Introduction

With several architectural options for Skype for Business, along with the various modes of communicating (Voice, Video, IM, Conferencing, App Sharing) it is now more important than ever to have clear visibility of usage, service delivery, consumption and costs. The monitoring, reporting and recording offered by MAF ICIMS™ and MAF UCR™ will ensure your investment in Skype for Business is delivering the business benefits you expected. If your configuration of Skype for Business alters to suit your changing needs both solutions are future proofed to simply adapt to any Skype for Business architectural changes that may be made.

Why MAF ICIMS?

Comprehensive reporting and analytics are no longer a ‘nice to have’ but an essential part of any successful deployment of Skype for Business regardless of the Architecture. MAF ICIMS™ is unique in the market due to its flexible and user defined nature which offers granularity and depth of reporting that is not possible with native Skype for Business reporting or other solutions available in the market. Want to know the difference between MAF ICIMS™ and SfB Native Reporting, check it out over here.

MAF ICIMS™ pulls only the relevant and useful information it needs to report on from Skype for Business into its own SQL database.  From there, it is in control of the data and generating this into meaningful information displayed in dashboards, systems monitors and reports. Users define what they need to see as oppose to the software telling them their requirements. The key areas addressed are:

Use of the Skype for Business Report Designer allows for simple bespoke report generation where the format of the report is created by ‘Dragging and Dropping’ the required fields. The user defined report format used in conjunction with the Report Builder, where numerous different filters can be applied, ensures the accuracy and relevance of all reports.

Skype for Business is now typically being adopted as an organisations voice platform whether this is Enterprise Voice, Skype for Business Online with E5 or Cloud PBX resulting in a requirement for accurate call costing reports. MAF ICIMS™ can hold an unlimited number of carrier tariff tabes allowing it to produce cost calls reports for distribution internally for management and control. Areas of abuse, both internally and from external threats such as toll fraud can be quickly identified and the finacial cost to the business mitigated. SIP Trunk utilisation can also be monitored to highlight any capacity issues.

CDR Collection

As a single, centralised solution MAF ICIMS™ can take CDR’s (Call Detail Records) from mulitple data sources making it ideal for Skype for Business regardless of the architecture adopted by the organisation. It is in fact platform independent so in the case of an organisation running multiple platforms such as Cisco, Mitel, Nortel, Avaya or others the CDR’s can be collated and consolidated reports ran. In many cases the accurate transition to Skype for Business from legacy platforms can be monitored.

By definition CDR’s are generated when a call or action has been terminated therefore all details are historic (almost real time).

Skype for Business Online
The Skype for Business Online connector is embedded in the MAF ICIMS™ collector so the below collection methodologies are also relevant. Due to authentication, it requires a user with administrator role for O365 / Skype for Business Online. Collection is not in real time and it is advisable to be done periodically throughout the day. The collection interval is specified by system admins and should be reflective of call load and available bandwidth.

Skype for Business On-Premise (MAF ICIMS™ On-Premise)
Once one or many CDR’s have been created they are then pushed to the MAF ICIMS™ SQL database by the MAF ICIMS™ collector. This frequency of the delivery is user defined but typically is around every 60 second so the data is near real time.

Skype for Business On-Premise (MAF ICIMS™ from MAF Cloud or Partner Hosted)
It is necessary to put retriever software on the Skype for Business monitoring server to facilitates the retrieval of the CDR’s into a user defined file directory to be collected and processed by MAF ICIMS™. The configuration is manually done through the configuration XML file and can be deployed on dedicated machines without needing any part of MAF ICIMS™ to be installed.

Information & Contact:
Questions about MAF InfoCom's UC Reporting and UC Recording for Skype for Business Online, On-Premise and Hybrid architectures? Call or mail us. Our salesteam is ready for you.

Phone: +3172-8200205
E-mail: sales@mafinfo.com