ISI Unified Communications Intelligence Tools: Infortel Select and Microsoft Lync : Driving ROI From Your Lync Investment

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1 ISI SOLUTIONS WHITE PAPER ISI Unified Communications Intelligence Tools: Infortel Select and Microsoft Lync : Driving ROI From Your Lync Investment By: Mitchell Weiss Director of Product Strategy ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc. At A Glance: Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (Lync) ushers in a new, complete Unified Communications (UC) product that transforms every enterprise communication voice, instant messaging, conferencing, application sharing, remote access, response group service and presence into a user experience that is more collaborative, engaging and accessible than ever before. Companies of all sizes are implementing Lync as an easy-to-use, consistent and known application that provides highly productive UC and collaboration among their employees. Infortel Select from ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc. provides an ideal complement to your Lync implementation, delivering a broad spectrum of comprehensive, unified reporting for all modes of communications in Lync. Its detailed and summary analyses from pre-defined and ad-hoc reports help you drive greater business intelligence for your enterprise. ISI Is a member of Microsoft s Technology Adoption (TAP) and was one of the first vendors to go through interoperability testing for Lync. Infortel Select is a designated Qualified Solution for Lync 2010 by an independent third-party auditor. ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc Perimeter Dr., Suite 200, Schaumburg, IL This document is provided as-is. Information and view expressed in this document may change without notice. 0002R030812

2 INTRODUCTION Microsoft Lync Server 2010 (Lync) ushers in a new, complete Unified Communications (UC) product that transforms every enterprise communication voice, instant messaging, conferencing, application sharing, remote access, response group service and presence into a user experience that is more collaborative, engaging and accessible than ever before. Companies of all sizes are implementing Microsoft Lync Server 2010 as an easy-to-use, consistent and known application that provides highly productive UC and collaboration among their employees. Infortel Select from ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc. provides an ideal complement to your Lync implementation, providing comprehensive, unified reporting for all modes of communications in Lync. Infortel Select has been awarded the designation as a Qualified Solution for Lync 2010, as certified by an independent third-party auditor. The rich call detail records (CDR) in Lync provide details on all interactions including voice, video, instant messaging (IM), conferencing and file transfers. Infortel Select collects, interprets and reports Lync s CDR data in a comprehensive, yet simple-to-use application. The addition of Infortel Select to the Lync solution provides management with a quick view into business performance. Infortel Select s telecom business intelligence tools create: Cost-Reduction: Help rightsize your telecommunications infrastructure, resulting in lower costs. Determine call productivity across the enterprise, from sales through the help desk. Make decisions about staffing, call routing, voice-network performance and sales channels based on quantifiable information. Enterprise-wide ROI: Determine key areas of value and improvement gained by the Lync deployment. Create a Chargeback Model for recouping your investment in Lync and your telecommunications facilities. Audit Trails: Receive valuable audit trail reports on critical communications activities. Detect fraud and abuse. Detailed Reports: Obtain a complete record of employee and department communication histories. When rolling out a new Lync deployment, ensure the staff is using and taking advantage of the new tools. Regulatory Compliance: Help meet U.S. governmental regulatory requirements such as Sarbanes-Oxley (publicly-traded corporations), HIPAA (healthcare), FERPA (education), FISMA (government), and other industry-specific requirements by maintaining the communication history in Infortel Select. Improved Customer Experience: Gain an insight into whether calls are answered in a timely manner so that problems can be quickly addressed, thereby improving your customers experience with your organization. Architecture Each Microsoft Lync system consists of one or more servers running various roles: Front-End Server and Back-End Server A/V Conferencing Server Edge Server Mediation Server Monitoring Server Archiving Server Director In the Standard Edition of Lync, these roles are compressed into a single server. In the Enterprise Edition, one or more servers are deployed for the various roles. The Monitoring Server role is used to collect CDR that provide the details of each interaction in Lync. These records are stored in Microsoft SQL Server. Infortel Select collects CDR from the SQL Server used in conjunction with the Monitoring Server. 2

