Duplicate check

Duplicate check is a setting in the lead loader that decides whether VICIdial will accept a phone number it has already seen. With it on, importing a number that already exists is blocked or flagged, so you do not end up with the same person sitting in your data twice. It is a small checkbox that saves a lot of cleanup down the line.

Duplicates are worse than they sound. Two copies of one lead mean the dialer can call that person twice in a short window, which annoys them and can edge you toward a complaint. It also quietly wrecks your numbers, because each copy carries its own called status and the reports double-count both attempts and outcomes, so your contact rate and conversion math stop reflecting reality.

The loader lets you set the scope of the check. You can dedupe within the single lead list you are loading, against the whole campaign, or against the entire system. The wider the scope, the stronger the guarantee that a number is truly unique, but also the slower the load runs on a big file. For most teams, checking across the campaign strikes a sensible balance between safety and speed.

One thing to watch: duplicate check looks at the main phone number, not the alt phone column. If the same person appears under a second number, the check will not catch it, so true human-level dedupe still takes some judgment. After every load, compare the accepted count to your file size; a shortfall is usually duplicates being rejected, which means the setting is doing exactly its job.

Be deliberate about turning the check off. Some teams disable it when they intend to add the same number to a different campaign on purpose, which is fine if you know that is what you are doing. The danger is leaving it off by accident and slowly building a lead list riddled with repeats. Make the choice consciously on each load rather than treating the setting as a default you never look at.