[asterisk-dev] Proposed changes to accountcode in CDRs

[Brian Degenhardt]

Grey Man <greymanvoip at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 11:12 PM, Brian Degenhardt <bmd at digium.com> wrote:
>> I'd love to get some feedback from those who are involved in CDRs and
>> billing on systems that actually do perform fancy operations such as
>> blind and assisted transfers.  Would this behavior cause any problems
>> for anybody?
>>
>> cheers
>>
>> Brian Degenhardt
>> Switchvox Engineer
>> Digium, Inc.
>
> Hi Brian,
>
> A lot of us have already recorded the significant issues with Asterisk
> CDR's when transfers occur.
>
> http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=11093
> http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=11849
>
> It's also worth noting that murf, who to date appears the only core
> developer interested, already tried to improve the situation from 1.2
> to 1.4 but from the CDR's for transfers are now possibly more
> inaccurate.
>
> I also raised the problem on the Asterisk-User's list as there are a
> number of VoIP providers losing money.
>
> http://lists.digium.com/pipermail/asterisk-users/2008-January/204856.html

I can appreciate your concerns.  CDRs are infused with a lot of
varying business rules, and murf has done a great job at making
difficult compromises in the attempts to make something that works for
everybody.  Certainly there's always more room for improvement.

Let's put aside the complete issue of CDRs for a moment though and
focus specifically on accountcodes.  Can you see any problem with not
implicitly transfering the accountcode from one channel to another
when a bridge occurs?

> My opinion would be that any tinkering with the CDRs without doing
> coming up with a proper design first would be disasterous.

I agree 100%.  This is exactly the reason I'm asking the list to
examine these design changes to the behavior of accountcode before making
them.  I'd love your feedback on this change.

Thanks for your input.  I was getting a little worried there when
nobody initially responded.

cheers
-bmd