3 Infortel Select can be deployed in two models: On-Site Cloud-Hosted Although the same software is used for both models, the actual deployment architecture differs. ON-SITE DEPLOYMENT MODEL CDR ODBC Queries Lync Monitoring Server SQL Server CDR Database Infortel Select In an on-site deployment, the Infortel Select server issues periodic queries of the Monitoring Server database to retrieve (collect) records. Once the records are received, Infortel Select parses the data, processes it, and stores the data in its own SQL Server database. Since all subsequent reporting is performed on the Infortel Select database, no performance impact on Lync is seen, regardless of the number of call records stored. CLOUD DEPLOYMENT MODEL CDR ODBC Queries SFTP Internet Lync Monitoring Server SQL Server CDR Database Collection Server Corporate Firewall SFTP Infortel Select in ISI Secure Data Center ISI recognizes that opening the Lync Monitoring Server to allow an outside application to directly query the Lync Monitoring Server would present a significant security concern for the enterprise. Thus, ISI deploys a lightweight collection server behind the corporate firewall. This server can be on a physical PC or a virtualized server, using either Hyper-V or VMware. The collection server periodically queries the Monitoring Server database for CDR. These records are stored locally on the collection server. On a scheduled basis, the collection server securely pushes encrypted records to ISI s secure data center, where all subsequent processing takes place. All user reporting takes place using Infortel Select s Microsoft Silverlight web interface. 3

4 Lync Reporting for Voice Lync offers two kinds of voice communications peer-to-peer voice and enterprise voice. Peer-to-peer voice consists of one Lync user talking to another, either via the Lync client or an actual telephone handset. Enterprise voice connects the Lync system to a PSTN gateway through a Mediation Server. Regardless of the type of voice communication being used, Infortel Select provides full reporting for both experiences. INFORTEL SELECT REPORT DESIGNER Infortel Select provides over a hundred reports for Microsoft Lync, which can be modified through the use of constraints to report on specific data, timeframes, etc. In addition, Infortel Select offers a powerful web-based Report Designer where users define and create their own reports from virtually any field in the database. With Infortel Select s extensive collection of report constraints, user-friendly operability and intuitive interface, users can point and click to drill-down data to locate specific calls whether by time, station, user or device and then generate a customized report. Furthermore, Infortel Select s report distribution system lets you distribute custom and pre-defined reports to authorized users on a scheduled basis via or portal. INFORTEL SELECT S TOP KILLER PRE-DEFINED REPORTS Infortel Select offers Lync users over one hundred pre-defined reports. Some of Infortel Select s most popular killer reports include: Extension Reports Report calls by extension or Lync user, detailing all elements of the call including date, time, duration, phone number or SIP URI called (for outbound) or Caller ID (for inbound), city, state, country, and cost. Extension reports are available in both detail and summary form. Organizational Reports Reports by department, division, etc. that reflect the company hierarchy. Unlike detail reports, organizational reports are tagged to either a person or an organization. Detail and summary reports are available. Traffic Reports Detail and summary reports by gateway that let you review calls, provide summary information of calls by hour or usage by hour, and help you size your gateways using a variety of methods such as Erlang analysis and concurrent call path analysis. Business Intelligence Reports Each time a customer calls a company, a customer interaction occurs. This interaction has the potential to enhance or degrade the relationship with the customer. If the encounter is not positive, customers can terminate the relationship and take their business elsewhere. This fact affects businesses across the board large or small, regardless of industry or vertical market. Call center managers have long understood this. Many administrators using Lync create Response Groups to mimic call center functionality. To properly monitor customer service, administrators need to assess the productivity of their groups. They need to determine how long the call lasts, if a call was abandoned, and how many calls each agent answers. With Infortel Select s Business Intelligence offering, clients can now measure the customer call experience in a non-contact center environment. They can reduce costs by rightsizing their equipment and staff, improve customer satisfaction by reducing hold times and abandoned calls, and provide an audit trail of all customer interactions. Analytics are available in various Infortel Select reports, provided in text and graphical representations, and include abandoned and ring time information, traffic analysis, as well as productivity. Both detail and summarized information are available. Taken together, Infortel Select offers comprehensive, easy-to-use reports that help any organization better administer and utilize Microsoft Lync! 4

