Asterisk Reports Settings | Asterisk Reports Made Simple

This part describes how to setup the application and manage it.

This help file is for the old version of SAM Reports. New version brings more reports and a lot of new features.

There are new help files for Settings for the new version -> SAM Reports2 :

Open the “Options Window” and enter your settings as described below:

Asterisk IP address and login information
Dialplan settings
Country code and your local prefix
If you are running your reports for the first time then take a notice at a special step required to distinguish between extensions (channels) and trunks in your PBX.

Here you enter your login information (user name and password) and the IP address of your Asterisk box. This information is needed so that the included SFTP client application can connect to your PBX seamlessly to download the log files.

Settings - Asterisk IP Address

The only important option on this window is the “PBX Prefix”. This is needed so that the caller-id information form the log files can be correctly identified.

Dialplan Settings

Settings - Country Code

Settings - Local Prefix

Now you can run your reports.

That’s it, you’re set to go!

If your settings are still not complete, you may look here for more detailed overview.

Assuming that the options are properly set, as described above, to run your reports you need to

Download the Asterisk log files (using the integrated SFTP client)
Process the files.

YOU NEED TO DO THIS ONLY IF YOUR LOG FILES HAVE CHANGED!

Otherwise, you can view your reports at any time, without additional actions. Just choose “CDR Reports” or “Queue Reports” in the application.

For example, let’s say you installed SAM Reports for the first time and processed the log files.
You now have a fresh and complete reports.
You view your reports, play with them…
In about a week you would like to refresh your reports, add that week’s data as well.
Then you transfer the files again and process them.
But, SAM Reports will not process the data from the beginning all over again.
SAM reports will only process the difference, in this case only the data for the last week. And that data will be added to the existing data.

When you initiate the file transfer here’s what happens:

1. SFTP client application is launched and it attempts to connect to your Asterisk box. If it succeeds then it looks for the files.
2. First the CDR log file “master.csv” is transferred.
3. After that queue log file “queue_log is transferred.
4. At the end the connection is closed.

Transferring Asterisk Log Files

Now you can start the file processing to create your reports.

Here’s what happens during file processing:

1. First the CDR log file is processed.
2. Then the queue log file is processed.
3. At the end SAM Reports generates queue reports by transforming the non-linear data into a linear structure (that’s all I’m allowed to tell you ).

SAM Reports Processing And Generating Reports

When you run your reports for the first time there is a special step needed to distinguish between channels (extensions) and trunks. The program displays a window after the first processing of CDR log files (master.csv).

First parsing of CDR - Choose channels and trunks

You need to select the appropriate channels and trunks. That is needed to instruct the application which channels are extensions and which are trunks.

Differentiating Channels (Extensions) from Trunks

After that a message box is displayed asking whether it should parse the CDR data again. Answer “Yes” to take the newly discovered data into account.

Adding new found data to existing Asterisk report data

Every time a new channel or trunk is found by processing the CDR log file, this window will appear. You should let the application process the CDR data again, by clicking on the “Yes” button.

SAM Reports keeps it’s data in an embedded database.

The data management tasks are:

Backup and restore
Repair data if needed
Compact the data or empty the database

Backup And Restore

SAM Reports lets you backup the program database. There are two ways of doing it:

Regular backup : you just press the “Backup Database” button. SAM Reports first compacts the database, that means that all the free but unused space is eliminated.
Quick backup does the same thing, but skips the compacting part, thus making it a faster procedure. You can call the “Compact Database” command any time you need to.

SAM reports names the backup file by adding a time stamp to it’s name. You may check this out by looking in the “About” window on the “Application data tab”.

SAM Reports Backup File Names

To restore your database to the most recent backup just click on the “Restore Backup” command. If you want to restore to some other snapshot, delete or move all snapshots following the one that you choose.

Repair and Empty Data

If your database becomes corrupted the program will try to repair it automatically. If you need to you can initiate the repair process manually by clicking on the “Repair Database” command.
If you need to “start over” with you data you can click on the “Empty Database” command. Do not delete the database file, fur the empty command instead. “Empty” database is not really empty. It has some minimal data structures that are required for a proper functioning.

If your Asterisk PBX installation is not a “standard” one and your log files are not in default locations then you can enter your specific files location into program. You can also decide how your copy of SAM Reports should look by dressing it up into one of more that 20 available skins.

If your Asterisk log files are not in the default location then you can enter your exact location in the “Options” window. When you open the “Options” window just go to “General/CDR Options” and here you are (as you can see on the picture below):