Feedback
Contents
CDR Analysis and reporting
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.
Note
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.
- CDR Analysis and reporting overview
- Roles
- Reports
- Audit logging
- Log-on message
- Internationalization
- Web browsers
- Online help
- Upgrade
- Backup database
- CPU utilization
- Related topics
- Additional documentation
CDR Analysis and reporting overview
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:
- Automatically configure the required tasks to take place.
- Manually perform the tasks by using the web interface.
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.
Note
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.
Scheduling Reports
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:
- Daily reports run at 1 a.m. every day. These reports get purged after two days.
- Weekly reports run at 4 a.m. every Sunday. These reports get purged after four weeks.
- Monthly bill reports run at 3 a.m. on the first day of every month. These reports get purged after two months.
- Other monthly reports run at 2 a.m. on the first day of every month. These reports get purged after two months.
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 e-mailed 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.
Setting Up Alerts
CAR provides e-mail alerts for various events, including the following events:
- Charge Limit Notification indicates when the daily charge limit for a user exceeds the specified maximum. You can set the maximum in the window.
- QoS Notification indicates when the percentage of good calls drops below a specified range or the percentage of poor calls exceeds a specified limit. You can set the range in the Report Config > Notification Limits window.
Enabling the system for e-mail 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 e-mail server. Next, you must enable the e-mail alerts on the Automatic Report Generation/Alert window (). By default, CAR enables e-mail alerts for some, but not all, reports.
Be sure to disable the automatic e-mail alerts to conserve system resources while you upgrade your system to a later version of Cisco Unified Communications Manager.
Note
The system does not provide e-mail alerts to application users because no mail ID exists for an application user.
Purging CAR Data
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 e-mail to all CAR administrators. When the database size exceeds the high water mark or the number of CDRs in the CAR database exceeds the maximum allowed records, CAR deletes CDRs that are older than the number of days that you specified for the CDR minimum age in the Configure Automatic Database Purge window; then, an e-mail gets sent to all CAR administrators. If the high water mark gets breached again or if the number of CDRs exceeds the maximum allowed records even after automatic purging completes, CAR triggers auto purging, does not load the CDRs/CMRs, and sends another e-mail.
Tip
To disable automatic purging to the minimum age when the high water mark gets breached or when the CDRs exceed the maximum number of records, configure the CDR minimum age to equal the CDR maximum age in the Configure Automatic Database Purge window.
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.
Call Costs
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.
Note
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.
Note
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.
Roles
CAR provides reporting capabilities for three levels of users:
- Administrators use all the features of CDR Analysis and Reporting; for example, they can generate system reports to help with load balancing, system performance, and troubleshooting.
- Managers can generate reports for users, departments, and QoS to help with call monitoring for budgeting or security purposes and for determining the voice quality of the calls.
- Individual users can generate a billing report for calls.
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 Communications Manager Administration. For more information, see the Generate CAR users.
Reports
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.
Report information
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:
- When no records match the time range that is specified (hour of day, day of week, or day of month) in the search criteria, the report displays a value of 0.00 for all of the days/hours.
- If all records that are returned have a value of 0.00, CAR does not display the charts. CAR displays the charts if any record contains a non-zero value.
- When records get generated (for at least one day in the chosen date range) and the number of days that is chosen is more than the number of days that the report can show (more than seven for weekly and more than 31 for monthly), the chart displays all the days (with 0 value for the days that do not generate records). A table displays for all the days with relevant value and 0.00 for the days that do not contain data.
- When records generate (for at least one day in the chosen date range) and the number of days that is chosen is less than the number of days that the report can show (less than 7 for weekly and less than 31 for monthly), the chart displays all the days (with 0 value for the days that do not generate records). A table displays all the days with relevant value and 0.00 for the days that do not contain data.
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).
Related References
Generated report schedule
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.
Related References
Audit logging
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:
- Scheduling the CDR Loader.
- Scheduling the daily, weekly, and monthly user reports, system reports, and device reports.
- Mail parameters configurations.
- Dial plan configurations.
- Gateway configurations.
- System preferences configurations.
- Autopurge configurations.
- Rating engine configurations for duration, time of day, and voice quality.
- QoS configurations.
- Automatic generation/alert of pregenerated reports configurations.
- Notification limits configurations.
Log-on message
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.
Related References
Internationalization
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:
- User - Files that relate to user-related functions, such as phone display text, user applications, and user web pages.
- Network - Files that relate to network-related functions, such as phone and gateway tones. Country names designate network locales.
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 Communications Manager 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. See the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration Guide for more detailed information.
These sections describe the elements that make up the internationalization of CAR.
Logon Page
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.
Authenticate and Show CAR Pages for Post Logon Windows
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
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.
Related References
Web browsers
Related References
Upgrade
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.
Related References
Backup database
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.
Related References
CPU utilization
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.
Note
Be aware that these tests were performed with Cisco Unified Communications Manager Release 8.0(1).
Additional documentation
- Cisco Unified Serviceability Administration Guide
- Cisco Unified Real-Time Monitoring Tool Administration Guide
- Cisco Unified Communications Operating System Administration Guide
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration Guide
- Cisco Unified Communications Manager Call Detail Records Administration Guide
- Data Migration Assistant User Guide
- Disaster Recovery System Administration Guide
