The "allow greeting chooser" voicemail setting

There are two layers to custom voicemail greetings in VICIdial, and people usually meet them in the wrong order. The per-box Voicemail Greeting field is where you pick a file — but it does nothing until a system-wide switch is on. That switch is Allow Voicemail Greeting Chooser, and it lives in Admin – System Settings rather than on any single box.

Think of it as the master enable. Off, and every box plays the standard Asterisk greeting no matter what you select on the record. On, and the greeting dropdown on each box becomes live, free to point at a file in the audio store.

What the flag actually gates

The setting is a gatekeeper, not a greeting. It does not choose a file, record anything, or change wording. It only decides whether the chooser on individual voicemail records is honored. When it is enabled, a box owner can set the Voicemail Greeting field and callers will hear that file. When it is disabled, the field is ignored and the default greeting plays — even if a file is selected.

This is why a common support ticket reads "I set a greeting but callers still hear the robot." Nine times out of ten the per-box field is correct and the system flag is still off. Flip the flag once, and every box that already has a greeting selected starts using it.

Enable globally, or keep it locked

Because the flag is system-wide, it is also a deliberate lock. If you run a tightly controlled estate where greetings are managed centrally and you don't want individual box owners swapping audio, leaving it off keeps everyone on a known default. That is a legitimate choice, not just an oversight — a Managed hosting setup with one ops team often prefers it locked.

Turn it on when:

• Different boxes need different greetings — a sales DID (direct inward dialing) versus an after-hours support box.
• You want per-client wording on a multi-tenant box separated by Ingroup or user group.
• You're routing overflow from a Call menu to voicemail and want branded audio on the way down.

Keep it off when one default greeting genuinely covers every box and you'd rather not give box owners a way to change it. The decision the system makes per call is small but absolute:

flowchart LR
  A["Voicemail box hit"] --> B{"Allow Greeting Chooser ON?"}
  B -- No --> C["Ignore box greeting field"]
  C --> D["Play default greeting"]
  B -- Yes --> E["Read box greeting field"]
  E --> F{"File selected?"}
  F -- No --> D
  F -- Yes --> G["Play selected file from store"]

One enable covers the whole server, so you do not toggle it per box. Set it once, then manage greetings on the records that need them. If a box plays the wrong audio after you've enabled the flag, the problem has moved down a layer — to the file selected on the box, or to the file's format in the store, where TTS (text to speech) exports and GSM encoding can trip you up.

This flag is the second half of a two-part feature, so it reads best alongside the voicemail greeting chooser on the per-box side. For the broader chain of how greetings, prompts, and the audio store fit together, the audio prompts and voicemail overview lays it out.

If you'd rather skip the System Settings hunt entirely, we ship a clean, secured VICIdial box in under 40 seconds — see pricing — and you flip exactly the flags your setup needs.