CDR Overview

Call Detail Records (CDR) are available through two interfaces to the Cisco Unified Communications Manager (Unified CM):

• CDR Service
• CDRonDemand API

The following image shows the architecture.

CDR Data

Cisco Unified CM produces two types of records which store call history and diagnostic information:

• Call detail records (CDR) are data records containing information about each call processed by CallManager.
• Call management records (CMR) are data records containing quality of service (QoS) or diagnostic information about the call. Also referred to as diagnostic records.

Both CDR and CMR are referred to as CDR data. CDR data provides a record of all calls that have been made or received by CallManager system users. CDR data is used primarily for generating billing records. However, CDR data can also be used for tracking call activity, diagnosing certain problem types, and capacity planning.

CDRs contain information about call origination, call destination, the date and time the call was started, the time the call connected, and the time the call ended. A call is considered started or originated when the caller goes off-hook. The call is considered ended when either the caller or the called party goes on-hook.

CMRs contain information about the amount of data sent and received, jitter, latency, and lost packets.

For details on the CDR service configuration, and CDR data file contents and definitions, refer to the Cisco Unified Communications Manager Administration Guides.

When to use CDR Service or CDRonDemand API

For applications that need a continuous feed of all CDR records, use the CDR Service to configure the CDR Repository Manager to send CDR data files to your server via FTP or SSH-FTP.

To retrieve individual CDR files on demand, use the CDRonDemand API. However, this API is intended for ad-hoc inspection of a small number of individual files and is not suitable for bulk CDR retrieval. CDRonDemand requests are limited to 15 requests per minute by default.

For details on the CDRonDemand API, refer to the CDRonDemand Overview (link).

Use Cases

The CDR Service delivers call detail records for up to 3 destination application servers on a continuous basis. This information is useful in scenarios such as:

• Billing server applications which need to obtain all CDR records from the system.
• Applications that track call activity.

How It Works

The Cisco Unified CM CDR Repository service can be configured to transfer CDR files for up to three application servers on a preconfigured schedule, with a default time of once per minute. The files are then deleted per the Cisco Unified CM configuration and other criteria. If the application does not receive the CDR files or needs to retrieve specific CDR files again, the application can use the CDRonDemand API.

The CDR Repository Manager keeps track of which files have been sent to each application server, retries sending files if there is an interruption, and sends only files not received. See the CDR Repository Manager to activate and configure the CDR Repository Manager.