What the VICIdial hopper is and why it matters

Almost every confusing thing VICIdial does on an outbound campaign traces back to one concept: the hopper. Once you understand what it is, idle agents, slow dialing, and leads that never seem to get called all start to make sense. Here is the short version, written for someone who runs a call center, not a server, and who just wants to know why the dialer behaves the way it does.

Think of it as the on-deck circle

Your lists might hold hundreds of thousands of leads. The dialer never picks straight from that giant pile in real time, because searching it on every call would be slow. Instead VICIdial keeps a small, fast holding area of leads it is about to dial in the next few minutes. That holding area is the Hopper. When an agent becomes free, the dialer grabs the next entry from the Hopper and places the call.

A background script refills the Hopper once a minute. It looks at your campaign settings, walks your active lists, and pulls in fresh leads to keep the supply topped up. So the hopper is a constantly replenished short list sitting between your full lead database and the dialer. It is never more than about a minute out of date, which is why changes you make to a campaign show up so quickly.

What decides which leads land in it

The refill script does not grab leads at random. It honors your dial statuses, your List order, any Lead filter you set, and your call-time rules. So a lead only enters the hopper if it has a Status (lead status) you are dialing, sits on an active list, passes your filters, and is inside its allowed local calling window.

It also screens against your DNC (do not call) rules where enabled, so a number on a do-not-call list gets flagged rather than loaded. That is why a clean-looking list can still under-fill the hopper: the leads exist, but they are not eligible right now. The hopper is only ever as full as your rules allow it to be.

Why it matters day to day

If the hopper is empty, your agents go idle no matter how many leads sit in your lists, because the dialer has nothing staged to call. If the hopper is too small for your agent count, the dialer keeps running out between refills and your pace stutters. If it is sized well, the dialer always has the next batch ready and your floor stays busy from one minute to the next.

That is why the hopper is the first place to look when dialing acts up, and why it ties into so many other settings covered in the VICIdial dialing strategies guide. The amount it tries to keep on hand is the Minimum Hopper Level, and if you want to set that yourself rather than let the system guess, start with how to set your Minimum Hopper Level.

If you would rather not babysit any of this, our managed boxes ship with sensible hopper defaults the moment they go live. See the plans and pricing to compare.