Links to recorded calls in CDR reports?

I am looking to move from our older Trixbox install to an asterisk and FreePBX only interface. At the same time we will be moving from Asterisk 1.2 to 1.4, mostly to avoid larger migration issues later, to take advantage of the “autofill” functionality in queues, and to, with luck, avoid the problems we have here with queue calls getting stuck and generating “single-ring” calls for our agents which cannot be picked up.

Anyhow, one sticking point I need to work around is that the Trixbox CDR reports provide a link to call recordings when that call has been recorded, but the FreePBX CDR reports do not. The volume of our call recordings seems to swamp ARI, so I need some other interface. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Tom

I suppose nobody has an answer to this? The feature of the Trixbox CDR report that gives access to call recordings is a great feature, but I’m ready to be done with Trixbox. Unfortunately, I know of no other interface that lets you easily find and listen to a specific call like that.

There have been a lot of improvements to ARI in FreePBX 2.4 and 2.5. If you use ARI with the latest version of FreePBX 2.5, you should be able to log in and see the full list of calls for the logged in account; each recorded call should have a playback link. The search box at the top of the page searches all the CDR fields for something that matches the text you enter. The duration box allows you to specify in seconds the minimum length of call you want to view. If you need to view all the call recordings on the system, login as the admin user. You can set the admin user name and password in the main.conf.php file. You can also set certain extensions as admin extensions with this file, as well.

If none of the above options meet your needs, please explain in a little more detail what you mean by:

I am active in developing new functionality for ARI, so please let me know any issues that you have come across. You can also use the Development link on the left side menu to file a Bug or Feature Request for ARI.

Thanks, Seth

Well, ARI seems great, but I get this when I try to use it:

“To(sic) many files in /var/spool/asterisk/monitor/q400-20080513-141308-1210702386.274134.WAV Not all files processed”

We have an excessive number of call recordings, due to the fact that we record every incoming call to our customer service queue, and we have been on TrixBox/AAH/FreePBX for a couple of years now. It looks like we have 161366 files in /var/spool/asterisk/monitor:

root@vox ~]# ls -1 /var/spool/asterisk/monitor/| wc -l 161366

At some point (and why not now?!) We will need to find a way to group and store recordings by date to avoid filesystem limits of total files in one directory, but I haven’t wanted to break the TrixBox functionality of clicking a link in the CDR.

Tom

rymes,

Open your main.conf.php file (probably in /var/www/html/recordings/includes/ on your system) and find the line that says

$CALLMONITOR_ONLY_EXACT_MATCHING = 0;

change that line to

$CALLMONITOR_ONLY_EXACT_MATCHING = 1;

This is the recommended configuration for systems with more than 2500 call records. Let me know if you still have problems after you change this setting.

Thanks, Seth

If you are getting too many files, you should also look at the ARI configuration variable, new to FreePBX 2.5:

$SETTINGS_MAX_FILES=3000;

you can find that in main.conf.php in the ARI include directory. This config file is left alone when FreePBX has new downloads so you may have to add it manually.

I made the “$CALLMONITOR_ONLY_EXACT_MATCHING = 1;” change, and I no longer get the message about too many files. Thanks.

However, ARI does not seem to even come close to providing the functionality I am looking for. I am looking to view and search through incoming queue calls, and none of the items returned by ARI are showing links to the monitor files. More problematic is that, if they did, it wouldn’t be much help, because it does not appear easy to limit the results by date, etc. That and I need to know each user’s VM password to even get into their page. The Trixbox functionality of adding a “Recording” link to the CDR report is much more powerful. Maybe this is the best time to make a feature request?

This is basically the only thing keeping me from finally jumping off of the Trixbox bandwagon here.

rymes,

Just log in as the admin user. The Call Monitor page will display all the recordings on the system. See my first post on this thread for more info. That post also explains how to use the Search and duration boxes to find specific call records. It doesn’t have all the specific options that the Reports page does, but it is a very powerful search method.

Thanks, Seth

rymes,

Each filename does have the date and time encoded in it. The file q400-20080513-141308-1210702386.274134.WAV was done on May 13 2008. and recorded at 14:31:18 (now I can’t remember if that is the beginning or end of the call) you will find that all recorded calls do, they just have a prefix as this was for Q400.

I can search using the date (yyyy-mm-dd) and the queue number (400) in the search box. It pulls up all of the relevant calls, but I cannot pull by user, which makes the digging a bit slower, but beggars can’t be choosers.

However, When I pull up my queue calls, there are no links to the call recordings in the “Monitor” column. It is just blank.

