What you need to know
The Service Assurance feature, also known as the Calling Metrics Dashboard, provides an overall call quality view that includes call and site statistics, per-call media ratings, and SIP signaling details. Service assurance is included in all packages and on-premise equipment is not required. All devices are supported.
Understanding the Calling Metrics dashboard and the data it provides is key to using it effectively.
- Data is collected for all devices from the SBCs that endpoints register to at the edge of the cloud. For example, if Alice calls an external PSTN number (phone number), the data shown refers to the packets transmitted by Alice’s device and received by the cloud.
- The dashboard collects data from access side SBCs, therefore only calls answered on a registered device will be listed. A call received from an external phone number and redirected to another external phone number is an example of a call that would not be listed in the dashboard.
Launching the Calling Metrics Dashboard
The Calling Metrics Dashboard is accessed through the admin portal. To open the full service assurance dashboard, follow these steps:
- Log in to the admin portal.
- The service assurance panel is on the admin portal dashboard.
- From the service assurance panel, select the Calling Metrics Dashboard.
- The Calling Metrics Dashboard opens in a new window on the main dashboard screen.
Note: If you do not see the service assurance panel within your admin portal, contact your service provider.
Understanding the Dashboard
The main dashboard gives an at-a-glance visualization of the usage of the system and the media quality experienced by a customer.
The bell notification icon showcases new feature releases available for the Calling Metrics dashboard and provides insight to “What’s New” and a link to the new feature documentation.
Note: Each new feature notification displays for 2 weeks.
Call Quality
- The Poor Calls section shows the number of calls within your domain having MOS scores below 3.2 in the last 24 hours.
- The Good Calls section shows the number of calls within your domain having MOS scores above 3.8 in the last 24 hours.
- The Call Quality section identifies the top poor call sites in conjunction with a call quality breakdown. The call quality is provided in 3 categories within the last 24 hours for an individual site:
- Good (MOS > 3.8)
- Fair (MOS 3.2 to 3.8)
- Poor (MOS < 3.2)
- The Devices pie chart displays a breakdown of which devices were in use across the selected customer site.
- You can view usage on particular sites by using the drop down menu at the top right of the dashboard and making your selection. If a customer has several sites, you can switch from one site to another. Simply begin typing the name of the site to quickly find it, the search is flexible and matches any text from the site name.
- The graphs and visualizations presented on the dashboard are all exportable in a variety of formats for further analysis outside of the dashboard. To export a graph, select the More Options icon in the top, right-hand corner of the graph you would like to print or download.
Reading the Calling Metrics View
The Calling Metrics view displays a list of calls made during a given time period with complete call details. You can select a site and time period to view a list of calls and associated media quality information. Columns can be sorted to display calls in order of whichever metric is pertinent to the problem that is being worked.
Within the Customizable Column, the Additional Settings button allows a user to customize the column they want to view under the Call Metrics tab. This provides the ability to add or remove additional fields as well as organize and reorder columns.
To customize your column view, click on the Additional Settings tab and select the individual fields from the drop-down menu or click the Select All option.
Note: Only fields under the Additional Settings tab can be customized. The fields listed below are set to default and cannot be removed.
- Start time
- Duration
- Calling Number
- Caller
- Called Number
- Callee
- Call Quality
- Packet loss (PL) %
- More Info
Download Button
The download button for Call Detail Records (CDR) provides the ability to download the contents of CDR metadata. It offers insight on how a specific phone number and/or users are utilizing the phone system and helps to identify their calling trends.
By navigating to the Calling Metrics tab, you can choose any site and date then select the download button. This will download the CDR contents in excel file format.
Note: The downloaded file is not site specific and contains calling trends for all sites. Additionally, only a day worth of data can be downloaded.
Call Type
The Call Type column in the Call Details list allows you to quickly identify what type of call a particular record is associated with. It is important to note that the only records that are shown on the Call Metrics Dashboard are those that had a media session. The dashboard, by design, does not show unanswered calls. A complete view of call history can be seen under the Analytics tab in the Calling Admin Portal.
Call Type Examples:
- Call Transfer:
- At 09:34 PM, Alice called Bob (+14307973003 -> +14307973004), Call duration 223 seconds.
- Bob initiated a call transfer to Carol.
- At 09:36 PM, Alice and Carol were in conversation (+14307973003 -> +14307973005).
- The dashboard lists two calls because there were two media sessions. First call would be Alice to Bob (09:34 PM) and the second call would be Alice to Carol (09:36 PM).
- The “Call Type Column” Indicates that this is a “Call Transfer” scenario.
- The “redirecting number” explains who attempted the transfer. In this case, it would be Bob’s number (+14307973004).
- The “reason” explains that there was a “deflection” during a course of the call which indicates call transfer.
- Hunt Group:
- At 10:27 PM, Dave called a Hunt Group number.
- Alice is an agent on this Hunt Group, and she attended the call.
- Dave and Alice spoke for 121 seconds (+14307973002 To +14307973003).
- The dashboard lists one call as the call had one media session. I.e., Dave (caller) to Alice(callee) at 10:27 PM.
The “Call Type Column” indicates that this is a “Hunt Group” scenario. - The “redirecting number” denotes the actual “hunt group” number (+14307973009) which then forked the other agent phone number.
Call Quality and Packet Loss (PL%) Columns)
The Call Quality and PL % columns in the Call metrics tab list allow you to quickly identify media quality problems for a particular call.
Call Quality
Call quality is represented as Good/Fair/Poor based on the Mean Opinion Score (MOS). It reflects the worst media quality reported by the Cisco SBCs for the media session. This includes media in both the transmitting and receiving direction. Here is the call quality criteria:
- Good Call: MOS > 3.8
- Fair Call: MOS ranges in-between 3.2 to 3.8
- Poor Call: MOS < 3.2
Packet Loss (PL%)
The PL% value represents the Average Packet Loss for a call conversation. The value may represent the highest of either the caller to callee media portion or the callee to caller media portion.
Call Details
On the Call Details page, the SIP call flow section shows the requests and responses made by the caller and callee for the selected call.
Select the Call Stream Metrics column to show the Packet Loss over time, if it’s available for a particular call.
Data Retention
Data retention for the Calling Metrics Dashboard is 30 days for general call and media quality data. SIP signalling and Call Stream data is available for 7 days.
Troubleshooting Examples
These examples are common media quality issues and how you would investigate them using the service assurance dashboard. With these tips, you can quickly narrow down an issue.
Example 1: A single user reports poor media quality
If a single user reports poor media quality, use the service assurance dashboard to do the following:
- Check the user’s site on the dashboard, and by looking at individual call records, determine if all users are experiencing problems?
- If other users are also seeing issues, use the filtering tools to view past calls to see when this issue began and troubleshoot the sites network connectivity, using Examinet or other tools.
- If other users are not seeing issues, filter/sort the calls to view that user’s calls only.
- From this list, it should be clear if there is a pattern to their calling issues:
- All calls from a particular device have issues, but calls from other devices are ok.
- Troubleshoot that single device.
- Only calls at busy periods are showing issues.
- This points to bandwidth contention during busy periods.
- Other users using a particular device type are also having issues.
- These devices may be having issues on the customer’s network.
Example 2: A single site shows bad media quality in the admin portal
The service assurance dashboard can isolate a list of calls for a particular site by filtering on the Call Details page.
- From this list, problem calls can be sorted and the following patterns identified to isolate the problem.
- Are the problem calls coming from the same user?
- Are the problem calls happening every day at the same time?
- Are the problem calls specific to a device type?