What a DID is in VICIdial

When someone dials your business number, that number has to mean something to VICIdial. A DID (direct inward dialing) is how it gets meaning. DID stands for Direct Inward Dialing, and in VICIdial a DID is a small record that says: when a call arrives on this number, send it here. Without one, an inbound call has nowhere to go.

What the DID actually matches on

Your Carrier decides what digits it hands VICIdial when a call comes in. Some send all ten digits, some send only the last four. The DID Extension you create has to match exactly what the carrier sends. That string can be 2 to 20 characters long, with no spaces or punctuation. Once it is set you cannot edit the extension later; you would delete the DID and make a new one. You also cannot have two DIDs with the same extension.

There is one reserved entry called the default DID. Any call whose digits do not match a real DID lands on the default, so a stray call is never left hanging in the Dialplan.

What a DID decides

The DID holds the route. A single number can be sent to an Ingroup so a pool of agents answers it, to one specific agent, to a recorded menu, to a voicemail box, or to a raw extension in the dialplan. The DID is also where you turn call recording on for that number, and where you can clean up or rewrite the inbound caller ID before the call moves on.

A few more fields ride along with each DID. There is an Active flag, set to Y by default, that lets you switch a number off without deleting it. There is an Admin User Group field that limits which admin users can view the entry, which matters once you have many people in the system. And there is a Route Answer option that, when on, sends an answer signal to the call as it reaches an in-group or agent, so the line is properly picked up rather than left ringing.

When a DID feeds an in-group it also decides how the lead record is found. The call handle method does this. The simplest, CID, creates a fresh lead for every call using the inbound caller ID as the phone number. Other methods look the caller ID up against your existing lists so a returning customer keeps the same record instead of spawning a duplicate. You choose this once, on the DID, and forget about it.

flowchart TD
  A[Caller dials your number] --> B[Carrier sends digits]
  B --> C{Match a DID Extension}
  C -->|Match| D[Use that DID route]
  C -->|No match| E[Default DID]
  D --> F[In Group]
  D --> G[Agent]
  D --> H[Call Menu]
  D --> I[Voicemail]

Where it fits in the bigger picture

Think of the DID as the front door. The room behind the door is usually an in-group full of agents. For the full picture of how inbound calls flow once they are through that door, read our VICIdial inbound call handling guide. If you are still deciding what an in-group even is, start with what a VICIdial in-group is.

There is also a reporting side to DIDs that is easy to miss. A traffic report can show, per number and per day, how many calls each DID took, what route it used, and how hold, talk, and dropped calls break down across the day in short intervals. If you run several inbound numbers, that report is how you tell which line is busy and which is quiet, so it is worth knowing the DID exists for more than just routing.

Running your own server for this is a lot of setup. With our managed VICIdial hosting you get a working dialer in under a minute, so you can spend your time wiring up DIDs instead of building boxes.