Uploading leads to your dialer (lists & CSV)

Lists are where your phone numbers live. A campaign can only dial numbers that sit inside a list attached to it. This walkthrough takes you from a CSV on your laptop to leads in your dialer, click by click. About five minutes.

Before you start: your CSV

The importer accepts a plain CSV file (in Excel: File → Save As → CSV). One row per person. The only column you really need is a phone number — names, city, email and anything else can be mapped during the import. Up to roughly 500,000 rows or 200 MB per file.

• One phone number per row. Digits only is safest, for example 2025550143.
• The first row can be column names — you will tell the importer what each column means in step 3.
• Keep the original file. You can undo an import for 10 minutes, but not after that.

Step 1 — Open the Lists 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 Lists.

You are now looking at every list on your server — how many leads each holds, which campaign it feeds, and whether it is active (the green switches on the right).

Step 2 — Create the list

1. Click the + New list button, top-right of the table.
2. In List ID, type any unused number — for example 1001. The dialer uses it internally; you never have to remember it.
3. In List name, type something your team will recognize in three months, like "Solar Homeowners Q3".
4. Under Attach to campaign, pick the campaign that should dial these people. You can change this later.
5. Click Create list.

Step 3 — Import your CSV

1. Click Import leads, just left of the New list button.
2. Drop your CSV into the dashed box — or click the box and pick the file.
3. Under Destination list, choose the list you created in step 2.
4. Click Next — map columns.
5. On the mapping screen, tell the importer which column is the phone number and which is the name. Then start the import and wait for the green confirmation.

Step 4 — Check your leads landed

1. Click the Leads pill, just right of the Lists pill at the top of the panel.
2. Type a phone number or a name into the search box to spot-check a few rows.

You should see real-looking rows with status NEW. If a column landed wrong (for example names in the phone field), undo the import and map again — see step 5.

Step 5 — Import history and the 10-minute undo

1. Click the Imports pill, at the far right of the pill row.
2. Find your import in the history. From here you can download errors.csv (rows that failed and why) or click Undo to remove the whole import.

Undo works for 10 minutes after the import starts. After that, delete unwanted leads from the Leads tab instead.

Step 6 — Point the campaign at the list

1. Click the Campaigns tab (left of Lists).
2. Click the pencil icon on your campaign’s row to open its settings.
3. Check that your new list appears in the campaign’s lists. Lists dial in the order shown.
4. When you are ready for the dialer to call these numbers, go back to the Lists tab and flip the list’s switch to Active (green).

A campaign only dials lists that are attached AND active. Paused lists wait their turn — useful for staging next week’s leads early.

Good to know

• Paused lists are never dialed. The green switch on the Lists tab is your safety gate.
• Duplicates inside one list are merged automatically during import.
• The importer can scrub numbers against your DNC list and look up each lead’s time zone during import — turn both on for US campaigns.
• The screenshots here use fictional 555-01XX numbers from our demo server. On your real server, only upload numbers you have the right to call.