Also, I have noticed that it would be really nice to have the navigation links for multiple pages of results at the top of the page as well as the bottom, because it eliminates a good deal of scrolling. An ability to change the number of results shown on each page would be excellent, too, but not such a big deal.

Thanks again for the help.

I have been noticing errors in red at the top of the page like this:

Asterisk command not understood
Event: Hangup

The events vary quite widely.

rymes,

It seems like you have some very specific needs that may be of use to the larger community. For each of the features you would like to see in ARI, please file a feature request in the Trac system. You can do this by clicking Report Bug in the flyout for Development site in the left side menu. In the new ticket change the Type from Bugs to Feature Requests. Under Components select ARI; this will automatically assign the ticket to me for review. Also, if you don’t see some of the recording files, follow the instructions on that page for filing a bug.

Regarding your error, you may have a badly patched version of ARI. I would recommend installing the FreePBX 2.5 on your new system. The version of ARI that ships with the FreePBX 2.5 has a lot of bug fixes and security fixes.

Thanks, Seth

I noticed that the Upgrade tool in module admin mentioned a change to reflect the final version being released, but I have seen no news on the main page. Is 2.5 considered final now? If so, I’ll see if that fixes the ARI monitor links not showing problem.

Also, this is an old Trixbox 2.2 installation upgraded to 2.4, soon to be 2.5. Are there any small things due to upgrades (like Philippe mentioned above) that I should look for that might be causing my issues with monitor links?

Lastly, I filed two feature requests, one for ARI that mentions the nav links, variable records per page, and the possible inclusion of Destination channel, or some other way to search/sort by agent. I also filed one under "Reports’ requesting the same links to recordings for calls in the CDR module, just in case someone else saw that and thought it was a worthwhile investment of time and effort.

Looks like it’s time for another donation from me…

Tom

Yes 2.5 is Final now.

OK, I upgrade to 2.5 last night, and I now have the FreePBX mascot in my ARI logon page. I made sure to download and install the ARI framework (and FOP, for that matter). Anyhow, I still get Asterisk errors at the top of the page in red, such as: “Asterisk Command not Understood: NewExten” This happens pretty much at all times, and I still do not have any links to recordings made from the queue in the monitor column. Please keep in mind that these are recordings made by the queue, not by the settings for any particular extension.

We don’t really use ARI here much, so I am willing to “start fresh” with settings, config files, etc, if that might help.

Hi,

Several of my clients also have similar requirements, and the ability to listen to recorded called from the CDR reporting is also the only things keepings us from moving completely away from Trixbox (which we really want to do).

Graham

Graham, Glad to hear that I am not the only one! Anyhow, I was wondering if Seth has any updates on the feature requests I submitted. I presume that all of the Devs are busy enough already, but I’m just curious. Even a “No idea, maybe for 2.6?” sort of an answer would be helpful.

Trying not to look a gift horse in the mouth…

Tom

just a FYI: trixbox does nothing with the ARI except de-brand FreePBX and re-brand it to trixbox.

On demand recordings are placed in the ARI area for the person who asked for the call to be recorded.

I still run a pre-fork Trixbox, but the point is valid. Part of why this is important to me (and Graham, I presume) is that I need to upgrade my box to get to Asterisk 1.4, but I do not want to move to a post-fork Trixbox.

However, I need the functionality available in the Trixbox-only, non-ARI, CDR report whereby there is a nice, friendly link to the recording in the CDR results. Basically, to recap, I am looking to have Trixbox-CDR functionality added to FreePBX CDR output. We do not currently use ARI at all.

Clarification: I edited this to change the last line. I would prefer to have this functionality added to the FreePBX CDR report, not ARI. ARI is a great product, but not for our needs, AFAICT. (we need more detailed search tools, like the CDR report.)

I understand what you are saying.

But so that you know with trixbox (I have two 2.2.x trixbox systems and several different versions in the 2.2.3 to 2.2.12 in VM for testing purposes) the CDR display is nothing more or less then what is provided by FreePBX. To state it clearly the CDR in trixbox is the FreePBX CDR. So if you loaded up the same version of FreePBX on a hand build system you would get the same exact thing. So if something has gone missing in a later version then a detailed description of what is missing should be done as a bug report so that it can get fixed.

You can verify it by going to /var/www/html/admin/report.php which is the CDR report and read the top of the PHP file. It willl tell you who has been editing it and you’ll see it is all the FreePBX development team and zero from trixbox. I can confirm this as I’ve been through the SVN and looked at the older versions back to FreePBX 2.2 and done file level comparisons.

I do agree that I could also use some more custom search options. More importantly I think a tutorial on the CDR would be great as I’ve found it can do things I never knew about from a posting in the last two months. (Search for line usage or max channels used).