Advantages of the Tariscope call accounting system for large companies

As you know, call accounting systems, including Tariscope Enterprise (SoftPI), are used to collect and analyze call data usage (CDR, SMDR, AMA, and others), which allows you to optimize the costs of telephone calls, increase the productivity of company employees related to telephone calls, detect and prevent telephone fraud, and also to improve the company's customer service.

What advantages can the Tariscope Enterprise system provide compared to similar software for large companies?

Often large companies have a branched structure, when parts of the company are in different cities and places. At the same time, different telephone systems from different manufacturers can be used in different offices of the company. Therefore, for centralized collection and analysis of call data throughout the company, there is a need to have software that processes data from all these PBXs, and in addition, has the ability to collect data from remote PBXs.

Tariscope Enterprise (hereinafter we will simply use the name Tariscope) allows you to do this. It supports dozens of types of telephone systems that are most common in the telecommunications market: 3CX, Alcatel-Lucent, Asterisk, Avaya, including all PBXs previously owned by Nortel, AudioCodes, Cisco, Grandstream, Karel, LG, NEC, Kontron (formerly Iskratel), Mitel, including PBXs from Unify, Panasonic, Ribbon Communications, Samsung, and others. If any PBX you have is not on this list, SoftPI is ready to finalize support in Tariscope for the PBX you need, free of charge.

Tariscope allows you to receive CDR data from various sources: TCP server or client, UDP server or client, FTP (SFTP) server or client, SSH, RADIUS, files from a specified folder, Microsoft SQL or MySQL databases, Asterisk AMI, etc. These sources cover virtually all CDR receiving options used in telephone systems.

And in addition, Tariscope has the ability to receive data from a remotely operating Tariscope Observer service, which can be installed directly next to the PBX hundreds or thousands of kilometers from the Tariscope server. This is relevant, for example, for legacy PBXs that transmit CDR via a serial port. In this case, Tariscope Observer receives CDR data via a serial port and then transmits it to the Tariscope system via an IP network.

Remote Tariscope Observer services can also be relevant when the user has dozens of remote PBXs from which CDR collection is performed. In this case, a separate server can be installed for part of the Tariscope Observer services so as not to overload the main Tariscope server.

The more PBXs a user has, the more difficult it is to monitor that CDR information is continuously received by Tariscope from the PBXs. And there may be various obstacles: network damage, routing changes, firewall rule changes, and others. In order for the Tariscope administrator to respond in a timely manner to a delay in receiving CDR data, Tariscope contains a Call Monitoring system. This system creates a model of receiving calls from a specific PBX and, if the expected time for receiving the next CDR data from the PBX deviates from the expected time, this system notifies the administrator so that he can quickly determine the problem and eliminate it.

Large companies have a large employee structure. Accordingly, it is desirable that the call accounting system can support any such structure. Tariscope allows you to create any hierarchical employee structure, which has no restrictions on the number of levels of such a hierarchy and allows you to receive reports on any division of the company.

Tariscope allows you to create system administrators with different access rights, for example, there may be administrators who will be able to manage only a separate group of subscribers from a certain division of the company.

Tariscope supports synchronization of subscriber parameters with AD (LDAP), which significantly simplifies subscriber administration in Tariscope. The user only needs to create a profile for such synchronization and assign this work to the Tariscope Scheduler.

Tariscope includes Tariscope Personal Area, which allows an individual subscriber to review their calls and, if necessary, set categories for their calls, for example, business and private. This allows you to create reports that will contain data on the costs of calls, both work-related and private. Department managers in their Tariscope Personal Area have the opportunity to review the calls of their subordinates and check the correctness of the assignment of category for calls.

When a company has its own corporate telephone system, the question arises of identifying corporate calls and distinguishing them from external calls. In Tariscope, you can configure the system to identify corporate calls.

If company employees have corporate mobile phones, and the mobile operator provides information about calls from these phones, Tariscope allows you to import this data into the system and perform a complete analysis of costs for all types of phone calls.

