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This walkthrough provides an introduction to CDR2Cloud Authentication Code (Auth Code) feature and how to effectively use Auth Codes to identify which customer CDR calls should be billed to.

This walkthrough will cover the following steps:

• Anatomy of a CDR file
• Business Logic for Identifying Customers
• Define Authentication (Auth) Code for Customer Records

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Anatomy of a CDR file

CDR files come in many different formats, sizes and field definition. Every PBX manufacturer has a different CDR file format, however we can safely say that every PBX produces a CDR file. CDR files are basically log files that contain a transaction record of calls that have been processed by your PBX, SIP Server or Network. When operating a PBX there are basically 2 accepted ways of producing billing records, RADIUS and CDR files. CDR2Cloud allows you to easily produce billing records from your CDR files by reading each line in the CDR file and bill that line to a customer. You must however define the logic that will be used to associate that line from the CDR file to a customer, but you must first understand what data is in your CDR file and how it relates to your customer.

Below is an extract of a CDR file as viewed in Edit Pad as well as Excel:

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^{_{CDR File in EditPad Text Editor (click to display)}}

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^{_{CDR File in Microsoft Excel (click to display)}}

Notice that there are 9 records (rows) with 9 fields (columns). If viewed in a Text Editor you will notice that each field is separated (delimited) by commas, however when viewed in Excel the columns are more clearly marked. We have added the column header descriptions to the Excel image for the purpose of this walkthrough. Your CDR file may have a few or thousand rows, however we are more interested in the fields (columns) as they hold the key to determining which customer the call should be billed to.

Taking each record (row), one at a time you will notice that every field (column) contains different information such as:

For Example, reading the first call record from the extract above we can see the following:

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_{^{CDR File in Microsoft Excel (click to display)}}

We must now figure out how each field (column) relates back toy our customer that we would like to charge the call to. We will do this in the next section Business Logic for Identifying Customer Calls.

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Business Logic for Identifying Customer Calls

Now that we have a clear understanding of the fields in our CDR file we can take a look at how we will determine the Business Logic that is needed to identify each CDR record to a customer. 

One of the simplest and most common ways of identifying calls to your customers is to use the [Calling Number] field. In our sample CDR file extract above this would be the [from-uri] field. Simply put we are saying that we will identify our customer calls by using the number from which the call was made (or the Caller ID).

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Define Authentication (Auth) Code for your Customer

Now that we understand the anatomy of CDR file and have defined our business logic for linking calls to our Customers, the last thing we have to do is convert this Logic into a format that the CDR2Cloud will understand.

We do this by adding the Business Logic to the Customers account and this is called the Writing the Authentication Code (or Auth Code) on the Customers Account. 

Lets take a look at each of the 2 Examples above to see how they will translate into an Auth Code on he Customers Account

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