Asterisk Reports Made Simple – SAM Reports

Why do I need it?

As I presented in my case, in the previous post, I need a virtual machine of an operational TrixBox PBX (Fonality edition).

• I need it to test connecting to the MySQL database in order to read the CDR and queue data.
• I also need it to further improve on my merging of the log files created by the system, and transferring them.

Privacy issues

• I’m aiming at PBXs that are no longer in use, but have not been refurbished yet.
• I will obfuscate the data. I made a little program, Randy, that generates random names and phone numbers, just for that purpose. I used it to change all the identifiable data from one of my clients. I’m using that data for demonstrating the features of Sam Reports, the owner of this blog.

What’s in it for you?

In Croatian (Ima’l mene tute?)

• If you’re interested in Sam Reports than you might benefit from a free license, once it’s out of beta and released.

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.

Update 2011-12-07 : SAM Reports 2 supports Trixbox/Fonality without any additional modules. Take a look at our new help files.

TrixBox (Fonality) issues

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:

Master.csv

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

Queue_log

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

Merging the files

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.

• It requires that you have copied all the log files and directories from your Fonality box, somewhere on your local disk.
• Then you merge the files with FonalityMerge
• And you get your master.csv and queue_log

Now you can process the log files with Sam Reports and see your reports.

Further improvement

If I get enough inquiries for TrixBox/Fonality support I may opt to do one of the things:

• Make the transfer of directories from Fonality-TrixBox available with a click of a button. That would take into account just the diff between directories and files (the directories and files already present on the local disk would not be transferred any more)
• Or go for the database option and connect directly to the MySQL database with the logs. To do that I would need a working TrixBox with a database that contains meaningful data.  Meaningful means real data generated by using a system for 5-6 month, at least.

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…

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).