5 Video Reporting Video is rapidly being adopted within the enterprise. Virtually any call within Lync can have a video component. For that reason, Infortel Select offers full reporting on video calling. For any report, a user can show the voice legs, video legs, or both. With Infortel Select s report filters, users can choose which media (voice, video, IM) to include on a report. Although video calls within an enterprise incur no per-use charges from the carrier, they do use expensive bandwidth. With the growth in video, companies are seeing the need to increase their bandwidth both within a network and on expensive WAN links. Infortel Select system administrators can configure a rating scheme within the Infortel Select application to apply a charge per video call, or per video call minute, so that video usage may be allocated based on time/cost to departments or users. Conference Call Reporting Many organizations are using Lync to replace expensive third-party conferencing services. With Lync, users can arrange ad-hoc and dial-in conferences. One of the challenges of using Lync for conferencing is the accurate allocation of costs. Companies may dedicate hundreds of circuits for conference calling. These circuits come with a monthly cost. Additional charges are incurred if toll-free calling is allowed. Infortel Select provides an ideal tool to allocate charges back to the people and departments that are actually using the conferencing. With Infortel Select, all legs of a conference call can be allocated back to the individual organizer. Administrators can assign a perminute cost for all callers into a conference. Additionally, a different cost can be assigned depending on the method of calling. For example, standard inbound calling can be charged at $0.05 per minute, toll-free inbound can be charged at $0.10 per minute, outbound calling can be tagged at the true price of the call, and on-net calling can be free. Additionally, video conferencing is tracked and can be charged. The report below shows how you can receive a detailed report on any conference call in the system. In addition to the detailed report above, a summary of all conference calling activities can be received. This summary report is an ideal tool for charging back calls to users. Note that this report, and all reports in Infortel Select, can be generated in various formats such as.ls or.csv and can be input into other systems for automated chargebacks. 5

6 The report below shows a summary of calls for one person Colleen Collins. The next report shows a summarization at a higher level for an entire department. Beyond recovering costs, another key challenge of running a conferencing system is ensuring that enough circuits are available for your callers. Imagine customers unable to dial into a conference about a new product launch! Infortel Select offers a host of traffic reports that let you monitor usage of critical trunks and facilities both SIP and TDM. As you can see, Infortel Select is an ideal tool for managing conferencing using Microsoft Lync. 6

7 INSTANT MESSAGING REPORTING One of the most popular uses of Lync is for Instant Messaging (IM). Infortel Select provides a wealth of reports on Lync IM. With Infortel Select, you can see who is using IM and with whom they are messaging. The example below shows a complete log of conversations: The number of messages sent indicates how many Instant Message exchanges (messages) were sent by the Owner and the Responder. Note, however, that the Infortel Select report does not contain the actual instant message content. Microsoft offers an Archiving Server that contains the actual content of the messages. FILE TRANSFER REPORTING Lync offers a convenient way of exchanging files between users. This can be a very powerful productivity tool. When abused, this can lead to significant security breaches. It is critical that an organization maintains an audit trail of files transferred. Infortel Select provides detailed reporting on all file transfers within an organization, which becomes an invaluable tool for documenting activity and detecting misuse and abuse. Note that in addition to the sender and receiver information, you receive the name of the file along with a status code indicating if the file was accepted, rejected or canceled. MICROSOFT INTEROPERABILITY Infortel Select was built from the ground-up using Microsoft technologies. As a member of Microsoft s Technology Adoption Program (TAP), ISI was one of the first vendors to go through Microsoft s interoperability testing for Lync. Conducted by a third party, this testing ensures that the system is fully compatible with Lync and has no detrimental effects on the performance of your Lync environment. The system is fully compatible with Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, and also can run under Hyper-V. By using Microsoft SQL Server as its database, companies can take full advantage of their existing investment in databases. 7

8 Infortel Select uses Microsoft s Internet Information Server as its web server and presents users with a rich Internet experience through the use of Microsoft Silverlight. delivery of reports can be accomplished through Microsoft Exchange and directory information can be imported directly from Microsoft Active Directory. As you can see, deploying Infortel Select fits seamlessly into your Microsoft architecture. Your IT staff will find its interoperability easy to install, easy to manage, and easy to use. Your users will be able to use existing Microsoft tools to view and export data. Conclusion Infortel Select is an award-winning, certified, telephony business intelligence tool for managing and reporting on your Lync implementation. As a market leader, ISI s Infortel Select application delivers a broad spectrum of detailed and summary analyses through pre-defined or ad-hoc reports on all communications activities within your enterprise a robust set of comprehensive reports which help you drive greater business intelligence from your Lync solutions. ISI is the industry leader in call accounting solutions and a natural partner for your Microsoft Lync solution. DISCLAIMER This document is provided as-is. Information and views expressed in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, may change without notice. You bear the risk of using it. Some examples depicted herein are provided for illustration only and are fictitious. No real association or connection is intended or should be inferred. This document does not provide you with any legal rights to any intellectual property in any ISI product. You may copy and use this document for your internal, reference purposes. Copyright 2015 ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. Infortel is a registered trademark of ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc. Microsoft, Lync, Hyper-V, Silverlight, SQL Server, Windows are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. VMware is a registered trademark of VMWare, Inc. 8