Opening up a CUCM C.D.R file is the epitome of “Opening a Can of Worms”. You will start with a comma-delimited file that contains multiple rows, each representing a call leg, or at minimum a complete call with over 100 columns of valuable data. Ready to attempt opening the file in Excel and doing your best to make sense of what might look like gibberish?
Starting with a CTRL + F to find the phone number you need, you likely find multiple rows all of which look frighteningly similar. After identifying the timestamp it can be a struggle to convert from Epoch to a human readable format. Sure, there is the Cisco CAR (CDR Analysis and Reporting) tool, but that’s like playing darts with spaghetti!
What you need is an effective CDR Reporting solution, but with so many options how do you know which one is the right one?
The application should be flexible, giving you options to deploy in a single, or multi-tier environment to match your infrastructure. It should allow you the freedom to choose between operating systems and databases types, enabling utilization of open source platforms, which cuts the overhead cost of expensive licensing. The solution should allow customization by configuration, not code. After all every CUCM deployment is different, canned reports that work for some, will not work for all!
Let’s quickly highlight the difference between three of the most popular CDR reporting platform. If considering other options, make sure to ask your vendor for these same critical details:
Cisco CDR Reporting Product Comparison Table
There are a lot of factors that you need to consider when making an investment in Call Analytics. Overhead cost of hardware and licensing for Operating Systems, Databases, and (S)FTP server applications. Software stability and usability, deployment speed and efficiency, and most importantly support. How will the vendor respond when you run into trouble?