What the Start Email URL field does

Start Email URL is a quiet little field on the email group that does one job: every time an email is handed to an agent, VICIdial sends a web request to the address you put here. The agent never sees it. There is no popup, no new tab, nothing on screen. It is a behind-the-scenes ping you can point at your own systems.

Think of it as a hook that fires at the start of the work. The moment an email reaches a logged-in Agent, the request goes out. Leave the field blank, which is the default, and nothing fires.

What you can put in the URL

The string supports the same variables used in web form fields and scripts. That means you can stitch the customer's details straight into the address. A few common ones:

• lead_id to tell your system which record this is.
• user to pass the agent ID who picked up the email.
• Phone, email address, name, and the other standard record fields.

So a Start Email URL might tell your CRM to open a ticket, log that an agent has started on a customer, or warm up a record in a separate dashboard before the agent even reads the message.

Where it fits in the flow

The request sits right at the handoff point, between the email arriving on the agent and the agent actually working it:

sequenceDiagram
  participant M as "Mailbox"
  participant P as "Email parser"
  participant V as "VICIdial"
  participant A as "Agent"
  participant X as "Your system"
  M->>P: "New email"
  P->>V: "Match lead, queue email"
  V->>A: "Deliver email"
  V->>X: "Start Email URL fires"
  A->>A: "Read and work the email"

Because the URL fires the instant the email reaches the agent, your outside system learns about the work as it begins, not after it is done. That is the difference between this field and the one that fires at the end.

Good uses for it

Anything that should happen at the start of an email belongs here. Open a record in your help desk, mark a Lead as in-progress in another tool, or trigger a workflow keyed to the Disposition you expect later. Since it carries the same variables your forms use, you have plenty to work with.

Filling it in is simple. Open the email group, drop your full web address into the Start Email URL field, and add the variables you need using the standard markers VICIdial recognizes. Save, and the next email that reaches an agent fires the request. Leave the field empty to switch it back off. Because it is a plain web address, you can test it by pasting it in a browser with a real lead id and watching whether your endpoint reacts the way you expect.

It also pairs well with the rest of the email group. The routing method decides which agent the email lands on, and the instant it does, your Start Email URL fires for that agent. So if you pass the user variable, your outside system always knows exactly who is working the message. That makes it easy to keep an external dashboard in step with what is happening inside VICIdial.

If you also want to react when the agent closes the email, that is a separate field, covered in the Dispo Email URL field. For the wider picture of running email queues, see the inbound email and chat guide. The same variable trick shows up across the email group web forms too. If you would rather skip the plumbing of an Ingroup and parser entirely, our pricing page lays out managed VICIdial hosting.