Tariscope has various methods for providing information about missed calls, as this can lead to lost contacts and, accordingly, lost revenue. There are reports for this that can be received on a schedule, in addition, such information can be displayed on the dashboard, and you can also receive an instant notification via email or messenger immediately after receiving such a call. Such a notification can be sent both to the Tariscope administrator and directly to the employee to whom this call was assigned.

A large company usually means high costs for telephone calls and problems with not exceeding the company's budget for telephone calls. Tariscope has a restriction function that allows you to set limits for a specific type of telephone traffic, both for each subscriber and for a group of subscribers as a whole. You can also set a limit for a separate gateway or trunk. When the limit is exhausted, Tariscope sends a command to the PBX that changes the class of service for a specific subscriber, group of subscribers or gateway (trunk), prohibiting telephone traffic. From the beginning of the next month, Tariscope restores access. This way, you can clearly implement the company's budget for telephone calls.

Tariscope can be installed on both Windows and Linux, so no matter what OS you use in your company, you can use Tariscope.

Anyone wishing to test the above Tariscope functionality can download the installation for free, install the system and receive a free activation key from SoftPI for 1 month for full-featured testing. SoftPI support can help with setting up the system and show you how to work with it.

Retrieving CDR data from Alcatel-Lucent OmniPCX Enterprise (Alcatel-Lucent OXE) via FTP

The Tariscope Enterprise call accounting system and the Tariscope Provider billing system (SoftPI) can receive CDR data from the Alcatel-Lucent OXE using various PBX ports. This can be done over a local network or the Internet using TCP or FTP protocols, or via a serial port. The latter case is already quite outdated, so we will not consider it, although Tariscope also has such an option. A description of how to receive CDR data from Alcatel-Lucent OXE using TCP is given in the article "Alcatel-Lucent OXE. Receiving CDR via TCP in Tariscope". In the current article, we will consider how to configure Tariscope to receive CDR via FTP.

The Alcatel-Lucent OXE contains files named TAX-----.DAT. These are actually 7z archive files, so if you change the extension of this file from DAT to 7z, the file contents can be unzipped, for example, using the 7-Zip application.

Before starting Tariscope Observer (Observer), it is essential to correctly specify the date format used in CDR files for correct processing of CDR records. If the date format is specified incorrectly, errors will occur when processing CDR records and the data will not be entered into the Tariscope database.

To determine the date format, you need to unpack one of the CDR files (TAX*.DAT). An example of the unpacked file with the date and time value highlighted is shown in Figure 1.

 Figure 1

For the value displayed in Figure 1 in the PBX parameters shown in Figure 2, the following format should be selected: yyyyMMdd HH:mm:ss

Figure 2

Or, if you already have Observer running and it is receiving these files, select Current Data File (CDR/SMDR) from the Observer menu. The Service Log page will be displayed, where you can see the date and time format.

In the Tariscope system, both Tariscope Enterprise and Tariscope Provider, Observer modules are used to collect CDR (SMDR). To create a new Observer, select Data Collection/Observer -> Observer management in the Tariscope system menu. The Data Collection/Observer page will appear, where you can click the Add icon on the toolbar and select New Observer. The New Observer window will appear, where you need to enter its name, for example, Alcatel-Lucent OXE. In the window confirming the creation of the Observer, click the Settings button. As a result, the Tariscope Observer configuration page will appear, an example of which is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Creating a new Observer assumes that the user has already created and configured the PBX settings.

To select the created PBX in the Observer settings, click the "here" link and select the name of the created PBX. In the Data source list, select the FTP client value, and click the Data source configuration button to the right of the list. The Data source configuration window will be displayed, an example of which is shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4

A feature of the FTP client settings for processing CDR files from Alcatel-Lucent OXE is the setting of the Unpack 7-zip switch. This means that the received files will be unpacked using the 7-zip archive. All other FTP client settings for receiving files from Alcatel-Lucent OXE are no different from those described in the document “Tariscope 4.6. Administrator Guide”.

How to control phone call costs?

Any medium or large company or organization that has a PBX is faced with the issue of controlling the use of funds for telephone calls. This can be especially relevant for government agencies, because they spend not their personal funds, but taxpayers' funds. There have long been organizational methods where orders at the enterprise stipulate the specifics of the use of telephone communications. But as practice shows, these orders are not always carried out by all employees. Can this be done using computer programs? Yes, this is exactly what the Tariscope Enterprise (hereinafter Tariscope) call accounting system from SoftPI is. And this is proven by the fact that this system has thousands of users in more than 40 countries.

