How to upload an audio prompt in VICIdial

You have a greeting recorded and saved as a file. Now you need it inside VICIdial so a campaign or an In-Group can play it. Uploading it through the audio store takes a minute, and the page checks your work as you go.

The upload itself is simple. The parts worth slowing down for are naming the file and reading the validation result, because those are what save you from a silent prompt during a live call.

Name the file before you upload

The filename is how you find the prompt later in the audio chooser, so pick something you will recognize: greeting_main, hold_loop, closed_hours. Keep it lowercase and avoid spaces. One detail that matters — uploading a file with the same name as one already in the store replaces the older version everywhere. That is handy for updating a prompt, and a trap if you reuse a name by accident. When in doubt, give a revised clip a fresh name.

This is true whether the file came from a TTS (text to speech) engine, a Soundboard export, or a clip you recorded over the phone. The store does not care where it came from, only that the name and format are right.

Do the upload and read the result

Open the Audio Store page in the admin, choose your file, and upload it. After a .wav upload the page tries to validate the format. Two outcomes:

• No warning — the file is PCM mono 16-bit 8k and is good to distribute.
• A red warning — the format is wrong. Re-format the file and upload it again. Do not skip past this; an unvalidated file will not play right.

flowchart TD
  A["Choose file"] --> B["Upload to audio store"]
  B --> C{"Format valid?"}
  C -->|"Red warning"| D["Re-format the file"]
  D --> A
  C -->|"OK"| E["Distributed to all servers"]
  E --> F["Appears in audio chooser"]

Where the file ends up

Once validated, the file is distributed to all of your VICIdial servers — give it about two minutes to reach the others. It then appears in the audio file list, newest at the top, sortable by name, upload date, or size, and you can play or download it straight from that list to double-check it is the right take. From there it shows up in the audio chooser next to every prompt field, so a Call Menu, an Ingroup, or a Music on hold class can point at it.

The same page also lets you delete a file by name, one at a time, and copy an existing file to a new name if you want a variant without re-uploading. Small tools, but they keep the library tidy as it grows.

If your upload throws a red warning every time, the file is almost certainly the wrong format. The accepted file formats post spells out the exact spec, and the broader audio prompts and voicemail guide shows where uploaded prompts get used.

Uploading is the easy part once the store is wired and your servers are in sync. A managed box ships that way, so your first file distributes cleanly without manual copying. If that sounds better than maintaining it yourself, spin up a ready VICIdial server — see pricing. It is live in under 40 seconds.