Detail Analysis Of Program Design Tools

Analysis of Call Detail Records (CDR)
using Excel Addin

GL's CDR Analysis System is designed for capturing all calls and all events (including voice quality) during the call, on any network type such as TDM, IP, or Wireless.

Brochure

Overview

Call monitoring and recording applications used by telecommunication companies generate extremely large amount of call detail records (CDRs) in real-time, and companies constantly need to leverage from this data to boost productivity. The volume of the calls and data captured by the call monitoring applications is so large that it impossible to manually analyze and conclude the behavior of the network.

When "problem calls" occur infrequently but often enough, they can negatively affect productivity and efficiency of a thriving business. Such calls are often not reproducible or predictable. For example, when a call suddenly disconnects during the middle of a call or,

there is voice in one direction but not the other
there is echo, or noise, or level issues in one direction and not the other
there are signaling issues such as - "no wink", "no ringing or ringback", "no call connection"
"mid-call digits" are not passed reliably during an IVR transaction
digits are split or merged causing incorrect called or calling numbers

When such calls occur and users complain, engineers need data to analyze "why such a problem occurred", but the volume of calls presents a needle in a haystack condition. Analyzing the CDRs allows you to

Drill-down to problem calls and identify the cause
Monitor daily operations
Identify customer behavior
Network usage and performance monitoring or daily or weekly basis

CDR Analysis System

GL's CDR Analysis System is designed for capturing all calls and all events (including voice quality) during the call, on any network type such as TDM, IP, or Wireless. Signaling, alarm, and call capture over IP or TDM lines is performed with capturing tools such as PacketScan™ or T1 E1 Call Capture and Analysis. The system allows one to understand and analyze the captured call detail records, troubleshoot call failures, and provide insight into the overall performance.
Additional tools such as Advanced Excel® Addins, can be used to drill down to specific call, play or download the voice file, and generate graphs.

The CDR Analysis System permits,

Capture for extended periods of time from hours to months
Once calls are captured, a search for "calls of interest" can be performed while live capturing continues
Drill-down to problem calls for post analysis
Additionally, monitor daily operations
Identify customer and user calling patterns
Network usage and performance monitoring on a daily or weekly basis
Trunk sizing, utilization

Excel® as CDR Analysis Tool

Excel® has the capability to handle large volumes of structured data, in-built statistical features, and offers easy automation through VBA programming, with which you can extract useful information from the captured call detail records with aclick-of-a-button. In some cases where the data is unstructured, and complex, Excel® is not preferable for data analysis.

GL's Advanced Excel® Addin is available as a customized application with the GL'sCDR Analysis System to leverage from the Microsoft® Excel's capability to handle large volumes of data, inbuilt statistics, graphical features, and automation. This tool is frequently used by many Carriers, and Service Providers to analyze CDR on various network platforms such as TDM, IP, or Wireless.

GL's Advanced Excel® Addin reads the records stored in a structured format such as CSV. It offers several parameters from the records to get to the calls-of-interest (COI). The add-in uses a combination of Excel® Pivot Table and Advanced Filtering features to perform filtering on these parameters. The filtered records view is be facilitated using a customized Windows® application that organizes and displays the information from CDR in a way you want. Viewing CDRs in this format is very informative in itself. However, you can also design a custom Pivot Table and generate Pivot Charts linked to this table. This helps to analyze and summarize the required information in table or graphical forms. Once you have the PivotTable designed, use Excel® inbuilt VBA support to program and automate repetitive tasks.

Excel® Addin programs can be easily customized per customer requirements. Searching for unique conditions, such as "no wink", "low MOS scores", "call with specific digits" can be quickly performed during post analysis. Some typical case studies are described below.

CASE STUDIES

CASE STUDY #1 : Filter and select calls-of-interest, drill-down to problem calls, and view the call details.

With ourCDR analysis tools, the CDR column headers can be extracted and summarized in a GUI to allow customer to choose to the filter parameter.

Some examples include –

Filtering for calls with certain mid-call digits
Filtering for abruptly terminated calls without dial tones, ring tones, or DTMF digits
Filtering for calls based on release codes, duration of the calls, or based on Start and Released timestamp of the calls
Filtering for calls based on quality of call with MOS scores, R-factor, release codes, and so on

CDR finding calls of interest with midcall digits

CASE STUDY #2 : Ability to play the voice files of a call-of-interest from the local or ftp directory.

Our CDR analysis tools contain the information on the captured voice files path, and file name for every call. Using advanced Excel® addin, you can filter for the particular call-of-interest and play the voice files corresponding to this call using a 3rd party audio editing software (such as Goldwave). You can also customize the excel to download these voice files to a particular directory after playing using the audio editing software.

