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Cisco Unified Serviceability supports CDR Analysis and Reporting (CAR) under the Tools menu. CAR generates reports for Quality of Service (QoS), traffic, and billing information.
CAR is not intended to replace call accounting and billing solutions that third-party companies provide. You can find the companies that provide these solutions and that are members of the Cisco Technology Developer Program by searching the home page of the Cisco Developer Community.
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CAR does not handle iDivert calls (feature that diverts calls to a voice-messaging system) and treats them as normal calls. The part of the call after the iDivert feature gets activated may not get charged to the correct party. |
As its primary function, CAR generates reports about the users of Cisco Unified Communications Manager and generates reports on the system status with respect to call processing. CAR also performs CAR database management activities. You can perform these tasks in one of the following ways:
You access CAR from the Tools menu of Cisco Unified Serviceability after you activate the appropriate services as described in the Activate CAR.
All CAR reports use CDR data. CAR processes the CDRs from flat files that the CDR Repository service places in the CDR repository folder structure. CAR processes CDRs at a scheduled time and frequency. By default, CDR data loads continuously 24 hours per day and seven days per week; however, you can set the loading time, interval, and duration as needed. In addition, the default setting loads only CDR records. CMR records do not get loaded by default.
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An option allows you to uncheck the "Load CDR Only" check box in the CAR System Scheduler window to allow CMR records to load. See Set up CDR load schedule for additional information. |
CAR retrieves information that is required for various reports from CDRs, CMRs, and the Cisco Unified Communications Manager database.
After CAR is activated on your system, you can schedule CAR reports to generate automatically at a regular time. Each report that can be scheduled has its own report generation interval. You can make the report generation interval be daily, weekly, or monthly. Scheduling Daily reports schedules all the reports that have report generation intervals of daily. Similarly, scheduling Weekly or Monthly reports would schedule the reports that have report generation intervals of weekly or monthly. You can also specify the time to keep a report before it gets automatically deleted.
By default, CAR uses the following report generation and deletion schedule:
For a list of reports and the default generation schedule, see the Enable automatic generation reports.
For system monitoring, automatically generate various reports, such as QoS reports, and review them at regular intervals, perhaps every day if you have a very large system, or every week or every two weeks for smaller systems. QoS reports help you determine the quality of calls that run on your network and judge whether you need additional hardware to improve performance. You can use utilization reports for gateways, voice messaging, conference bridge, route groups, route lists, and route patterns to provide a picture of the usage to help with system handling.
You can also customize the report parameters and enable a mailing option, so reports get emailed when they are created. The Customize Parameters option allows you to customize the report parameters for particular reports in the Customize Parameters window. For each individual report, you can customize the parameters for that report.
CAR provides email alerts for various events, including the following events:
Enabling the system for email alerts comprises a two-step process. First, you must specify the mail server configuration information ( ). CAR uses the configuration information to successfully connect to the email server. Next, you must enable the email alerts on the Automatic Report Generation/Alert window ( ). By default, CAR enables email alerts for some, but not all, reports.
Be sure to disable the automatic email alerts to conserve system resources while you upgrade your system to a later version of Cisco Unified Communications Manager.
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The system does not provide email alerts to application users because no mail ID exists for an application user. |
This section contains information on the following topics:
CAR provides automatic and manual purging of the CAR database. By default, the system enables automatic purging. Before and after loading CDRs/CMRs, CAR checks the size of the CAR database and invokes automatic purging, if necessary, to control the CAR database size.
With automatic purging, CAR continuously monitors the number of days that the CDRs are kept in the CAR database; when the CDR age exceeds the maximum number of days as configured in the maximum age setting in the Configure Automatic Database Purge window, CAR deletes all CDRs that are older than the number of days that you configured.
In the Configure Automatic Database Purge window, you specify the percentages of the CAR database that you want to allot for CAR data; the system maintains the CAR database size between the high water mark and low water mark that you specify. When the CAR database size exceeds the low water mark, CAR sends an email to CAR administrators. When the CAR database size exceeds the high water mark, CAR begins to delete the partitions from billing data and billing error tables, starting from the oldest date partitions until under the specified limit, allowing the system to continue loading the latest records. In cases where there are a large number of CDRs present in the CAR database and deleting the partitions does not lower the limit, CAR will keep at least two days worth of data and send an email to CAR administrators.
Configure manual database purge when you want to delete records that are older than a particular date or that fall in a specific date range, but you do not want to change the automatic purging schedule. You can also reload the CAR database with CDR records by clicking the Reload button in the Manual Purge window. You may want to reload the database to reclassify calls after dial-plan updates, user-device association changes, call rate changes, and so on. After the system loads the new records, the system loads the records according to the schedule in the configured CDR load schedule. By default, CDR data loads 24 hours per day, 7 days per week.
Event log purging, which is a daily scheduled job that monitors the tbl_event_log table, automatically deletes the tbl_event_ log records to keep the latest 3 days of daily jobs, the latest 3 weeks of weekly jobs, and the latest 3 months of monthly jobs; that is, if more than 1500 rows exist in the tbl_event_log table, CAR automatically enables event log purging and does not send an e-mail when event log purging occurs.
You can use CAR to set a base monetary rate for the cost of calls on the basis of a time increment. Then, you can further qualify the cost by applying the time-of-day and voice-quality factors. Service providers who must account for service to subscribers use this feature. Some organizations also use this information to establish billing costs for users and departments in the organization for accounting or budgeting purposes.
Reports that use these rating parameters include Individual Bill, Department Bill, Top N by Charge, Top N by Number, and Top N by Duration.
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If you do not change the default value for charge base/block, the cost will always remain zero because the default base charge per block equals zero. |
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If you do not want to increase call cost by voice quality, you can use the default values. The default multiplication factor specifies 1.00, so no increase in call cost for voice quality occurs. |
For more information on setting call rates, see CAR rating engine.
