You got VICIdial installed. Maybe it went smoothly. Maybe you inherited a running system from someone who left without documenting anything. Either way, you're staring at a hundred menu items and nobody handed you a training manual.
There isn't one. Not really. The Manager Manual on Amazon covers reference material. The forum has 13,400+ threads with answers scattered across a decade. YouTube has walkthroughs from 2019 referencing CentOS 7. None of it adds up to a structured training path.
Here's how to actually train people on this thing.
Two Separate Training Tracks
VICIdial training isn't one thing. It's two completely different skill sets.
Admin training covers the back-end: campaigns, leads, carriers, reports. This is for managers, supervisors, IT staff. Getting this wrong means agents can't work and reports lie to you.
Agent training covers the front-end: taking calls, setting dispositions, scheduling callbacks. Simpler in scope but just as critical. A badly trained agent will misdispose leads, forget callbacks, and tank your metrics without realizing it.
Don't train everyone on everything. Agents don't need to know dial ratios. Admins don't need to practice rebuttals. Go deep, not wide.
Admin Training: The 20% That Causes 80% of Problems
The admin panel is organized around objects, not workflows. No "set up a campaign" wizard. You create objects — users, phones, campaigns, lists, carriers — and link them together. Understanding this architecture is the single most important concept.
Users and Phones: Every agent needs both. The most common new-admin mistake is creating user accounts but forgetting to create matching phone registrations, then wondering why agents can't log in.
Pick a convention for User IDs (1001-1999 for agents, 6001-6999 for admins) and stick with it. Be stingy with level 9 access — an undertrained admin with full permissions can delete campaigns and wipe lists.
Campaign Configuration: This is the heart of operations. The settings that matter on day one:
- Dial Method — Start with RATIO (fixed lines per agent) or ADAPT_HARD_LIMIT (predictive with drop rate ceiling). Save ADAPT_TAPERED for when you know what you're doing.
- Dispositions — Create campaign-specific statuses (SALE, CALLBACK, NOT_INTERESTED, DNC). Every status has flags for Human Answered, Callable, and Scheduled Callback. Getting these flags wrong silently corrupts your reports for weeks before you notice.
- Pause Codes — Make them required (FORCE) from day one. If optional, agents won't use them, and you'll have zero visibility into non-talk time.
- Recording — Set to ALLCALLS. You can delete recordings later. You can't recover calls you didn't record.
Lead Loading: VICIdial accepts CSV/TSV with a specific field order. Phone numbers must be 10 digits, no dashes, no +1 prefix. Save as UTF-8 to avoid encoding corruption. Duplicate checking only checks within the loaded list by default — set DUPCAMP or DUPLIST for broader checks.
Agent Training: Five Lessons That Cover 95% of Daily Work
Lesson 1 — Login. It's a two-step process that trips up every new agent. Web login first (user ID + password + campaign selection), then phone login (separate credentials). Label these clearly in your onboarding docs.
Lesson 2 — Call Handling. In predictive mode, there's no "answer" button. The customer is already on the line the moment the agent's screen changes. Train this until it's muscle memory: screen pops, review customer info, follow the script, use the web form, handle the outcome, disposition the call. The system won't send the next call until the current one is dispositioned.
Lesson 3 — Pause Codes. The cardinal sin: staying in READY status while not actually ready. The dialer sends them a call, nobody answers, the call drops, your drop rate goes up, and the predictive algorithm gets thrown off for every other agent. One absent agent in READY can degrade the entire campaign.
Lesson 4 — Transfers. The warm transfer process specifically: Transfer/Conference button, dial the target, wait for answer, announce the call, click Transfer, then hang up. New agents will try to click Hangup before completing the transfer, which disconnects the customer.
Lesson 5 — Callbacks. When a prospect says "call me Thursday at 2," click Callback, set date/time, disposition as CALLBK. USERONLY callbacks go back to the same agent. ANYONE callbacks go to whoever's available. Always set callbacks in the customer's timezone.
The Training Schedule That Works
Week 1 (Admins): Day 1-2 is navigation and architecture — tour every section without changing anything. Day 3 is building a test campaign from scratch. Day 4 is lead management and carrier configuration. Day 5 is reports and real-time monitoring.
Week 2 (Agents, 3 days): Day 1 covers login, interface, dispositions, and practice calls between agents. Day 2 covers transfers, callbacks, web forms, and edge cases. Day 3 is live calls with a supervisor listening in and coaching.
Ongoing: Pull disposition reports weekly. Compare to actual call outcomes. Identify agents who are misdisposing and retrain. Review callback completion rates. Check pause-code usage for gaming.
The Settings That Separate Amateurs From Pros
Once you're past the basics:
AMD Tuning — Default AMD settings pass through 15-20% of answering machines as live calls. In /etc/asterisk/amd.conf, adjust greeting, maximum_number_of_words, and total_analysis_time. Proper tuning gets accuracy to 92-96%. That difference means agents spend 7-16% more time talking to actual humans.
Dial Level Optimization — Set auto_dial_level carefully. Set Drop Rate Max to 3% for TCPA compliance. Set Available Only Tally to Y (always). Keep the hopper_level at 100-200.
Verifying Agent Activity — Run this query to find agents with suspicious pause patterns:
SELECT user, pause_code,
SUM(pause_sec) AS total_pause,
COUNT(*) AS pause_events
FROM vicidial_agent_log
WHERE event_time >= DATE_SUB(NOW(), INTERVAL 1 DAY)
GROUP BY user, pause_code
ORDER BY total_pause DESC;
Call Time Restrictions — Configure per-state calling windows under Admin > Call Times. The default "9am-9pm" is a starting point, not a finish line. VICIdial uses the gmt_offset_now field and the vicidial_phone_codes table to enforce timezone-aware dialing on port 8443 or wherever your admin panel runs.
ViciStack includes full admin and agent training as part of every deployment. We've onboarded 10,000+ agents across 200+ call centers. $150/agent/month, training included.
Originally published at https://vicistack.com/blog/vicidial-training-guide/
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