Using Groups and Extensions

Groups are a way to roll up call counts based on groups *you* define (or you pull from Active Directory!)  that are keyed on DNs and Extensions.

Extensions are the individual “numbers” and associated information that make up those groups.

See here on how to enable them and create some groups, then hop back here when you’ve got it set up!

Groups and Extensions each have their own special pages, but the fields involved can also be used as generic search/filter/split/group by fields too.

In this document

• Using the special, dedicated page for Groups
• Using the special, dedicated page for Extensions
• Using Group and Extension information in Browse Calls as filters
• Using Group and Extension information in General Report
  

Groups special page

Browse > Groups

If you have set up any groups, you will be able to pick them easily while viewing the Browse Groups page.  Use this to report on overall metrics for a particular group of numbers or people.  For stats on the individual numbers that comprise a group, see the “Extensions special page” section just below.

How to use this page

(And really, this is a set of options/items that you’ll want to read through and try each one – it won’t take long, I promise!)

1. Filter by group and by subgroup
   • All groups and subgroups defined in the system will display here, regardless if they made any calls in the timeframe selected.
   • These two are “AND”ed together.  So if you pick the group of Cecily’s Cakes and a subgroup of The Shire, you will only get those calls that had membership in both of those.
2. Other filters
   • number (wildcards allowed)
   • hunt pilot (wildcards allowed)
   • And a time range picker.
3. Two very useful options:
   • a) include or don’t include groups that made no calls in the timeframe.
   • b) count or don’t count calls with zero duration in the totals
4. Add or remove fields from the table.
5. Data!

There are quite a few more fields than I’m showing in this screenshot.  It’s OK to do a little exploring to see what you have populated!

I didn’t highlight them in the above, but above the field picker (#4 in the screenshot), there is the ability to save what’s showing as a report, a dashboard panel, or to export it.

If you click on a row, you’ll get a context menu:

The option to view extensions with group=”XXX” will take you to Browse > Extensions with the group already selected so you can see the individual people/numbers that made up the group’s stats.  See our Extensions special page in this same document for more information!

The option to view calls with group=”XXX” will open Browse > Calls and filter the calls list down to just those calls that were part of the group.  See the section below on using these fields in Browse Calls.

Extensions special page

Browse > Extensions

This page shows the individual calling summary records for any subset of groups.  Use this to report on call volume (and other metrics) for a particular subset of people and numbers.  If you’d like to report on those groups in aggregate, see the above section on the Groups special page.

How to use this page

(And really, this is a set of options/items that you’ll want to read through and try each one – just like in Browse > Groups, this won’t take long)

1. Filter by group and by subgroup
   • All groups and subgroups defined in the system will display here, regardless if they made any calls in the timeframe selected.
   • These two are “AND”ed together.  So if you pick the group of Cecily’s Cakes and a subgroup of The Shire, you will only get those calls that had membership in both of those.
2. Other filters
   • name (wildcards allowed)
   • number (wildcards allowed)
   • hunt pilot (wildcards allowed)
   • cluster (for those whose environments are larger!)
   • And a time range picker.
3. Two very useful options:
   • a) include or don’t include groups that made no calls in the timeframe.
     • NOTE – “Alexander G” on the second to last line in the screenshot above is included only because we’ve set this to “include” the zero calls people.
     • If we had this set the other way, he would not show up.
   • b) count or don’t count calls with zero duration in the totals
4. Add or remove fields from the table.
5. Data!

Also as with the above, there are quite a few more fields than I’m showing in this screenshot.  It’s OK to do a little exploring to see what you have populated by adding and removing things from the field selector #4.

I didn’t highlight them in the above, but above the field picker (#4 in the screenshot), there is the ability to save what’s showing as a report, a dashboard panel, or to export it.

When you click on a row, for now there’s no context menu.  We hope to add some, so don’t be surprised if that happens.  But until we do, clicking on a row takes you directly to Extension Detail

Extension Detail

If you click any particular row in Browse Extensions, it will take you to the Extension Detail page where you can see a breakdown of the calls to an from that extension.

Many of those things are also clickable, so feel free to try digging deeper.

Groups general use

Displaying the fields in Browse Calls

These fields are enabled by default. To see them in Browse Calls, simply add them with the field picker.

1. Click Edit Fields in the upper right.
2. Find the field you want to add either by scrolling around, or use the filter field.
3. Click to add fields to the Selected Fields list.
4. Click and drag to rearrange the fields on the right.
5. Remove extra fields by clicking their “x”.
   

If the resulting page has blanks this is OK – it just means that the calls being displayed aren’t associated with any groups.  Add more numbers into the groups setup, or look below for how to filter out numbers with no associated groups.

Simple Filtering on Group/Subgroup in Browse Calls

Click on an item to use contextual menus to search for or exclude particular results.  For instance, here I clicked on the group “Becky’s Baked Goods”.

When I select that, it’ll add … well you know what?  Why don’t you guess what it’ll do or try it yourself?

Do keep in mind that the “search filters” is just a text field – the contextual menus help you put filters into that or take them away, but in the end you can edit them directly if need be.  For instance,

• Exclude a single group, click on it and select the option to  exclude group="XXX"
• To exclude multiple groups, you can just keep clicking on the ones you don’t want and excluding them.
• To filter TO multiple groups – select and add one group, like I’m doing in the above, then add an “OR” and copy/paste the second in with name-changes, like  group="Hattie's Hats" OR group="Bernie's Barnacles"
• Include all calls where a group – any group – is set, pick one and search for it, then erase the group name and replace it with a ‘*’ for a wildcard so it will look like group="*"

These search filters follow you though to General Report if you click the “>> graph calls over time” link in the upper right.

Simple Filtering by Group/Subgroup in General Report

There are a several options for using this information in General Report.

Using it as a search “filter”

The easy way to do this, obviously, is to go back to Browse > Calls and add the filter there, then click the link in the right to >> graph calls over time to end up in General Report with that filtering set.  See the previous topic on using filtering in Browse calls directly above for more information.

Using Group/Subgroup as “over” or “split by” fields

A different way to look at that data is over group.

You can combine this with a filter as well (like filtering as above for group="Hattie's Hats" and then over subgroup, or over any other thing you can think of like site or callingPartyCountryCode…

Or even more fun, split by one of the fields.  This means we go back to over time but then split the resulting columns up by the split by field.  Well, a picture is worth a thousand words:

If you have any comments at all about the documentation, please send it in to docs@sideviewapps.com.