CDR and CAR

[jneiberger]

I saw a post elsewhere from someone who was rather unhappy with CAR and was looking to replace it with another CDR product. I'd like to get some more opinions about how user-friendly CAR actually is. My company is currently evaluating Cisco IPT and CDR/CAR is an important component.

I'd like to find out sooner rather than later if it's a dog.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!
John

 

[bwell3]

I made this post several months ago about CAR. They are still valid.
This may be a bit long but bear with me.
Cisco’s two Report Billing tools are referred to as ART and CAR. CAR is the successor to ART in CallManager
version 3.3. You will have the same issues with ART as described for CAR below.
CAR reads data directly from the CallManager database
for billing reports. This has the potential of
significantly affecting the performance of
CallManager’s call processing capabilitites. In fact,
these warnings exist in the CAR documentation as
Notes:
”Report generation can degrade Cisco CallManager
Performance; schedule reports when performance will
least be affected.”
It is not always possible to schedule call billing or
traffic reports at convenient hours when the PBX is
usually idle. In fact some monitoring and fraud
detection reporting requirements require access to the
call detail during the busiest hour of the day!
CallManager has limits on the number of calls that can
reside in the CDR (SMDR) tables of its database.
When these limits are exceeded, old data must be
removed. The data removed is no longer available for
access to the CallManager billing report tools (ART and
CAR).
Large customers with millions of call records may
exceed CallManager call detail limits without
maintaining a satisfactory number of months of calls
online.
CallManager’s CAR billing system is not a billing
system in the true sense of the word. CAR determines
the type of call carried by the PBX based on the digits
dialed.
For example, “local” calls have their call type status
determined by the virtue of 7 digits dialed. In many
metropolitan areas and other parts of the US, 7-digits
does not determine a local call. 7-digit calls outside the
local calling area of the Local Exchange Carrier (LEC)
are classified as “local toll” calls and priced
accordingly.
Counting digits is not sufficient to accurately identify
local, local toll, and IntraLATA calls. Furthermore,
local calls may be dialed as calls to an adjacent area
code as a 1+10 digit number. This frequently occurs in
large metropolitan areas such as Washington DC.
Counting digits to classify local versus toll calls will
not be accurate in these cases either.
CAR systems are limited to scheduling reports at only
these intervals: Daily, Weekly, Monthly.
”Only CAR administrators can schedule reports for
automatic generation.”
CAR systems are limited to output to the popular
Adobe PDF format of 20,000 call records. Another
frequently used output format is text for data called
CSV (comma-separated variable) which can be used to
read in other programs such as Microsoft Excel or
imported into other databases such as general ledger
accounting packages.
CallManger and CAR have no option to archive aged
calls from the call detail record (CDR) database. The
only option for the user is to purge data.
CallManager’s Serviceability Administration Guide
Release 4.0(1) contains this warning before it’s
description of running an exceptional cost report (Top
N by Charge):
”CAUTION: Use CAR only during off-peak hours.
Otherwise, data collection and report generation could
cause performance degradation in the Cisco
CallManager system.”
CallManager’s CAR Traffic Reports summarize usage
by aggregating call types based on digit counting
(internal, local, long distance, international, on net,
incoming, other). This is not a traffic summary as
much as it is a call description summary. Other call
accounting products incorrectly use the term “traffic” to
describe call activity.
There is no information in the CAR Traffic Reports that
describe service or resource utilization.
CallManager offers a limited number of report varieties.
In particular, there is a single summary and a single
detail report for billing. Reports are grouped by the
“user name” and include limited information based on
call type.
In particular, reports do not include information
regarding: city/state description, account code,
trunk/route info, access codes.
CallManager reports cannot be sorted by any variety of
criteria including area code, department, trunk, account
code, cost.
CallManager reports are limited to a single Publisher
(database). This prevents an administrator or executive
managers from viewing report information across all
locations in an enterprise.
If you are looking for a reporting system with none of these flaws you should look at

http://www.atcomm.com.

They offer a robust product . It has been installed on systems with all of the following at once:legacy PBXs, multiple Publishers, CallManagers, CallManager Express, all in mutiple locations. It is offered as both CPE nad ASP (out sourced) version). They have afree trial. Try it and your problems will be solved.

 

[jneiberger]

Wow, thanks for the great info! That's precisely the sort of info I was hoping for. Thanks again for taking the time to write it all down!

John

 

[megaco]

Can CAR be tweaked in any way to read information from a flat file?

I work for myself - my website is

http://www.call.uk.net