CDR palying voice from filtered call of interest

CASE STUDY #3 : Organizing CDR data from different applications into a single GUI

Different call monitoring applications may produce different type of analysis results pertaining to a single call. The data type, columns, and the structure may be different the records output. Such records can be imported to excel, called within Excel® using by identifying a key id that links all these results to a call. With Excel®, one can develop a custom GUI to display the records from different applications pertaining to a call and explore all the call details.

For example, the screenshot here is displaying a ISDN call capture records by different applications, one producing the call summary such as called number, calling number, timestamp, & detail call signaling events, while another application is producing the voice band analysis. All these have been accommodated into a single GUI using Excel® VBA for ease of monitoring.

CDR merged reports

CASE STUDY #4 : Find calls by 'Day of the Week' or by 'Hour of the Day' (24-hr period call analysis)

If you are interested in looking at the pattern of calls made throughout the day during the week, or the number of calls for one particular day, or looking at a call placed at a particular minute, then with GL's CDR Analysis tools you can summarize this data either in tabular format or graphical format or both. Similarly, one can also plot the total and average call duration per hour, per week, or month.

CDR call volume graph and table

CASE STUDY #5 :Analyze quality and network performance over an All-IP network from the call detail records, voiceband statistics, and captured calls.

The structured report from our network monitoring software, such as PacketScan™, can be easily imported into Excel® using custom addin. The addin allows to filter the required calls, analyze CDRs using pivot tables and generate different charts, such as call volumes, call duration, call failure causes, conversational mos, listening mos, packet loss, and more. Brief list of charts that can be customized are listed below:

Call Volume and Duration over the day, week or month
Call failure causes, answered or unanswered calls
Session disconnect delay(SDD) ,Post dial delay (PDD)
MOS scores – conversational (CMOS), listening (LMOS)
Average packet loss, jitter, and delay

CDR average packet loss average cmos graphs

Resources

Please Note: The XX in the Item No. refers to the hardware platform, listed at the bottom of the Buyer's Guide, which the software will be running on. Therefore, XX can either be ETA or EEA (Octal/Quad Boards), PTA or PEA (tProbe Units), UTA or UEA (USB Units), HUT or HUE (Universal Cards), and HDT or HDE (HD cards) depending upon the hardware.

	T1 E1 CDR Analysis System
Item No.	Item Description
	(The system requires any of the below mentioned T1 or E1 platforms with Basic Software)
PTA031 PEA031 VBA032 VBA036 CDR032 MS Excel 2010 SA048 SA017B SA007e SA002b	Enhanced Call Capture Analysis for T1 Enhanced Call Capture Analysis for E1 Voiceband Analyzer Traffic Analysis for VBA Call Data Records Advanced Filtering of Calls Goldwave Software RJ-48C Crossover Cables RJ-48 Y Bridge Dual 75/120 Ohm Transformer
	Packet over TDM CDR Analysis System
	(The system requires any of the below mentioned T1 or E1 platforms with Basic Software)
PTA135 PTA136 VBA032 VBA036 CDR032 MS Excel 2010 SA048 SA017B SA007e SA002b	PPP and MLPPP Analyzer Packet Analysis for PPP and MLPPP Analyzer Voiceband Analyzer Traffic Analysis for VBA Call Data Records Advanced Filtering of Calls Goldwave Software RJ-48C Crossover Cables RJ-48 Y Bridge Dual 75/120 Ohm Transformer
	Packet over IP CDR Analysis System
PKV100 PTA136 PKV301 VBA032 VBA036 CDR032 MS Excel 2010 SA048	PacketScan Packet Analysis for PPP and MLPPP Analyzer LAN Switch w/Mirror Port Voiceband Analyzer Traffic Analysis for VBA Call Data Records Advanced Filtering of Calls Goldwave Software
	Related Software
XX020	Record/Playback File Software
XX051	Synchronous Trunk Record Playback
XX019	Transmit/Receive File Utility Software
SA026	Adobe Audition Software
SA048	Goldwave Software
SA021	File Edit Software
VBA032	Near Real-time Voice-band Analyzer
	Related Hardware
PTE001	*tProbe™* Dual T1 E1 Laptop Analyzer with Basic Analyzer Software
HDT001/HDE001	Legacy HD T1 or E1 (PCI) Cards with Basic Analyzer Software
HTE001	Universal T1/E1 Card with Basic Analyzer Software
UTE001	Portable USB based Dual T1 or E1 Laptop Analyzer with Basic Analyzer Software

Back to Call Data Records Page