Monitoring Aspect Availability

[CrankyMammy]

When our call center people start coming in, some mornings they'll contact me and say they cannot get logged into the Aspect system. We call the teleco and they say "everything looks fine" and then mysteriously the lines work again (after calling in a ticket).

we need to know if the lines are available for the reps when they come in. Other than scripting a login to attempt to mimic the call center rep, is there a smarter way to check on the availibilty of the connection?

 

[gshadz37]

What version of Aspect are you using? Are your reps using telesets or Uniphi Connect?

 

[CrankyMammy]

Aspect Winset Provide Version 4.0 SP02CM09 Build01.
Using Telesets (affectionally called "the brick".
Thanks.

 

[arznrchrd]

Setup a monitor to read the Activity Log.

 

[CrankyMammy]

Will an entry be created in the activity log once the end-user attempts unsucessfully to start up Aspect? What we are trying to do is test the connection before anyone comes in and tries.
Otherwise, we could send out the alert as soon as a person connot sign on. We're just trying to get a jump on a possible call center outage.

 

[arznrchrd]

What is preventing the users from logging in? If it is trunks going down, etc this is in the Activity Log so this would tell you proactively that no users would be able to sign-on way earlier than when they come into the office. First you have to determine what is problem when the user cannot login. If it is just some line problems, this is in the Activity Log as soon as it happens.

 

[CrankyMammy]

Yes, a RSC / trunk could well be down. Where would the activity log be located? Does it have a specific name? I do have the ability to monitor activity logs with Sitescope, so thank you.

 

[gshadz37]

If you open ayour browser and enter

http://yourACDprimaryIP/CA/default.htm

you'll get a login, default is username customer, password = customer. Look for entries pertaining to Carrier loss.

Is the teleset up/initialized when they come in, or are they getting a specific error when logging into Winset?

 

[arznrchrd]

This is not a standard Windows Event Log, from which I believe SiteScope reads. The activity log is a web log at the following address usually:

http://main

ip of callcenter/CA/default.htm

Main IP of Callcenter: Enter your IP

This site is a real-time Aspect activity log of tons of stuff going on in the call center. You just have to build a monitor that reads this web log ever so often and react to certain events. I read this log every 2 minutes and keep track of the last spot where an error ocurred. I search the log passed that point for new alarms. If I see an alarm I send out emails, text message pages, etc.

 

[CrankyMammy]

Perhaps I can do that afterall! It would be a URL Content monitor, I believe. I'll give it shot.
Thank you!

 

[arznrchrd]

Yes. I built one in .Net. The page has frames so you will have to do some manipulation to read the correct frame. Also, you will have to automatically click the button on the page to retrieve the latest log.

 

[CrankyMammy]

I'm attaching a screenshot of the log. Can you tell me what you specifically look for? we just had an outage around 10:30 a.m.

 

[gshadz37]

I see your D channels went down on four spans, and you mentioned these agents were on an RSC, could those spans be the point to points from the ACD to your RSC?

 

[arznrchrd]

I wonder if you have your timing setup correctly on those spans. We look for ISDN-D-Channel status report error and send the whole line in the page, email, or text message. We have exception spans so we do not page on those. If these are the SPANS in question that caused your outage you would be safe to look at these. Seems like you have a lot of port errors as well. What release are you on? Your spans should not go down often as it seems like they are.

 

[arznrchrd]

You want to make sure you have CRITICAL and OUTAGE selected at the left if you are going to be monitoring. You will eventually build a list of different alarms you want to be notified about.