Working with Call Detail Records

The MCU is able to generate Call Detail Records (CDR) which may be used for auditing and billing purposes. When logging is enabled, records are generated whenever a conference starts or finishes, when participants join and leave conferences and so forth.

The MCU can display up to 20 pages of Call Detail Records. However, the MCU is not intended to provide long-term storage of Call Detail Records. You must download the Call Detail Records and store them elsewhere.

To use the CDR feature, there must be a 256 Mb compact flash card available - in the slot in the front of the unit. If there is no compact flash card present, and you have enabled CDR logging, errors will be recorded in the Event log.

When enabled, the CDR log is stored on the compact flash card and displayed on the Events > CDR log page. You can either view the CDR log on that page, or you can download it as an XML file. You cannot read from the compact flash card using any device other than the MCU.

When the CDR log is full, the oldest logs are overwritten.

To view and control the CDR log, go to Events > CDR log. Refer to the tables below for details of the options available and a description of the information displayed.

Call Detail Record log controls
Call Detail Record log

Call Detail Record log controls

The CDR log can contain a lot of information. The controls in this section help you to select the information for display that you find most useful. When you have finished making changes, click Update display to make those changes take effect. Refer to the table below for a description of the options:

Field	Field description	Usage tips
Current status	This field indicates whether CDR logging is enabled or disabled. Use the two buttons (Enable logging and Disable logging) to change status. When you enable logging, the MCU writes the CDRs to the compact flash card.	Enabling or disabling CDR logging has immediate effect. There is no need to press Update display after clicking one of these buttons. Ensure there is a compact flash card available - either in the slot on the front of the unit or internally.
Messages logged	The current number of CDRs in the log.
Filter string	Use this field to limit the scope of the displayed Call Detail Records. The filter string is not case-sensitive.	The filter string applies to the Message field in the log display. If a particular record has expanded details, the filter string will apply to these as well.
Expand details	By default, the CDR log shows only brief details of each event. When available, select from the options listed to display more details.	Selecting All will show the greatest amount of detail for all messages, regardless of which other options are checked.

Call Detail Record log

This table shows the logged Call Detail Records, subject to any filtering applied (see Call Detail Record log controls, above). The fields displayed and the list's associated controls are described below:

Downloading and clearing the log
CDR log display

Downloading and clearing the log

The CDR log includes all stored Call Detail Records, and all available details, regardless of the current filtering and display settings. It is possible to download all or part of the CDR log in XML format using the web interface. When you start logging, the download button shows the range of record numbers but the delete button is greyed out until the log holds a certain number of logs.

To download the CDR log, click Download as XML to download all the log or Download X to Y as XML to download a range of events. (Note that if there are a large number of logged Call Detail Records, it may take several seconds to download and display them all.)

The range of logs that you can download to the web interface works in groups. Therefore you may see Download X to Y as XML and Y will not increase even though the log is filling up. When a threshold is reached, then Y increases. However, you always have the option to download the full log with Download as XML.

In addition the web interface displays a maxmium of 20 pages. If the log includes more events than can be displayed on those paes, the more recent events are displayed. Therefore you may see Download X to Y as XML where X keeps increasing when the page is refreshed. Again you can download the full log with Download as XML.

To clear the CDR log, click Delete X to Y. This will permanently remove Call Detail Records X to Y. Due to the way the CDR log works, it may not be possible to delete all records; the button name indicates which records can be deleted. For example, if you delete the 0-399 entries, then the 400th entry appears as the first entry in this page, even if you download the full log. The download button would then show that you can download say 400-674 (if 674 is the maximum number of entries in the log) and the delete button will be greyed out again (because it is only available when a certain number of entries are in the log).

To avoid duplicate entries when you download repeatedly, each time delete the entries that you have just downloaded.

CDR log display

The CDR log list shows some or all of the stored records, depending on the filtering and display settings (see Call Detail Record log controls). Click on a column heading to sort by that field. Refer to the table below to understand the fields displayed in the CDR log list:

Field	Field description	Usage tips
# (record number)	The unique index number for this Call Detail Record.
Time	The time at which the Call Detail Record was created.	Records are created as different conference events occur. The time the record was created is the time that the event occurred. Changing the time or NTP settings of the MCU will affect the displayed time for the Call Detail Records. For more information, refer to Further information about CDR time field, below.
Conference	The number of the conference to which this record applies	Each new conference is created with a unique numeric index. All records pertaining to a particular conference display the same conference number. This can make auditing conference events much simpler.
Message	The type of the Call Detail Record, and brief details, if available.	The display settings allow you to display more extensive details for different record types. The filter string allows you to select for display only records where a particular word or string occurs.

Further information about CDR time field

The CDR log time stamp is stored in UTC time and not local time like the Event log, but converted to local time when displayed in the CDR log.

Changing the time and NTP’s UTC Offset (on the Settings > Time page) will affect the CDR log time in the following ways:

Changing the time, either changing the system time or via an NTP update will cause new CDR logs to show the new time but no change will be made to existing logged CDR events
With NTP enabled, setting a UTC offset will change the displayed time for all the CDR events; the stored time will remain the same because it is stored in UTC and the offset is applied for display purposes
Enabling or disabling NTP when an offset is configured will cause the display time to change for all existing events and the UTC time will change for logging future CDR events. This is because, when NTP is disabled, the current time is treated as UTC with an offset of 0