is a dedicated piece on LIVE vs ACTIVE callbacks too.

The lifecycle of a callback lead

It helps to see the whole journey of one lead from the moment a callback is set to the moment it is finally dispositioned. The diagram below traces both branches.

stateDiagram-v2
  [*] --> Scheduled
  Scheduled --> ACTIVE: USERONLY waiting
  Scheduled --> WaitingTrigger: ANYONE waiting
  ACTIVE --> LIVE: trigger time reached
  WaitingTrigger --> BackToHopper: trigger time reached
  BackToHopper --> Dispositioned: dialer calls lead
  LIVE --> Dispositioned: agent dials callback
  Dispositioned --> [*]

Read it as two lanes. The ANYONE lane waits, hits its trigger, drops back into the hopper as a CALLBK lead, and is dialed by the campaign like any other call. The USERONLY lane sits as ACTIVE, becomes LIVE at trigger time, and waits for its owner to dial it by hand. Both lanes end the same way: the agent picks a new disposition, and the lead moves on. The trigger time is the hinge of the whole diagram. Nothing happens to either type of callback before its scheduled moment arrives; the lead is simply held. After that moment, the type decides everything. ANYONE leads rejoin the pool and lose their reservation; USERONLY leads stay locked to one agent and patiently wait to be dialed. A manager can step in at any point along either lane and reroute the lead, which is exactly why the edit tools described below exist.

Setting a callback from the agent screen

From the agent's point of view it is two clicks and a calendar. They choose CALLBK as the disposition, a panel appears, and they pick the future date and time. If there is a checkbox labeled My Callback, ticking it reserves the callback as USERONLY for that agent; leaving it unticked makes it an ANYONE callback. That one checkbox is the whole difference between the two types at the moment of creation.

Step-by-step, this is covered in how to set a callback from the agent screen and how to set the callback date and time. The My Callback checkbox itself, and what it does behind the scenes, has its own article: the My Callback checkbox explained. Agents pick the time from a calendar widget, which is described in the scheduled callbacks calendar.

Turning callbacks on: campaign and user options

Callbacks do not work out of the box; two switches have to line up. First, the Campaign option Scheduled Callbacks must be enabled. That is what lets an agent disposition a call as CALLBK and pick a date and time for the lead to be re-activated. Second, each agent's VICIdial user option for scheduled callbacks must also be on, or that agent simply will not have the feature.

There is a third switch for USERONLY. If you want agents to be able to reserve callbacks for themselves, their VICIdial user option for Agent only callbacks must be enabled as well. Without it, agents can still set ANYONE callbacks but cannot tick My Callback to keep one for themselves.

The campaign-level switch is walked through in how to enable scheduled callbacks on a campaign. The two user-level switches each have their own page: the agent callback user option and the Agent only callbacks user option. If callbacks seem set but agents do not see them, one of these three switches is almost always the cause.

The campaign settings that fine-tune callbacks

Once the feature is on, a long list of campaign settings shapes how it behaves. You do not have to touch any of them to get started, but knowing they exist saves a lot of head-scratching later. Here are the ones that matter most.

• Scheduled Callbacks Alert makes the callbacks status line in the agent interface red, blink, or blink-red when an AGENTONLY callback has hit its trigger time. The DEFER options stop the blinking once the agent has checked their callbacks, until the count changes again.
• Send Callbacks Email emails the owner of a USERONLY callback when its time arrives. It needs an AGENT_CALLBACK_EMAIL settings container and a valid email address on the agent's user profile, and the agent has to be logged in.
• Scheduled Callbacks Count decides what the agent's alert panel shows: only LIVE callbacks, only ACTIVE ones, or both via ALL_ACTIVE, which is the default.
• Days Limit, Hours Block, Calltime Block, Active Limit, and Display Days each restrict when a callback can be set or shown, so agents do not pile up callbacks outside calling hours or beyond a sensible horizon.
• Anyone Callbacks DNC Filter checks ANYONE callback numbers against the campaign DNC options before they go back into the hopper. It does not touch USERONLY callbacks.
• My Callbacks Checkbox Default, Show Previous Callback, Useronly Move Minutes, Next-Dial My Callbacks, and Force Dial tune the agent experience, from pre-ticking the reservation box to forcing an agent to clear triggered callbacks before doing anything else.

The alert behavior is covered in the scheduled callbacks alert, with the specific red-blink trick in how to make the callback line blink red. Email notifications get a full setup guide in scheduled callbacks email. The DNC angle is important for compliance, so if you run consumer campaigns, treat the DNC (do not call) filter as a must-read and keep your DNC list current.

How managers and admins run callbacks

Callbacks are not fire-and-forget. A manager with lead-modify permission in their own user account can open any callback record and change it. They can change the status to remove the callback entirely, convert a USERONLY callback to ANYONE, convert an ANYONE callback to USERONLY and hand it to a specific agent, or reassign a USERONLY callback from one agent to another. This matters when an agent is out sick and their reserved callbacks would otherwise sit untouched.

Admins can also view callbacks three ways: by user, by campaign, or by list. Each modification screen has a link to see all callback holds for that user, campaign, or list, showing the lead, the list ID, the campaign, the last-called date, the scheduled date, the owning agent, whether it is ANYONE or USERONLY, and its current status. From those same screens, admins can purge old callbacks to keep the records clean.

Reassigning, converting, and purging are common enough that each has its own walkthrough. There is no need to memorize the clicks; just know they are routine manager work and that the lead-modify permission gates all of it. Healthy callback hygiene keeps your Hopper honest and your reporting accurate, the same way good Lead recycling keeps the rest of your lists productive.

Why this matters for your dialing

Callbacks sit at the seam between automated dialing and human relationships. A campaign running Predictive dialing is optimized for volume, but a customer who asked for a specific time deserves to be called then, by the person they spoke to, or at least at the moment they expected. ANYONE callbacks fold neatly back into the automated flow; USERONLY callbacks preserve the personal thread when continuity is the whole point of the call. Most callbacks fired by an agent are reached through Manual dialing (click to dial) from the agent's own callback list, which is why the user options and the alert settings matter so much.

A lot of the more advanced behavior is driven by a Settings container, the reusable block of configuration VICIdial uses for things like the callback email and the timezone list. You configure it once and point several features at it, which is tidier than repeating the same values everywhere.

If you are weighing whether to run all this yourself or have it managed, VICIfast provisions a hardened VICIdial server with callbacks, dispositions, and the full agent screen ready to go in under 40 seconds. See our pricing for what is included on each plan, and come back to this guide whenever you need to wire up a callback workflow.

Ready to give your agents working callbacks without standing up your own dialer? Start with a VICIfast plan and have a branded, secure VICIdial up the same day.