OCS Billing and Reporting

A really common question is around the reporting and billing options available in OCS. What made me write about this topic now is the question was raised on the Technet Forums and there was a reply that OCS wasn’t customizable. I was beside myself for a second as this is the total opposite of the reality, then I prepared my response which I have reposted here.

So you have a number of options in regards to reporting on calls.
Not sure what Shafaquat is referring to. Reporting is completely customizable if you create your own SQL queries and reports. You really have three options.

A) There is some limited canned reporting available with OCS R2 that is set to expand with 14. When you deploy the OCS Monitoring server there is an option to deploy these reports to an SQL reporting server:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd425085(office.13).aspx

This is a good blog describing some of the available options:

http://blog.insideocs.com/2009/04/27/ocs-usage-reporting-options/

B) Create your own SQL queries and reports. The CDR/Monitoring database is nothing more than a SQL database that is easily accessible

Blog on creating custom queries

http://blogs.technet.com/b/perez/archive/2009/07/18/application-sharing-monitoring-in-ocs-r2.aspx

CDR and Monitoring database scheme

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd572606(office.13).aspx

QoE query samples

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd819976(office.13).aspx

C)Buy reporting capabilities from a company like Unify2 or Time billing by Convergent Solution

http://www.unifysquare.com/powerview.aspx

http://www.convergent-solutions.com/cgi-bin/convergent/file/Convergent%20UC%20Professional%20Services.pdf

Wave 14 there are going to be a bunch of new partners developing billing solutions and other reporting capabilities

http://www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver/cs14/en/us/partners.aspx

Here is a thread on Technet about some different billing options

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ocsmonitoring/thread/e5ed8c30-13e1-4ce4-b1e6-458a69eae7ad

Lots of options I hope this helps.

I tried to fill in all the options I could think of but I probably missed a bunch. If you have some good refference for OCS reporting please feel free to post a link in the comments of this post.

Comments welcomed.

VoIPNorm