I am a new user w/FreePBX etc. My boss has asked me to investigate the reporting capabilities of the program. I have been into the reporting tab and can generate on screen reports (and export them). But can this be done on an automated basis?
He has two scenarios (scenaria?) in mind. One is using some sort of dashboard tool to get the data onto his screen from the Asterisk box, and the second one, is that he wants our tele-sales people to be able to see a report at the end of the day that details what their phone activity was for the day.
If this is not possible, is there a means of setting up a user within the system where they can ONLY run a report, and NOT have access or the ability to change any of the system settings?
So does that mean that there is no way to configure a report that will provide this information through this PBX? Also is there a way to make a report for each extension that shows the phone numbers they’ve called each day? I can get one now, but it only shows me the main line calls made.
If you put in the extension that you want into the source and make sure that a source search is selected it should show you every call that extension made ( local, external, etc).
There is not a “built in” automated way to generate those reports currently. There is nothing saying that it can’t be done, you just need to do some programming. Request it as a feature request (development site, report a bug, and change from bug to feature request). The best way to get it is to pay for some support and have it built (see support, offical paid support).
As far as a dashboard tool, are you already using Crystal Reports at your business? If so, just write a report that pulls its data from the mysql database on the FreePBX server. I am running a Crystal Report that displays data from a custom view of the cdr data on the mysql server. It runs great from my Windows XP desktop.
I use Perl with WWW::Mechanize to run FreePBX admin tools from shell scripts. It definitely takes some effort to get the scripts running, but if you put some effort into it, you can make a shell script that acts like it is an admin user browsing to reports, entering search parameters and submitting the search, then clicking the link to download the PDF or CSV file from the web page. Then it would email the downloaded file to the accounts you specify. Once this script works, just add it to cron to run on whatever schedule you need.
OK, I just read the above paragraph and realized that it will probably be useless to most users. If it sounds too complicated, don’t worry. I’m just leaving this comment for anyone that feels confident in editing crontab and writing perl and shell scripts.
I also want to explore more sophisticated reports. From some research it looks like I should be checking out queue statistics from teh asteriskguru website. I don’t know if it offers automated reports but it seems to make different reports easier to produce.
Any type of report maker that can talk to MySQL should do. However, if you just want basic stats, you should be able to make a script that runs MySQL select queries and output them to email. I’m talking plain text here, but getting the data you’re looking for.
What everyone else suggested, Crystal Reports, etc, would definitely look better than plain text of course.
The reporting capabilities of freepbx are indeed far from perfect. Most people use an external reporting tool (here we use the Microsoft Report Builder to make an automate our reports).
If you are looking for an option to install on the same server you may want to have a look at Asternic, I hear it’s a great reporting tool.