Using Quality Information (Cisco CDR app version 6.3 and newer)

(For 6.2.x and older, see farther down this page.)

A brief overview

The field “quality” is one added by the app.  It takes on values like

• good
• acceptable
• fair
• poor

as defined by [hopefully sane and reasonable] default thresholds we’ve set up for various old and new style quality metrics Cisco has used.  It looks at not only the CS and SCS values reported, but also the older MLQK based values and even Jitter and Latency if that’s what’s available.  It takes the worst ‘category’ (as defined by those thresholds) and assigns to each call leg where CMR records exist a value as above.

As with all other fields, they’re able to be filtered for and reported on.

Those default thresholds can be edited and changed if you need to do so.

Also keep in mind the information that makes up this new “quality” summary field is still in the base fields of MLQK, CSR_overall and all the rest, so most of the ways you are used to still work.  We just think this is better.

Using the field “quality”

It’s easy enough to add the quality field into your field list.

• Select “Edit Fields”
• Search for or scroll to the “quality” field
• Click in in the left pane to add it to the right pane of “displayed fields”
• (Remember, you can drag it up/down that list on the right to change the order of the displayed fields!)
  
  (click for a bigger version of that image if you need it!)

You can sort it, use it, click on values to filter – all the “normal” use cases work!

And of course you can use it in reports as a filter, a split-by, or in any other way you need.  If you want more information, contact us and we’d be happy to get on a call with you and work through your needs with you!

Adjusting thresholds

While we pick great defaults, what if your needs differ?

Easily enough changed!

• Click our app’s Setup, then “Define quality thresholds”
• You can of course download a CSV to edit offline and upload again.
• But otherwise, just adjust the thresholds yourself!

There are a few special notes though

• It won’t *break* anything, but having gaps and overlaps for any particular measurement will be super weird.  Don’t do this.
• (Which means that if you adjust one row, you’ll possibly need to adjust a second row to “make up for it”.)

Other than that, have fun!

Also…

The below information for older versions still loosely applies for basic usage hints, so it might be worth looking at.  After we get a few revisions down the road I’ll probably merge much of the below older information into the newer topic here.

Using Quality Information (version 6.2.x and older)

We have really improved this area of the app recently in 6.3, you should update.  But if you are still on an older version for now, here’s some information for you too.

Find Quality Fields

• In the app click the “Home” in the upper left.
  
• In the bottom half of the home screen pick “Call quality and qos”
  
• Read through the fields to get an idea of what’s available!
• Do note that the fields you see may vary –
  • Many older devices only report MLQK and related fields.
  • Most newer devices report the new CS and SCS based scores (Concealed Seconds and Several Concealed Seconds)
  • Some devices report both.
• Read more about this in our blog on the new quality scores.

See our blog post on the Field Gallery for more information.

What to do if you don’t have any of the quality fields?  Most likely, the answer is you didn’t turn on sending CMR (e.g. “Quality information”) with your CDR inside CallManager.  Go check the settings in the section “Get the call quality” in our docs, it’s an easy change and will only add a little bit to the license usage, but will add a lot of useful information.

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”.
   

Simple Filtering by Quality Fields in Browse Calls

In version 6.0 of our app and newer, there are context menus which make filtering/searching much easier.  You’ll still have to edit the search filters box occasionally too, but it’ll do most of the work for you.

Follow along with me!

1. Add the MLQK and CSR_overall fields to your Browse Calls by using the Edit Fields button as shown above.
2. Click on the *column header* for MLQK to sort by it.  You should now have a bunch of MLQK values in that field.
   • IF YOU don’t see those, you probably didn’t turn on sending CMR with your CDR inside CallManager.  Go check the settings in the section “Get the call quality” in our docs.
3. Click on one of those and select the option to search for MLQK=”<whatever>”, like I’m doing here.
   
4. In the search filters box above, edit it and change the MLQK="<value>" to MLQK<"4.5"
   • The quotes and extra zeros if such are in there don’t really matter as long as what’s in there can be interpreted as a number.  MLQK<"4.5000", MLQK<4.5, or MLQK<4.50 all work.
5. Press enter, or click the “search” button to the right.
6. Gaze in wonder at your not-perfect calls!

So while the contextual menus saves you from having to type in field names (and in many cases will actually work splendidly without editing!), for numeric values for now you’ll still have to edit the search filters slightly to change the criteria.  We’re working on that!

Similarly, you could

• Filter to a certain range of MLQK, like MLQK<"4.5" AND MLQK>"3.0"
  • Just add MLQK="<value>" and change it to MLQK<"4.5"
  • Add another one (it’ll let you do this as long as it’s not the same as an existing one) and change the second one to MLQK>3.0, so you have MLQK<"4.5" MLQK>"3.0"
  • There’s an implicit AND between the two, but you can always type that if it makes it more clear to you.  MLQK<"4.5" AND MLQK<3.0
• Find where either the CSR_overall or MLQKav showed the call was not great quality,  MLQKav<=4.0 OR CSR_overall>0.1
  • Again, pretty much the same process as above.  Add a filter for one item, adjust it.
  • Add a filter for the CSR_overall in much the same way.  Adjust it.
  • In this case, we then add an OR between them to change the default AND into … OR.  Sorry, I was being overly silly there.  I’m sure that was obvious.

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 Quality Fields in General Report

Using quality fields as a search “filter”

The easy way to do this, obviously, is to go back to Browse > Calls (see above!) 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.

Be sure to make any other changes you want – restricting it to certain numbers, date ranges, call types…

These search filters also follow you back to Browse Calls if you click the “See calls” link in the upper right so feel free to hop between the two “views” of the data!

Using Quality as “over” or “split by” fields

A different way to look at that data is over MLQK.  If you are using the newer quality scores, you’ll want something like over SCSR_overall.  You could easily use *any* of the fields here, give them a try!

The app is smart enough to put the continuous “MLQK” scores into intelligent buckets.   Here the default of 0.1 sized buckets wasn’t bad, so I left it.  You can change it to a smaller number to have fewer, larger sized buckets via the # of bins setting.  Sometimes you have to change it a LOT before Splunk will snap to a smaller or bigger bucket. Try 5 then try 800 just to see what happens.

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

Note in this case there are *two* settings for # of bins.  The first is associated with the time, so setting this small gives you fewer but bigger chunks of time across the bottom.  The second is associated with the split by field, setting this one smaller or larger adjusts how big of buckets the MLQK is put into.  Play with both of those settings a bit (one at a time!) and you’ll see how they work.

Also note my mouse pointer is over one of the bars to see more information.  Those are clickable so try that and see what happens!

Other Notes!

Read more about this in our blog on the new quality scores.  It’ll be fun, we promise!  Well, if not fun, at least it’ll be useful!

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