Creating your first campaign

A campaign is the job your dialer runs — it decides which leads get called, how fast, and which agents take the calls. This walkthrough takes you from zero to a campaign that is ready to dial: create it, attach a list, pick which leads are dialable, and switch it on. About ten minutes. One prerequisite: a campaign can only dial numbers that sit inside a list, so upload your leads first (see "Uploading leads to your dialer (lists & CSV)").

Step 1 — Open the Campaigns tab

1. Click Servers in the left sidebar.
2. Click your server’s name in the list.
3. A row of tabs appears under "VICIdial Management & Reporting". Click Campaigns.

You are looking at every campaign on the server: its type, auto level, hopper, lead order, when it was last edited, and the Status switch that turns dialing on and off. The small pills above the grid (Campaigns, Dispositions, CID Groups) switch between related screens — stay on Campaigns for this guide.

Step 2 — Create the campaign

1. Click + New campaign, top-right of the grid.
2. Pick a type by clicking its card: Manual Dial Only (agents pick leads one-by-one, no auto-dialer), Inbound + Manual (agents take inbound calls and hand-dial between them), Predictive Outbound (the auto-dialer paces calls to keep agents busy), or Predictive Blended (outbound auto-dialer plus inbound queues on the same agents).
3. In Campaign ID, type a short code like SALES. 2-8 characters, A-Z, 0-9 and _ only. This is permanent — you never have to remember it, but you cannot change it.
4. In Display name, type something your team will recognize, like "Q2 Outbound Sales". Up to 40 characters, and you can edit it later.
5. Click Create campaign. The settings panel for your new campaign opens automatically.

The type is permanent too. It locks the dial method and inbound behavior, and there is no "convert" button later — if you pick wrong, delete the campaign and create it again.

What a new campaign already knows

Every new campaign is created with sensible defaults, so you only touch what you want to change:

• It starts Active — but with no list attached it dials nothing, so this is safe.
• Hopper size 2000 — how many leads are pre-loaded and ready to dial.
• Lead order: oldest leads first.
• Local call time: 24hours — dialing allowed around the clock. Change this to your legal calling window in step 3.
• Only brand-new leads (status NEW) are dialed until you tick more statuses in step 5.
• Every call is recorded, and the internal DNC list is checked before dialing.
• Predictive types start at auto level 4; manual types at 0 (no auto-dialing).

Step 3 — Check the basics in the edit sheet

The edit sheet holds every campaign setting. It opens automatically after creation; later, open it with the pencil icon on the campaign’s row. Down the left is a rail of tabs grouped into Monitoring, Setup, Dialing rules, Routing & transfers, and Agent UX. Click Basic Details under Setup and review:

• Display name and Description — the description is an internal note; agents never see it.
• Caller ID number — what customers see. 10 digits; leave blank to use the trunk default.
• Hopper size — 2000 fits most outbound shifts.
• Lead order — oldest first, most recent first, random, timezone-aware east-to-west, and more.
• Next agent call — which idle agent gets the next call. The default, Agent idle longest, is the fair choice.
• Dial timeout (seconds) — how long to ring before counting the call as no-answer.
• Local call time — when dialing is allowed. Pick your calling window here instead of 24hours.

Nothing saves as you type. When you are done, click the Save N changes button at the top of the sheet — or Discard to back out.

Step 4 — Attach a list

1. In the sheet’s left rail, click Lists.
2. The left panel, Available, shows every other list on the box. The right panel, Attached, shows the lists feeding this campaign.
3. Tick the checkbox next to the list you uploaded.
4. Click Attach selected →. If the list currently feeds another campaign you will be asked to confirm the move — a list can only feed one campaign at a time.
5. Check the list’s chip says Active. Click the chip to flip between Active and Paused — a paused list is never dialed, even while attached.

A campaign dials only lists that are attached AND active. Both gates must be open.

Step 5 — Pick which leads get dialed

1. In the left rail, click Dial Statuses.
2. Under Dispositions to dial, tick the lead statuses the hopper should pick up. NEW (never called) is ticked by default. Add the retry statuses — for example no-answer and busy — so leads that didn’t pick up the first time get called again. Each status is shown with its plain-English name.
3. Click Save N changes at the top of the sheet.

Below the checkboxes sits Auto alt-dial — when a lead’s primary number fails, the dialer can automatically try the lead’s alternate numbers. Leave it Off (only primary) until you are comfortable with the basics.

Two related spots, for later: the Dispositions pill above the campaigns grid manages the server-wide status library (what each code means and whether it counts as a sale, contact, or DNC), and the Custom Statuses tab inside the sheet lets you add campaign-specific dispositions that agents can pick after a call.

Step 6 — Turn it on (and pause it)

1. Close the sheet with the X, top right.
2. On the grid, flip the Status switch on your campaign’s row to on.

That’s it — the dialer starts filling the hopper, and calls flow to agents as they log in to the campaign. Flip the same switch to pause: calls already in flight finish normally, but no new leads get dialed. To act on several campaigns at once, tick their checkboxes and use the Activate / Pause buttons on the bar that appears.

Cloning a campaign

Once one campaign is tuned the way you like it, cloning is the fastest way to make the next one:

1. Click the copy icon on the campaign’s row.
2. The dialog suggests a new ID (SALES becomes SALES2) and a name ending in "(copy)". Adjust them if you like.
3. Click Clone. The edit sheet opens on the new campaign.

Cloning copies every setting plus the campaign’s custom statuses, hot keys, and recycle rules. It does not copy the lists — they stay attached to the original, so attach lists to the clone from its Lists tab if you want a parallel run. The clone also keeps the source’s Active or paused state, so glance at its Status switch before you walk away.

Watching it run — the Stats tab

Stats is the first tab in the edit sheet and opens by default. It shows live KPIs for the campaign: Today (dialable leads, calls, answers, drops with a percentage, agent-handled calls, answering machines detected), Last hour, and Live (last minute), plus pacing-trend sparklines and the top dispositions of the day. The numbers refresh by themselves every 30 seconds. Before the campaign has dialed anything you’ll see "No stats row yet" — that’s normal. If the drop percentage climbs above 3%, it shows in red: that’s the US telemarketing ceiling, so slow down.

One control lives elsewhere: for predictive campaigns, the dial-level slider (1.0× to 10.0× — how many lines the dialer burns per agent) sits on the campaign’s card on the Floor tab, not in the edit sheet. Drag it down if drops rise, up if agents sit idle.

Good to know

• The Campaign ID and the campaign type are both permanent. Only the display name and settings can change later.
• Deleting a campaign (trash icon, owner accounts only) is a soft-delete: it flips the campaign to paused and asks you to type the campaign ID to confirm. History and recordings stay intact, and you can re-enable the campaign any time with the Status switch.
• A campaign starts dialing only when three things are true: the campaign’s Status switch is on, a list is attached, and that list is Active. Checking those three solves "why isn’t it dialing?" almost every time.
• Attaching a list that already feeds another campaign moves it — the old campaign silently loses its leads. Watch for the confirmation prompt.
• A clone of a running campaign is born running. Pause the clone until you have attached the right list.
• The dial level shown in the grid’s Auto level column is read-only there — the slider that changes it lives on the Floor tab.