Documentation
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about CiscoPrompts and its tools
Overview
General
What is CiscoPrompts?
CiscoPrompts is a suite of tools built for UC and collaboration engineers. It provides a small set of focused utilities — Webex service health monitoring, SSL certificate inspection, G.711 telephony audio generation and more.
Who can access CiscoPrompts?
Access to the tools requires approval by the site administrator. The Webex Calling status and SSL inspector pages are publicly accessible without a login.
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.
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.
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, 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