So you successfully have your Cisco Unified Communications (UC)/Collaboration solution running smoothly now. You’ve migrated off your legacy PBX, managed to port over what users think is same internal dial plan, and have trained them on how to use most, if not all of, the features on that shiny new Cisco IP phone on their desk. Have you considered measuring Cisco collaboration user adoption to see how much or well it’s all being used?
Now What?
The company has generously given users a number of choices for how they communicate – desk phone, mobile client, and likely even a soft-phone. They can park calls and resume them from the conference room, initiate conference calls on the fly as needed, not to mention dial their counterparts across the globe via an internal extension!
Whether it’s been 3 months or 3 years since you made the switch to UC, the question is…are they using it for more than basic dial tone?
Your organization undoubtedly chose to implement UC for many reasons – easier manageability, toll and other cost savings, as well as enhanced features beyond dial tone that truly can improve how users communicate and collaborate. If you haven’t already, it might be time for measuring Cisco collaboration user adoption of those new features, identify which users are still dialing “9011..” instead of the internal DN to reach their colleagues in Europe, and see who only uses their desk phone and lets their mobile client and soft-phones collect dust and consume licenses in Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), not to mention who actually uses video calling.
Getting the Data and Making Sense of It
Gathering up and making sense of all this data, whether per user/department or company-wide, actually isn’t too daunting.
First, you of course need the Call Detail Record data (CDR) from CUCM. If you’re not already collecting and storing it, it’s a good idea to start. CDR collection isn’t enabled by default in CUCM out of the box and even when it is, you’re limited in how much data CUCM will be kind enough to keep for you. For more info, read up on how to enable and collect your CUCM CDR data.
Second, unless you love manually harvesting many thousands (if not millions) of CSV rows in excel with your own macros and formulas, you’ll need a reliable CDR reporting software product.
Variphy has emerged as the industry leader for Cisco CDR reporting with a powerful, yet easy to use call analytics solution that provides the robust and flexible reporting needed to identify which users should be trained on how to dial international users, how much the user base has adopted enhanced features like call park, meet-me, and video, as well as which phones and soft clients haven’t been used in months (or ever) and can be reclaimed or re-purposed.