How to make a custom greeting for VICIdial

A custom greeting is just an audio prompt that plays at a specific point in a call: the message a caller hears before they reach an agent, the line an answering machine catches, or the Welcome message on the front of an inbound line. In VICIdial there is no separate "greeting" object. You make an audio file, get it into the Audio Store, then point a field at it. This post covers both ways to make the file and where it lands.

Method 1: record it over the phone

If you have a phone registered on the system, this is the fastest route and you never have to think about file formats. From a registered Agent phone or any extension on the box, dial 8168. It asks for a PIN, which is 4321 followed by the pound key.

1. Dial 8168 and enter 4321#.
2. Wait for the beep, then speak your greeting. Leave 2 to 3 seconds of dead air at the start so the message doesn't clip when a caller picks up.
3. Press pound when done, then press 1 to save, 2 to listen back, or 3 to re-record.
4. Write down the prompt ID it reads back. These start at 85100001.

Tip: read the greeting twice in one recording if it is short. Callers often miss the first second or two, and answering machines clip the front, so a doubled message means they hear it once in full.

Method 2: upload a file you made elsewhere

If you record in Audacity, get voice talent, or generate the audio with text-to-speech (TTS (text to speech)), you upload the finished file through the Audio Store page. The format matters: VICIdial only accepts PCM mono 16-bit 8k WAV or 8-bit 8k GSM. Anything else gets a red validation warning on upload. If your editor exports stereo 44.1k MP3, convert it first. We walk through that conversion in how to convert audio for VICIdial, and the format rules sit in VICIdial audio store file formats.

Once the file is uploaded, give it about two minutes. Asterisk needs that window to copy the file across the box and validate it before it shows up everywhere. After that it appears in the audio chooser.

Pointing a field at your greeting

A greeting does nothing until you attach it somewhere. The place depends on what you want it to do.

flowchart TD
  A[Make the greeting] --> B{Record or upload}
  B -->|Dial 8168| C[Prompt ID 851XXXXX]
  B -->|Upload WAV| D[Audio Store file]
  C --> E[Audio chooser shows it]
  D --> E
  E --> F{Where should it play}
  F -->|Inbound front| G[In-Group welcome]
  F -->|Caller dials menu| H[Call Menu prompt]
  F -->|Answering machine| I[AMD message field]

• For an inbound line, open the relevant Ingroup and set the welcome prompt field.
• For a phone-tree prompt, set it in the Call menu where the caller hears their options.
• For an answering-machine message on an outbound Campaign, drop the prompt filename into the Answering Machine Message field.

Every one of those fields has an audio chooser link beside it, so you do not need to type the name from memory. For the bigger picture on how the store, formats, and playback fit together, read the complete guide to VICIdial audio prompts, voicemail, and TTS.

That is the whole job: make the file, wait two minutes, pick it from the chooser. VICIfast ships a fully configured dialer with the Audio Store already turned on, so you skip the setup and go straight to recording. See our pricing to get started.