INCALL — In Call

What INCALL Means

Indicates a call is actively in progress between an agent and this lead. The INCALL status persists for the duration of the conversation until the call ends and the agent selects a disposition.

When This Status Is Set

INCALL is assigned automatically the moment a call connects to an agent — when the SIP 200 OK is received and the audio bridge between the agent’s phone and the contact is established. The lead’s status in vicidial_list transitions from its previous state (typically QUEUE) to INCALL, locking the record so no other dialing session or agent can access it simultaneously. INCALL persists for the entire duration of the agent-contact conversation and is cleared only when the call ends and the agent enters the DISPO phase. If an agent’s session crashes, the browser is forcefully closed, or the Asterisk channel drops without a clean hangup event, the lead can become stuck in INCALL status indefinitely — a condition known as a “stale INCALL” that requires manual administrative intervention.

Impact on List Management

Leads in INCALL status are locked and must never be included in dial_status_filter — the system enforces this lock to prevent duplicate contact attempts on leads that are actively connected to an agent. However, stale INCALL statuses are a significant operational risk because they effectively remove leads from the dial pool permanently until corrected. Even a small number of stale INCAlls accumulated over weeks can represent meaningful lost inventory on smaller lists. Run a daily audit query against vicidial_list for records where status = 'INCALL' and no corresponding entry exists in vicidial_live_agents with a matching lead_id — any results are stale and need to be reset to their previous status or to NEW. Track the volume of stale INCAlls over time as an indicator of system stability and agent session health.

Best Practices

• Monitor for stale INCALL statuses with a daily automated audit — leads stuck in INCALL with no active channel are invisible to the dialer and represent lost dial inventory

• Do not include INCALL in dial_status_filter under any circumstances — the lock exists to prevent double-dialing

• Stale INCALL can cause leads to effectively vanish from the dial pool — build a scheduled cleanup script that resets orphaned INCALL records to NEW after verifying no active channel exists

• Investigate the root cause of stale INCAlls — common culprits include Asterisk crashes, agent browser force-closes, and network interruptions between the web server and the agent’s browser

• Use the real-time report to monitor current INCALL counts against active agent channels — a count mismatch indicates stuck records

Admin Configuration

INCALL is a system-level status defined in Admin → System Statuses with callable set to N and selectable set to N. It is managed entirely by VICIdial’s internal call processing engine and never appears in agent disposition screens. To identify and repair stale INCALL records, use Admin → List Modification filtered by status INCALL, or query vicidial_list directly. The real-time report under Reports → Real-Time Campaign Summary shows agents currently in INCALL state and their call duration. VICIdial’s AST_manager_listen process monitors active channels and can be configured to detect and log channel/status mismatches.

ViciStack’s List Management module monitors disposition distribution in real time — automatically adjusting recycling logic, dial_status_filter priorities, and hopper fill strategies based on how your dispositions are trending. No manual SQL, no spreadsheet audits.