[asterisk-dev] Need some review and criticism for CEL (Channel Event Logging) (the new CDR attack)

[Andreas Sikkema]

On Friday 11 May 2007 22:15:21 Steve Murphy wrote:
> Please, for those billing experts out there, could you read the docs and
> give me your candid thoughts? If you can give it a spin, that'd be
> really nice! If you hate it, adore it, let me know. I'll be working on
> generating some common scenarios. If you'd like to help supply such
> example code, let me know.

I've read the tex file and I'm missing a couple of things. Currently Asterisk 
CDR's are more or less impossible to relate to external call identifying 
information (be it ISDN CallReference values or SIP CallID's, etc.) without 
some really ugly hacks. 

Instead of an extra field somewhere, why not change the UserEvent to include 
some (reasonably long) data, like for instance the call id, or some other 
data the dialplan creator wants to log with a call. 

Maybe an extension of the CELGenUserEvent application like this:

CELGenUserEvent(eventname, eventdata)

Example:

.....
exten => s,22,CELGenUserEvent(SIP-CallID,${SIPCALLID})
.....

or

.....
exten -> s,691,CELGenUserEvent(Remark,Not allowed to dial 0900 numbers)
.....

etc.


The second thing I'm missing is Channel status updates after a lengthy period, 
say every hour (configurable). From what more experienced colleagues tell mee 
this is quite common on (in their words) "normal" PBXes. These update CDRs 
are used as proof that the billing system didn't miss the end of the call and 
that it really was after 12 hours that the call had ended, instead of just 
after one and a half hours. 

I'd propose calling it the CHAN_ALIVE event.... 

Oh, and I'm missing a MySQL backend, but that might be on purpose, I don't 
know.

Thanks for working on this, I'd love to have more information from calls 
through Asterisk.
-- 
Andreas Sikkema