SMDR call accounting software receives information about telephone calls from your PBX (or PABX)
and can be used to discover information about your telephone system and ultimately
reduce your business expenses.
SMDR information can indicate if you have too many or too few telephone lines, if
you are missing calls before or after regular business hours or if an inappropriate
number or duration of calls are being made.
As telephone calls are completed your PBX sends information about your calls to the PBX SMDR (or CDR) port.
The SMDR port on your PABX can be connected to a computer and information sent from your PBX can
be received by SMDR software for recording, analysis and reporting.
SMDR software free download - click here
Basics
Before SMDR information can be read by an application the SMDR port of the PBX must
be connected to a computer (or other device). PBXes often offer connectivity via
serial or IP connection.
If using a serial port the cable length between the PBX and computer is limited
and the correct serial port settings such as baud rate and parity must be configured.
If connecting the PBX to the computer via IP (network cable) the PBX does not have
to be in close proximity to the computer. Depending on the PBX either the PBX or
computer acts as a server (waiting for a connection) and the other device acts as
a client (and connects to the server).
Each SMDR (Station Messaging Detail Record) also known as CDR (Call Detail Record) contains information
about the call such as; the extension on which the call occurred;
the duration of the call and the telephone number dialed.
Each PBX manufacturer usually uses a different PBX information format. SMDR call record information may be recorded as a single line of text
per call, two or more lines of information or even a page of information detailing the call.
Simple, single line SMDR call accounting records may look something like the following:
Sq Date Time Dur. Ext Tr Dialed
35 2012-01-26 23:34 00:02 101 01 O95551234
36 2012-01-26 23:44 00:15 103 02 I
37 2012-01-26 23:47 00:23 106 09 I
38 2012-01-26 23:48 00:07 101 01 O95551235
Different PBXes may have different settings to turn different parts of the SMDR information on or off. Some PBXes
may not display incoming calls at all, if they do they won't unless your telephone provider supplies caller ID. Some SMDR formats
include information about why the call was terminated, others provide information
about the DDI number called.
An often over looked configuration item is the date format, the same date format
must be used by both the SMDR and the call accounting application that reads the
data. If date formats are not the same, for example one is day-month-year and the
other is month-day-year, call records are stored for the wrong date or unable to
be stored due to invalid dates.
A simple solution?
Over the years many different SMDR software providers have created many different call accounting solutions.
Some systems have been designed from the ground up to be a commercial product, others have started life 'in-house'
to provide a SMDR call accounting solution to handle calls for their own business.
As SMDR software solutions are created developers discover that writing SMDR software starts as a very simple exercise.
Extracting call duration, start time and phone number can be a simple exercise for a simple PBX type. But as other
call accounting features such as multi-part and abandoned calls and other PBXes are supported by the
SMDR call accounting software developers discover that the processing of calls is not the simple exercise they originally thought them to be.
As SMDR software is put into use users often discover that a lot of calls are quickly recorded by the software.
A simple SMDR call accounting software solution records each call in a database (as it should) without any thought
to how the calls will be used. To keep costs low an inexpensive or free database solution is often used
and as the number of SMDR records in the database increases the performance of the SMDR software can rapidly decline.
A typical 'solution' to SMDR call accounting software becoming slow is to delete SMDR records from the software database.
This may seem like a solution but it prevents long-term and historic reports and comparison reports being run.
After a short while cheap solutions provide more problems:
- as the number of records increase reporting and even time to log in increases
- some reports take so long to run the user guides may recommend to NOT use some reports
- to 'fix' slow reports the user guide says to delete 'old' records
- using a cheap or free database there are few or no database tools
- daily backups are required to be performed by you
- when you need the SMDR software you discover the system hasn't been operating
Some call accounting solutions bill themselves as 'state-of-the-art' or 'industrial
strength' but in reality are legacy applications. Such applications brag about a
database of 'one million records'; 'generating a report in 15 seconds'; 'under development since 1998' and look like they've not been updated in 10 years; some advise you
'not to use this report'.
Reporting
SMDR reports are often available in both text and graphic format. Some SMDR software permits you to export data
in CSV format, some software may allow you to automatically
receive reports as PDF via email. Click on images for a demonstration.
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