What it means in practice
The hopper is VICIdial's buffer between your lead list and the dialer. When dialing slots open, VICIdial pulls from the hopper first rather than hitting the list table directly. Hopper level (usually 30–60 leads) needs to stay filled; if it empties, the dialer pauses. Hopper filling happens on a cron every 30 seconds by default.
In VICIPanel
VICIPanel's hopper monitor shows fill rate, current depth, drain rate, and time-to-empty per campaign. If the hopper is about to drain below safe levels, we alert before the dialer stalls.
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