CAR provides logs that can track the status of the various activities. The event log tracks events that the CAR Scheduler triggers, such as automatically generated reports, loading of CDRs, notifications, report deletions, database purging and monitoring, and event tracking.
CAR provides reporting capabilities for three levels of users:
Any user can act as a CAR administrator. Users who have been identified as CAR administrators have full control over the CAR system. The administrator can modify all the parameters that relate to the system and the reports.
CAR requires a minimum of one administrator.
You set up administrators, managers, and users in Cisco Unified CM Administration. For more information, see the Generate CAR users.
From CAR, you can generate reports on demand, or if you are an administrator, you can schedule reports for automatic generation. You can view reports in comma separated values (CSV) format or portable document format (PDF). If you choose PDF, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your PC.
For all CAR reports that show the pattern for Hour of Day, Day of Week, and Day of Month, the charts and tables get shown according to the following conditions:
In all the CAR reports that display username, userid displays if CAR cannot retrieve the username. This situation can occur when the report gets generated for prior data where the user that was involved in a call at that time no longer exists in the system ( Cisco Unified Communications Manager database).
Automatically generating reports comprises a two-step process. First, you must enable the reports that you want to have generated. Second, you must schedule the reports for the day and time that you want them to generate. CAR provides a default schedule, so if the default schedule is acceptable, you need only enable the reports that you want to automatically generate.
Reports and e-mail alerts do not automatically get enabled on a new installation. You must enable the reports that you want to automatically generate. To enable or disable report generation, see the Enable automatic generation reports for instructions on how to generate reports and e-mails automatically.
To change the specific time each day, week, or month that reports get generated and get purged from the system, see CAR system scheduler.
With audit logging, any configuration change to the Cisco Unified Communications Manager system gets logged in separate log files for auditing. An audit event is any event that is required to be logged. Cisco Unified CDR Analysis and Reporting creates audit logs for these events:
You can upload a text file that contains a customized log-on message that appears on the initial Cisco Unified Communications Manager CDR Analysis and Reporting window.
For more information and the procedure for uploading your customized log-on message, see Chapter 7 in the Cisco Unified Communications Operating System Administration Guide.
CAR, designed to be internationalized to handle any locale (or language), includes a database that can also handle any locale.
Two types of locale exists: user and network. Each locale comprises a set of locale files. The following definitions describe the two types of files:
CAR supports the locales only if the Locale Installer has installed locales.
Only User and Manager windows support multiple locales. Administrator windows display in English.
In the Cisco Unified CM Administration, set the user-preferred locale in the Cisco Unified Communications Manager database. You do this when you create a user from the End User Configuration window. Specify the preferred locale along with the user name, user ID, and so on. The Cisco Unified Communications Manager database stores this information. For more detailed information, see the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration Guide.
These sections describe the elements that make up the internationalization of CAR.
When the client (browser) requests the logon information, the logon window header includes the most preferred locale of the client. The CAR system checks whether the CAR UI supports this locale. If the CAR UI does not support the locale, or if the locale is not installed in the system, the logon window displays in the Cisco Unified Communications Manager system default locale that is set in the Cisco Communications Manager Enterprise parameter. If CAR does not also support this locale, or the locale is not installed in the system, the locale gets set to English_United_States.
User credentials (in any language) get authenticated through the Cisco Unified Communications Manager database, and then CAR windows for non-administrative users (users or managers) display the user preferred locale. If the CAR UI does not support this locale, or if the locale is not installed in the system, the Cisco Unified Communications Manager system default locale gets used. If this locale is not supported by CAR, or is not installed in the system, windows display in the most preferred locale of the browser. When the browser-preferred locale is also not supported or not installed, the locale gets set to English_United_States. All information on the UI windows, including labels, number formats, and so on., displays based on the locale. The administrator windows always display in English.
Reports, which are generated in both CSV and PDF formats, display in the user preferred locale for non-administrative users (users or managers). However, the dynamic data (like the Company Name shown in the report header) displays in the same language as was used to enter it in the database. The locale provides the basis for the header, footers, number formats, and some static data (like call classification). Reports for administrators display in English.
The CAR program supports the following web browsers:
From any user PC in your network, browse into a server where CDR Analysis and Reporting displays in Cisco Unified Serviceability and log in as a CAR administrator, manager, or user.
To access CAR documentation online help, choose (for a list of contents) or (for information that is specific to the page that displays.)
When you upgrade from an earlier version of Cisco Unified Communications Manager to a later version of Cisco Unified Communications Manager, you may not be able to upgrade all your CDR data. For additional information about the limitations that affect the amount of CDR data that may be available after upgrade, see the CAR Database. You may also need to refer to the latest Data Migration Assistant User Guide.
The CAR and CDR Disaster Recovery Service (DRS) now integrates into the Cisco Unified Communications Manager DRS. The DRS includes the backup of the CAR database, pregenerated reports, and the CDR preserved flat files.
The CAR Web Service and CAR Scheduler automatically stop before the backup and restore process begin, and automatically restart after the backup and restore process is complete.
The table displays the features and components that the Disaster Recovery System can back up and restore. For each feature that you choose, the system backs up all its components automatically.
For more information, see the latest release of the Disaster Recovery System Administration Guide.
Cisco has performed basic testing to measure CPU utilization when CDRs and/or CMRs are enabled. The CPU utilization testing was measured on subscribers and was not measured on the publishers. Your actual results can vary because of the CDR Loader settings and the CDR Management settings for external billing servers. Table 1 displays the results of these tests.
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Be aware that these tests were performed with Cisco Unified Communications Manager Release 8.0(1). |