Documentation
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about CiscoPrompts and its tools
Overview
General
What is CiscoPrompts?
CiscoPrompts is a private tooling suite built for UC and collaboration engineers. It provides a small set of focused utilities — SSL certificate inspection, G.711 telephony audio generation, secure document exchange, and Webex service health monitoring — all under one authenticated interface.
Who can access CiscoPrompts?
Access to the tools requires a username and password issued by an administrator. The FAQ and Webex Calling status pages are publicly accessible without a login. Accounts are managed by administrators.
How do I change my password?
Once logged in, click your username in the top-right corner of the navigation bar to go to your account page, where you can update your password at any time.
I forgot my password — what do I do?
There is no self-service password reset. Contact an administrator who can reset your password.
Tool
SSL Inspector
What does the SSL Inspector do?
It parses a PEM-encoded Certificate Signing Request (CSR) and displays all of its decoded fields — subject DN, Subject Alternative Names (SANs), key type and size, signature algorithm, and whether the CSR signature is cryptographically valid.
How do I use it?
Paste your CSR into the text area and click Inspect. The PEM headers (
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST-----) are optional — the tool will accept the raw base64 body on its own.Does the CSR get stored or logged?
No. The CSR is parsed in memory and never written to disk or any log file.
What key types are supported?
RSA and EC (elliptic curve) keys are both supported. The inspector will show the key type, bit size (for RSA) or curve name (for EC), and the signature hash algorithm.
Tool
TTS Generator
What does the TTS Generator produce?
It generates a WAV audio file encoded in G.711 u-law at 8 kHz mono — the standard format for Cisco and Webex telephony systems, IVR prompts, and auto-attendants. The voice is Microsoft Azure's en-US-JennyNeural with a friendly conversational style.
How do I use it?
Type or paste your prompt text (up to 3,000 characters) into the text area and click Generate & Download WAV. The file downloads automatically when synthesis is complete. Generation typically takes 2–5 seconds.
Can I upload the output directly to Cisco Unified Communications Manager?
Yes. The file is already in the correct G.711 u-law format that CUCM expects for Music on Hold, auto-attendant prompts, and IVR audio. No conversion is needed.
Tool
Doc Exchange
What is the Doc Exchange for?
It lets you receive files from people outside CiscoPrompts without requiring them to have an account, use email attachments, or access shared storage. You generate a one-time upload link and share it with the sender. They upload; you download via a separate private link that only you hold.
How do I create an upload slot?
Go to the Doc Exchange page and fill in an optional label, an optional password the uploader will need to enter, and an expiry duration. Click Generate Links. You'll receive two links — share the upload link, and save the download link somewhere private. The download link is shown only once.
What happens after someone uploads a file?
The file is stored on the server. Visit your download link to retrieve it. The upload slot accepts only one file — once a file has been uploaded the slot is considered fulfilled.
What is the file size limit?
50 MB by default.
What happens when a link expires?
Both the upload and download links become inaccessible and the uploader will see an error page. Files associated with expired slots automatically deleted from the server.
Tool
Webex Calling Status
Where does the status data come from?
Directly from Cisco's public Webex Status API at status.webex.com. No API key is required. The page fetches
components.json and unresolved-incidents.json on each load and filters to Webex Calling components only.Is this page public?
Yes — the Webex Calling status page is accessible without logging in.
How current is the data?
The page fetches live data from Cisco on every load. The timestamp shown next to the refresh indicator reflects exactly when the last API call was made.
Infrastructure
Deployment & Server Setup
What does the server stack look like?
CiscoPrompts runs on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) using a standard free-tier compute instance. nginx sits at the front as a reverse proxy and handles TLS termination; gunicorn runs the Flask application behind it.
Background
Site History
CiscoPrompts is the reinvention of CiscoPrompts — a tool originally built to solve a specific, practical problem for Cisco UC engineers and that grew well beyond what its original model could sustain.
2020 — Founded
CiscoPrompts was created as a simple Python script to make generating telephony audio prompts easier for Cisco UC engineers. It was shared freely within the community on a donation model, with no expectation of scale.
2021–2022 — Growth
The tool gained traction across the US and EU Cisco reseller community. Usage expanded into educational institutions and audio production. In a less anticipated direction, it also attracted a significant user base from the adult content industry — a demographic that apparently has a strong need for professional-quality voice prompts.
2023 — Subscription Model
With usage, infrastructure costs, and support requirements growing far beyond what community donations could cover, a subscription plan was introduced. Uptake was insufficient to offset the operational overhead, and support demands continued to exceed proceeds.
2024 — Shutdown
CiscoPrompts was shut down. The combination of costs, support burden, and the economics of a niche-but-diverse user base made the original model unviable at the scale it had reached.
2025–Present — Reinvention
CiscoPrompts is built from scratch with a different philosophy — a focused set of tools for a select user base, running on a private infrastructure with controlled access. The TTS generator remains at its core, joined by SSL inspection, secure document exchange, and service health monitoring.
Get in touch
Contact
For access requests, bug reports, or general questions about CiscoPrompts, reach out directly to Ray.
R
Ray Maslanka
Builder & maintainer, CiscoPrompts