[BC] SMDR and PBX

[Sherrod Munday]

On Tuesday 13 December 2005 11:38, Jeff Welton wrote:
> SMDR is Station Message Detail Recording. ?Effectively it's a log of all
> incoming and outgoing calls through the PABX (phone system control box),
> identifying trunk lines used and extensions thru which the call was
> routed.

Ditto on the usefulness of SMDR information.  We do exactly the same thing 
here at SRN.  (Only difference is that I have it going into another serial 
port of my voice mail computer, so I'm not archiving to an older PC.)  I have 
also used it to diagnose telco problems (like when all incoming and outgoing 
calls dropped simultaneously - it turned out to be a bad timing card on a 
telco SLIC concentrator that had just gotten installed).

It's really proven quite useful a number of times, including when managers 
want detailed reports of whether employees are misusing their time on the job 
with personal or extremely long calls.

In the worst case, at a former company I worked, we ended up having to let a 
part-timer go because he was making lots of long-distance calls from our 
system -- including outside his normal shift times (he would come in an hour 
early just to make long-distance calls before his shift started).  We gave 
him the printout of the calls he'd made, and he had to reimburse the company.  
That was his warning... and he continued to do it anyway, so we moved on to 
another part-timer.  That was sad, but some people just aren't all there...
-- 
Sherrod Munday <smunday at srnradio.com>
Technical Director
Salem Radio Network    (972) 831-1920