We are wrapping up the release of Sam Reports. I’ve been dealing mostly with the sales related tasks (setting up a shop, integrating the registration process into application). Answering numerous emails as well. More to come…
As I presented in my case, in the previous post, I need a virtual machine of an operational TrixBox PBX (Fonality edition).
In Croatian (Ima’l mene tute?)
The first five days of beta are behind me. Some people subscribed to the Google Group and others corresponded with me only via email. Very useful feedback so far, I’m satisfied with how all is going.
I would really like to make reading the reports from TrixBox (Fonality) a bit easier. Sam Reports generates Asterisk reports from log files that are present on every Asterisk box by default (master.csv and queue_log). TrixBox slices the log files into a bunch of small files and puts them in date-named directories . Let me describe it in details:
It is originally just one cvs file located in /var/log/asterisk/cdr-csv/master.csv (I don’t care about the cdr-custom at the moment). On Fonality PBX, (I’m not sure that the situation is the same on all TrixBox SKUs), the master.csv data is placed in the same directory: /var/log/asterisk/cdr-csv/09-10-01/, but there are additional directories created there, on a weekly basis. So (the date – 09-10-01 – corresponds to YY-MM-DD). A new directory is created on Monday of each week , as stated in Fonality help files. I have copied all the files from Fonality PBX on my local PC, and below you can see a screenshot:
Fonality (TrixBox) master.csv
In each of these directories there are thousands of master.csv parts named: Master.csv.xxxxxxxxxx, where the xxxxxxxxxx is a UNIX time stamp (the number of seconds elapsed since Jan 1, 1970). One such file is created every 5 minutes, on a Fonality PBX. The file named just “master.csv“, that you see on the figure above, is the latest log that has not yet been stored in a directory and rotated.
Fonality-TrixBox master.csv parts
Originally queue_log file is located in /var/log/asterisk/queue_log. On Fonality-TrixBox it is also dissected into many parts, in much the same way.
Fonality-TrixBox queue_log
The original “queue_log” file just holds the latest 5 minutes worth of information, and all other data is in files created by the same algorithm as CDR files.
Fonality-TrixBox queue_log parts
One of my beta testers wanted to try Sam Reports, but got only the 5 minutes worth of data. So I decided to make a little program to merge all the disjointed files into one, master.csv and queue_log respectively. If you ever have such need, you can download the file here: FonalityMerge.
Now you can process the log files with Sam Reports and see your reports.
If I get enough inquiries for TrixBox/Fonality support I may opt to do one of the things:
It would be great if someone could provide me with a virtual machine of a TrixBox PBX that has been operational for some time. I know it’s a long shot. I would be veeeery grateful.
SAM Reports beta started some six hours ago. Sing-ups are now officially closed.
I’ve sent the invites to all 42 participants. Isn’t 42 the magic number? -> Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
I’ve also sent the invites to the Google Group for SAM Reports beta support.
Beta will end on March 22nd. I just wanted a round 30 days period. After that I will put a big “Download” button, followed by “Buy” button and “Get it for free” link…
More on that to follow…
In preparation for the beta I’ve done several things:
Ten days ago I sent an open invite to would-be beta testers of SAM Reports to some Asterisk related sources:
The goal was to reach highly targeted audience, something like a pseudo-private beta.
Traffic sources for SAM Reports beta test
Most of my traffic came form three sources:
There were 130 Absolute Unique Visitors of which I ruled out 4 from my friends at micropreneur.com (I was asking for their opinion of the site), so that summed up to 126 uniques.
I started submitting the links on February 7th, and today is 17th, so that makes it 10 days. I’ve had 32 sign-ups for a beta test, that is 25%. A very good conversion but not that uncommon for a niche product.
Lesson learned : relevant traffic is much more important that volume.
People clicked the most on the “Tour” button. “Signup for beta” is the biggest button on the page, but I guess people first wanted to see what it’s all about. The “About” section was also popular. I guess visitors want to know who are they dealing with. That made me rethink my about page, and I will be adding more content.
SAM Reports content traffic
The funny thing is that I have put six video demonstrations of the product on the first page, but just a handful clicked on those:
Video Presentations On SAM Reports From Page
I have even added the appropriate hint for the buttons:
SAM Reports Hint Screaming: VIDEO
Even though the hint is screaming “VIDEO” almost no one bothered to pass the mouse over the buttons.
Lesson learned : if you want visitors to see you Camtasia screen cast, why don’t just say so.
When I attended the AstriCon conference in London in 2006, Mark Spencer said that on their first conference a guy came all the way from Nigeria to attend. It was his first visit to the United States. And in London it seemed like a mini UN meeting. Asterisk is truly a multi-national product, connecting people all over the world.
SAM Reports has visitors from all over the world
Northern America does take take the single biggest space, but it’s only 26%. We had visitors from over 40 countries.
This sums up my quest for relevant beta testers and what I have learned about them by looking at Google Analytics. There’s still a lot to be done. The actual beta test is yet to be conducted , so is this post to be continued…
I’ve been involved with Asterisk since 2006. In 2007 my husband and I started an Asterisk integration shop in Croatia. We cater to small businesses, because we are small.
Some of our clients that have small call centers needed a reporting solution. Also some of our other clients expressed a need to see more information about their call traffic. After some consideration I decided to build it using Delphi. I wanted something easy to install, with no maintenance and no pre-install software requirements. It was not meant to be “All-In-One” solution that does configuration, monitoring, click-to-dial, provisioning, etc. Neither was it meant to be a real-time reporting.
It was envisioned to do just one thing, show the call records, for both queues and CDRs, without presuming anything about the underlying system. The main goal of the application is to leverage what is already there in your Asterisk box, thus it operates on log files and not the database that you might have installed, or not.
The goal is also to show the information, as opposed to data, in an orderly and easily understood format. To be able to see multiple information displayed at once without any noise (information overload). Ease of use was also high on my list, therefore I opted for a “drag and drop” approach.
The application is currently used by the two of my clients. (Beta is about to start in 9 days) It was important to make it as simple as possible for them to update their reports when needed. Therefore I included a small SFTP client. Introducing the end users with WinSCP would complicate things too much for them. It’s much easier to click on the “Transfer files” icon from within the application.
SAM Reports is aimed at small businesses using Asterisk. I built it to solve the pain that I had : provide my clients, small businesses, with a reporting solution without the need to make any changes to their Asterisk boxes. And also to give them reporting that’s easy for them to use. I wanted to be able to offer it to both my call-center clients and those without, therefore the application handles both CDRs and queues.
This is a short overview of why we did SAM Reports and how. I’ll be posting here on the development process (changes, what features are planned, what’s coming). I’ll also desrcibe use-cases, real and virtual (aka, what’s possible, what might be a good use of).
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