Times, shifts, and holidays

Three small settings decide the rhythm of your call center. Call times decide when the dialer is allowed to call each lead. Shifts decide when your agents can log in. Holidays are exception dates that override the weekly schedule. All three live on one tab — this guide walks through it, click by click.

Open the Schedules 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 Schedules.

Three pills sit at the top of the panel: Call Times, Holidays, and Shifts. Your server comes with the classic VICIdial call times pre-installed — 9am-5pm, 9am-9pm, 24hours, and a few more — so most teams only edit, never create.

Call Times — when the dialer may call

A call time is a named weekly window, like "9am-9pm". Your campaign points at one of these windows, and the dialer only places calls while the window is open. Outside the window the lead simply waits — nothing is lost, it is dialed when the window opens again.

The one thing to understand: the window is checked against each lead’s own local time, not your office time and not the server’s clock. The dialer knows each lead’s time zone from the GMT offset that was looked up when the list was imported (the "Time-zone source for GMT offset" option in the import wizard — "Country + area code" is the default and works everywhere). So a 9am to 9pm window means 9am to 9pm where the lead lives. A New York lead and a California lead are each called inside their own 9-to-9.

Create or edit a call time

1. On the Call Times pill, click + New call time — or click an existing ID (like 9am-5pm) to edit it.
2. ID — a short lowercase tag, 2–10 characters, like 9am-9pm. It cannot be changed later.
3. Name — the readable label your team will see in dropdowns.
4. Default start and Default stop — your everyday window, in 24-hour time.
5. Below, each day of the week can override the default with its own Start and Stop. Leave a day at 00:00 to 00:00 and it follows the Default window (read the Good to know section — the "no calls" badge here is misleading).
6. After-hours audio — optional. A recording played when an inbound call arrives outside the window. Pick a default for the whole week, or a different one per day. The play button previews the file.
7. Holidays that apply — tick the holiday dates that should override this weekly schedule (create them first on the Holidays pill).
8. Click Create call time (or Save changes). It saves straight to your dialer.

Point your campaign at the window

1. Click the Campaigns tab (left of Schedules).
2. Click the pencil icon on your campaign’s row to open its settings.
3. Find Local call time and pick your window. The built-in 24hours window means dialing is always allowed — see the warning below before you use it.

A single list can override its campaign: open the list’s settings and set Local call time there. Pick "campaign — Inherit from campaign" to follow the campaign again.

Holidays — exception dates

A holiday is one specific date with its own rules. On that date, the holiday’s settings replace the weekly schedule — but only for call times where you ticked it under "Holidays that apply". Creating a holiday alone changes nothing.

1. Click the Holidays pill, then + New holiday.
2. ID — lowercase, for example christmas_2026. Spaces turn into underscores.
3. Date — the exact day it applies.
4. Name — what your team will recognize, like "Christmas 2026".
5. Status — Active, Inactive, or Expired. Only Active holidays do anything.
6. Method — Replace (use times below) swaps in the holiday’s own Start and Stop for the day (set a short window for a half day). Open (allow all-day) means calls are allowed the whole day. Override (state rules) is an advanced VICIdial option for state-specific rules.
7. Optionally pick an After-hours audio — the closed-for-the-holiday greeting inbound callers hear.
8. Click Create holiday. Then open each call time that should respect it and tick it under "Holidays that apply".

Shifts — when agents can work

A shift is a named work window for your people. Agents whose user group is restricted to a shift can only log in during that window. Shifts do not affect dialing hours — that is what call times are for.

1. Click the Shifts pill, then + New shift.
2. ID — for example DAY_SHIFT. Cannot be changed later.
3. Name — like "Day team".
4. Start time and Length (HH:MM) — the Computed window line shows you the result, for example "9:00 AM → 5:00 PM (8h)".
5. Weekdays — click the day buttons to toggle which days the shift runs.
6. Show in reports — leave on Yes unless you have a reason to hide this shift from reports.
7. Click Create shift.

Linking a shift to a team is a user-group setting. The dashboard shows each group’s current value — click the Users tab, open your group, and look at Allowed shifts. Changing it is done in VICIdial admin (the Open VICIdial admin button at the top of your server page, under User Groups) — or just ask support and we will set it for you.

Deleting call times, holidays, and shifts

The trash icon on each row (owner accounts only) opens a confirmation that asks you to type the ID — muscle-memory clicks can’t drop a row by accident. One warning from the dialer itself: anything still referencing that ID by name — a campaign, an in-group, a call menu — will need a new value picked afterwards.

Good to know

• The classic foot-gun: dialing outside allowed hours. If your campaign’s Local call time is 24hours, the dialer will call leads at any hour — including 6am their time. And if leads were imported with the GMT source set to "None", the dialer treats every number as GMT, so even a careful 9am-9pm window fires at the wrong local time. US rules (TCPA) ban telemarketing calls before 8am and after 9pm in the called party’s local time — pick a real window and keep the default "Country + area code" time-zone lookup on import.
• The "no calls" badge lies. The editor shows a "no calls" badge on any day set to 00:00–00:00, and the dialog text says that disables the day — but VICIdial actually reads 00:00–00:00 as "use the Default window for this day". The built-in 9am-5pm window relies on exactly this. If you need a genuinely closed day, VICIdial’s own convention is 24:00 to 24:00, which the time pickers here can’t type — ask support and we’ll set it for you.
• A holiday does nothing until you tick it under "Holidays that apply" inside each call time. Two steps, every year: create the date, then attach it.
• Call times and shifts are independent. Closing a shift does not stop the dialer, and narrowing a call time does not log agents out. Set both if you want both.
• Every save on this tab writes straight to your dialer — there is no separate publish step.
• The campaign settings hint still calls this tab "Times & Shifts". It is the same tab as Schedules — the label was renamed.