What the Campaign Debug Page shows about an auto-dial campaign

The Campaign Debug Page lets you select any Campaign and read the back-end log output that the VICIdial dialer is producing for it in real time, giving you direct visibility into why auto-dialing may have stalled, why the Hopper is not loading, or why pacing looks wrong.

Where to find it and how to open it

The Campaign Debug Page lives under Admin Utilities at the bottom of the main Reports page, alongside the Settings Compare and DB Schema Compare utilities. You open it, select a campaign from the drop-down that lists every active campaign in your system, and submit. The page then shows the current logging output for that campaign's dialer process.

This is a live or near-live view, not a historical report. It reflects what the dialer is doing right now, which makes it most useful during an active incident rather than in a post-mortem.

What the log output contains

The dialer writes log lines continuously as it decides whether to place a call, how many calls to place, and which Lead to dial next. The Campaign Debug Page surfaces these lines for the selected campaign, filtered away from the noise of other campaigns running on the same server. Depending on what the dialer is doing, you will see entries covering:

• Hopper loading — log lines showing how many leads the hopper loader found, how many it filtered out due to time zone or DNC status, and how many it added to the hopper queue.
• Dial pacing decisions — the dialer's pacing calculation showing the current Auto dial level, how many lines are in use, how many agents are available, and what the dialer decided to do (dial, hold, or wait).
• Drop rate tracking — the dialer's running count of drops and the Drop percentage limit check, so you can see if the limiter is actively suppressing calls.
• Error conditions — explicit error messages when the dialer cannot connect to Asterisk, cannot find the campaign, or encounters a configuration problem that prevents placing calls.

flowchart TD
  A["Auto-dial not working as expected"] --> B["Open Campaign Debug Page"]
  B --> C["Select the campaign"]
  C --> D["Read dialer log output"]
  D --> E{"Hopper load lines show zero leads?"}
  E -->|Yes| F["Check list status and lead filters"]
  E -->|No| G{"Pacing shows hold or wait?"}
  G -->|Yes| H["Check dial level and agent availability"]
  G -->|No| I{"Drop limiter suppressing calls?"}
  I -->|Yes| J["Lower dial level or review drop rate setting"]
  I -->|No| K["Check for error messages in the log"]
  K --> L["Fix the identified error condition"]

The problems it helps diagnose

The Campaign Debug Page is specifically aimed at AUTO-DIAL campaigns. The three most common problems it surfaces are:

• Hopper not loading — the hopper loader ran but found zero dialable leads. This usually means the lead list has no records in the right status, the time zone filter is excluding all records at the current hour, or the list is not active.
• Dialer not placing calls despite leads in the hopper — the pacing log lines show the dialer holding because no agents are logged in, or the Dial level is set to 0, or the campaign's active flag was set to N.
• Pacing looks wrong relative to agent count — the log shows the dialer's calculation of lines per agent, current calls in progress, and the target ratio. Reading these lines tells you whether the dialer is seeing the correct agent count or whether an agent session is being miscounted.

Using it alongside the real-time report

The Campaign Debug Page shows the dialer's internal reasoning. The Real-time report shows the outcome — how many agents are active, how many Channel slots are in use, and what the live call counts look like. Running both side by side during a stall gives you the most complete picture: debug tells you what the dialer decided, real-time tells you what the box is actually doing as a result.

For server-level context — whether the box itself is under load during a stall — see the full guide to monitoring VICIdial server health and capacity. If you want to understand what the system load figure in those reports actually measures, VICIdial system load explained covers it in detail.

Need a managed VICIdial box where these diagnostic tools are available from day one? Start a VICIfast trial — your server is live in under 40 seconds, fully configured for auto-dial with every admin utility in place.