How does Tariscope do it?

First, Tariscope has a rather unique feature compared to similar systems, namely the restriction feature. This feature allows the system administrator to set limits on the use of either any or a specific type of telephone traffic for specific subscribers or for a group of subscribers. After the limit is exhausted, Tariscope sends commands to the PBX, which changes the class of service of the subscriber, or group of subscribers, if the limit was set for a group of subscribers. With the beginning of a new month, Tariscope automatically restores the previous value of the class of service to subscribers to whom the limit was set. Thus, a company that has a monthly budget for telephone calls will strictly adhere to this budget.

Secondly, Tariscope contains a large number of opportunities for analyzing calls made. These are views for calls that allow you to choose the order and the required number of fields describing the call, sorting information by any field, filter data by various criteria, and group data by different fields, as well as a large number of various report forms. All this allows you to get a complete picture of how departments and subscribers use funds for telephone conversations.

Finally, Tariscope allows subscribers to access information about their calls through the Tariscope Personal Area, where subscribers are allowed to categorize their calls, for example, business or private. The head of the department has the opportunity to check this information on the calls of his subordinates, and if necessary, edit the categories. As a result, in Tariscope it is possible to generate reports by call categories, and if the company considers it necessary, to reduce the cost of their private telephone conversations from the employees' salaries. If you have any doubts about the above Tariscope capabilities, we suggest downloading Tariscope and testing it for free.

Automation of work Tariscope 

Tariscope is a call accounting system (Tariscope Enterprise) or a billing system for telecommunications operators (Tariscope Provider). If there is no need to specify the Tariscope edition in the future, we will use the name either Tariscope or the Tariscope system.

Each Tariscope user has their own set of operations that they most often perform in the system. If it is not a search for some calls, which is performed each time according to specific parameters and which cannot be automated, then the Tariscope Tasks allows you to automatically perform the most common operations on a schedule. Here is a list of tasks that the Tariscope Scheduler can perform:

• Generating reports.
• Creating database backups.
• Archiving call information.
• Updating currency rates.
• Synchronizing subscriber parameters with the company's Active Directory.
• Charging periodic services.
• Sending some information to subscribers.
• Launching applications.
• Performing a group of tasks.

Reports

The most common action in the Tariscope system is generating some reports. If such reports need to be generated periodically, it is more correct to create a corresponding task for the Tariscope Tasks, which will automatically execute this task according to the schedule. When creating a task for generating reports, you can specify the date and time of the first execution of the task, as well as the period after which it will be repeated. The following periods are possible for the execution of any tasks by the Tariscope Tasks, including those for generating reports:

• One-time. The task will be executed only once. If you need to do this task again, you must either change the date of its first execution or set a different period.
• Every minute. The task will be executed every minute.
• Every hour. The task will be executed every hour.
• Daily. The task will be executed once a day.
• Weekly. The task will be executed once a week.
• Monthly. The task will be executed once a month.
• Yearly. The task will be executed once a year.
• At service start. The task will be executed once when the Tariscope Tasks service starts. The Tariscope Tasks service starts automatically when the Tariscope server starts in the Tariscope Start application (when running on Windows) or can be started manually (when running on Windows or Linux).

In the case when it is necessary for the task to be executed, for example, not every hour, but after 4 hours, then this period of 4 hours is set in the Every textbox. The default value is 1.

In the case when the task of generating a report should be performed not for one, but for every subscriber of a certain group, then you can specify such a group of subscribers. Details on how to do this are described in the article "Automatic generation of reports only for a specified group of subscribers in Tariscope".

If the reports that the Tariscope Tasks should generate are related to call information, then to limit the calls that should be processed, you can select the appropriate filter in the Filter list. If this list does not contain the required filter, you can create it in the call view.

The task for generating reports allows you to select the folder where the reports will be stored, set the report file name template, specify whether this report is generated for each subscriber and whether subscribers will have access to their reports through the Tariscope Personal Area.

