|
SMDR, or Station Messaging Detail Record, is the data sent by a PBX, or PABX, about
a telephone call to a computer or other device for storage and reporting. Free call accounting trial.
SMDR
SMDR data has information such as:
- The date and time of the call
- The duration of the call
- The telephone extension involved
- The trunk line involved
- The direction of the call, inbound or outbound
- The manner in which the call was completed, for example ring out
- The number dialed - for outbound calls
- Caller id - for inbound calls, this is the phone number that called the PBX
- DDI - for inbound calls, this is the phone number that was dialed
- Account code - an indication that the call was involved with a specific project
- Authorization code - used to gain access to telephone line or class of service,
for example long distance
- Ring time - the duration the phone rang before being answered
There may be multiple SMDR records associated with a single telephone call as the
call is transferred from one extension to another or is handled by an auto-attendant.
A single SMDR record may be represented by one or more lines of text. Simple SMDR
records may look like the following:
2012-05-21 07:54:19 00:04:34 O 103 03 5558360
2012-05-21 07:54:41 00:02:58 O 104 09 5553013
2012-05-21 07:55:49 00:01:20 I 00:02 106 06
2012-05-21 07:55:58 00:00:37 O 109 09 5554709
2012-05-21 07:56:21 00:04:27 I 00:04 108 05
Call Accounting
The SMDR port on a PBX may be connected to a computer running call accounting software.
As each record is received by the call accounting software is it stored in a database
for later reporting.
Call accounting reports may be a simple chronological list of calls, detail reports
of call traffic about specific telephone extensions or trunk lines, total reports
over periods, graphical or other variations.
Simple call accounting applications may run as a program requiring a user to be
logged on to a computer. More appropriate applications might run as a program or
service in the background. Both these types of applications must maintain database
performance by running regular indexing and optimization automatically or by a user.
Database backups must also be maintained by users.
Newer call accounting applications are available as software-as-a-service, or as
cloud computing applications. In these applications the only software that runs
at the customers' location is a small data collection program that sends SMDR call records
to a remote data center and reports can be run from a standard web browser.
A cloud based SMDR call accounting program might look like this one, click here.
|