Avaya Malicious Call Trace Recording With Asterisk

[Mick61C]

Avaya 8730
Communication Manager: 5.1
Contact Center: 5.0
CLAN: TN799 HW01 FW026

My goal was to setup Malicious Call Trace (MCT) for our agents and supervisors in our Contact Center. During my initial setup I found an option in system parameters for “MCT Voice Recorder Trunk Group”. I wanted to share my experience setting up the voice recording using an Asterisk Server.

1.I first downloaded and installed AsteriskNow on an available PC.

http://www.asterisk.org/asterisknow

2.I wanted to trunk our Avaya to the AsteriskNow server via a SIP trunk however we didn’t have the licensing or Sip Enablement Services. We were licenced for H.323 trunking so I followed this post “

http://cyril-constantin.blogspot.com/2008/04/howto-connect-avaya-to-asterisk.html

“ to get the Avaya side setup with the exception of the AAR portion. I didn’t need that since the MCT selects a trunk group. I had some additional work to get the AsteriskNow side working though.

3.With the AsteriskNow server up and running I installed the H323 addon.
a.[root@localhost ~]# yum install asterisk14-addons-ooh323.i386

4.Next I setup the H323 trunk in Asterisk. This was the same setup as the Constantin’s blog post in step 2 with one exception. My ip-codec that I used was ulaw, not alaw. Took me a little bit to figure that one out.
a.[root@localhost ~]# vi /etc/asterisk/ooh323.conf
b.[general]
port=1720
bindaddr=10.49.220.220 <-- IP of the asterisk server
progress_setup=8
progress_alert=8
faststart=yes

h245tunneling=yes
gatekeeper=DISABLE

disallow=all
allow=ulaw <-- I ended up using ulaw instead of alaw
dtmfmode=inband
context=from-trunk


[Avaya]
type=friend
context=from-trunk
host=172.20.220.22 <-- IP of your CLAN
port=1720
disallow=all
allow=ulaw <--I ended up using ulaw instead of alaw

5.Now with the H323 trunk configured I logged into the web admin page of the AsteriskNow server and configured a general SIP extension and added Voicemail to it.

6.I uploaded a silent greeting to the mailbox using the webadmin page and checked “Do Not Play please leave a message after the tone to caller” under Setup>Basic>General Settings>Voicemail.

7.I created an Inbound route for all DID’s and any CID’s that would send all calls to the voicemail box of the extension.

8.Some of the default settings for voicemail will only allow so may seconds of silent’s before dropping the call. I commented out “maxmessage, minmessage, maxsilence, and silencethreshold” from the vm_general.inc file.
a.[root@localhost /]# vi /etc/asterisk/vm_general.inc
b.; 1st listed format gets emailed
format=wav49|wav

attach=yes
pbxskip=yes ; Don't put [PBX]: in the subject line
serveremail=vm@asterisk ; Who the e-mail notification should appear to comefrom
fromstring=Voicemail System ; Real name of email sender
#maxmessage=180 ; max length of vm message
#minmessage=3 ; Minimum length of a voicemail message in seconds
#maxsilence=5 ; Wait for 5 silent seconds and end the voicemail
#silencethreshold=128 ; What do we consider to be silence
skipms=3000
review=no ; Allow sender to review/rerecord their message before saving it
operator=yes ; Allow caller to press 0
nextaftercmd=yes ; Automagically play next message when current message is deleted or saved

9.To test I made the trunk group dial able. When dialed from the Avaya side you should hear the “beep” and silence. The call should now be recording in voicemail of the extension that was setup earlier.

10.I didn’t want the “beep” so I removed the sound file and replaced it with an empty file named the same.
a.[root@localhost /]# cd /var/lib/asterisk/sounds/en/
b.[root@localhost en]# rm beep.ulaw
c.[root@localhost en]# cat > beep.ulaw <--Creating new file.
d.“ Press Cntl+c” <--after “cat” linux listens for input. Just press cntl+c.
e.[root@localhost en]# ls -l beep* <-- make sure it’s there.
f.[root@localhost en]# chown asterisk beep.ulaw
g.[root@localhost en]# chgrp asterisk beep.ulaw
h.[root@localhost en]# chmod 664 beep.ulaw <--don’t know if permissions really matter all that much but I did it anyway.

11.Lastly I changed the “MCT Voice Recorder Trunk Group” in the Avaya “change system-parameters features” to the trunk group that was created. Now when an agent presses MCT Activate on their phones the call begins recording.

 

[sekitori]

This looks great - I was thinking of setting up something like this, but then I found the "Audix-rec" which works just fine in our organization.

It actually sets up a conference with audix-voicemail.
You can playback the message using Audix or use messagemanager to save it to disk.

Of course there are limitations to the size of the recording...

What is the advantage of this setup ?

regards,
Sekitori

 

[Mick61C]

Sekitori,
Well, one advantage is having a combination of "Malicious Call Trace" and "Audix-Rec" features in one button. Once the button is pressed it both notifies me on my phone and begins the recording. It wouldn't seem to be that big of a deal to have an agent press MCT Activate, then Audix-rec but I tried that already with them and it seemed to be a bit of a hurdle. So combining the buttons has made that easier.

Also, I don't think I ever figured out if you can remove the "beep" after the key was pressed when using Audix record. Not a big deal but it seems to make some callers uncomfortable. Since we notify callers via Announcements that calls may be recorded I like to try and things as non-intrusive to the call as I can.