The generated report(s) can also be received by the Tariscope administrator via e-mail.

Tariscope contains many various report forms. At the same time, it allows users to independently edit existing report forms or create their own. 

Creating database backups

Practically all information of the Tariscope system is stored in the database. Failure of the server where Microsoft SQL server is installed, or hacker attack can lead to loss of all information. Therefore, we recommend periodically creating backup copies of the database and storing them on other servers or media. This operation can be performed manually in Tariscope or using Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio.

But in order not to forget to do it on time, it is easier to create a corresponding task in the Tariscope Tasks. It is possible to set the creation of both a full backup and a differential copy.

Call archiving

The Tariscope installation package contains the installation of Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition. This edition has a database size limit of 10 GB. If the database reaches this size, further processing of new call information will be stopped. Instead of the specified edition of SQL Server, the user can use paid editions that do not have such a limit. But even on such editions, with a significant increase in the size of the database, SQL queries may slow down. Therefore, in both cases, using a free edition of SQL Server or a paid one, it makes sense to periodically archive call information for past periods that are not of interest now.

This operation in Tariscope can be activated manually, but it is easier to transfer it to the Tariscope Tasks. As for the task of creating a database backup, we recommend storing the call archive file on a physically different server or media than the SQL server.

Currency exchange rate updates

This task may be relevant only when calls or services are specified in different currencies and there is a need to convert them into the base currency. The task allows you to automatically obtain the exchange rates of the required currencies from a given web site.

Synchronization of subscriber parameters with AD

This task may be relevant only for users of the Tariscope Enterprise edition, if the company has Active Directory (AD). To perform data synchronization, the Tariscope administrator must first create the appropriate AD profile before creating a data synchronization task. And then in the task parameters, select this profile and set the date, time and period for data synchronization.

Charging for periodic services

This task is relevant only for users of the Tariscope Provider edition who charge periodic services to subscribers. Any services in Tariscope can be charged as needed manually, but it is easier to assign this operation to the Tariscope Tasks. The Tariscope Tasks allows you to create separate tasks for charging periodic services for separate groups of subscribers.

Sending messages

This task may be more relevant for telecom operators using Tariscope Provider when it is necessary to simultaneously send a message to a specific group of subscribers. But this task can also be used by Tariscope Enterprise users. In order for this task to work, you need to configure the email sending settings in Tariscope and specify their email addresses in the subscriber settings.

Running an application

Report forms, which are created on the basis of Report Definition Language (RDL), allow you to perform many different actions with data. But sometimes it is easier to perform some actions with separate applications that users have created themselves. As the simplest example of using this task is copying some Tariscope system logs, possibly with prior archiving and subsequent deletion of these logs, so that Tariscope creates a new log. Tariscope allows you to create a corresponding task that will periodically launch the required application.

Group of tasks

Sometimes it is necessary to perform a group of tasks, and the completion of the tasks depends on the result of the previous task.

As an example of this: a telecommunications operator performs charging periodic services, performs a report that calculates VAT for subscribers for the month, and reports are performed on the formation of invoices, receipts, and acts for subscribers.

Different options for task groups are possible:

1. Independent chain. Each subsequent task in the group will be launched for execution without analyzing the result of the previous task.
2. Dependent chain. Each subsequent task in the group will be launched for execution only if the previous task was successfully completed.
3. Independent chain with feedback. Launching tasks in the group is similar to option 1, but if any task is unsuccessful, an attempt will be made to execute it again. The number of task execution attempts is configurable. If all attempts are exhausted, but the task has not been successfully completed, the next task in the list will still be launched for execution.
4. Dependent chain with feedback. This group is similar to option 3, but if the execution attempts are exhausted and the task has not been successfully completed, the next task in the list will not be executed. The execution chain stops.
5. Run all together. All tasks in the group will be launched simultaneously in different threads, without a queue for their execution.

As we mentioned at the beginning of the article, the Tariscope Tasks implements the tasks that users use most often. At the same time, existing Tariscope users, or those who plan to purchase it, may have wishes for creating new tasks for the Tariscope Tasks. In this case, please send your wishes to the SoftPI support service.