Hello,

First, I have to admit I'm not a call center person so I'm not fully up to speed on how all of these things work. I'm a data warehousing person who has been tasked with creating a data warehouse holding our company's Symposium data and creating custom historical reports off that data warehouse.

My current problem that nobody at my workplace seems to be able to solve and that quite a bit of searching online hasn't been able to find a solution to is that I'm having trouble identifying distinct calls within the eCallByCallStat views.

Originally, I thought a CallID would be unique to a specific call. However, upon some research, I discovered that multiple calls, even within the same day, can have the same CallID value. For example, I'm looking at a CallID right now that is tied to one call from the morning of March 20th and a second call from the afternoon of March 20th.

Does anyone know how I can determine which records belong to a single call through the data? There must be some way to do this or the pre-packaged Symposium reports wouldn't be able to do this but nobody around here seems to know how to do this and I'm out of ideas.

Thank you in advance for any help you can offer.

While I would love to be proven wrong there isn't any real easy way to find this information. CallID's can be reset for a variety of reasons. CLID IDs would be unique to the caller...assuming they only call in once a day.

Your post seems to indicate the pre-packaged Symposium Reports have this ability so I may be misunderstanding. What information exactly are you looking for?

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately, the more I research this, the more I get the impression that you are right on in this regard. Everyone I ask either assumed that call id was unique to one call and is surprised when I offer an example where it is not or doesn't even pretend to know of a way to uniquely identify a call. The best answer I've received so far is that I am only looking for certain records call event types and all the calls I'm interested in start with a specific event type code. My answer may be to get everything ordered by timestamp and every time I see this code, I know I am on a new call.

It turns out that the pre-packaged reports did not work the way I understood them to work. The ones that break things out similarly to what I will need to do only do so for time frames of up to an hour. I need to break things out and summarize them for time periods of up to a year, possibly more.

Thank you again for your response and, if anyone has a better solution than what I will be attempting to do, I would greatly appreciate your thoughts.

Quote from Ryan

My answer may be to get everything ordered by timestamp and every time I see this code, I know I am on a new call.

There are much easier ways to find out the number of calls that came into the system.

What specifically are you trying to achieve or gather from these reports?

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what I'm trying to do is as simple as getting the number of calls coming into the system would be. Basically, I'm trying to create a report structure that would allow individuals to track their performance in answering calls.

For example, our reference line manager would like to know the average amount of time between when a call is first received by Symposium and when an agent answers the call for the past month, year, or other time frame. She would like to then be able to drill down to see this average by skillset or by agent. There are many similar things she would like to see within this, such as the amount of time callers are on hold after selecting a skillset and the amount of time callers are talking with agents, as well as more analytical reporting such as calculating wait time vs. rate of abandonment.

In order to do this, I would need to identify which transactions belong to a specific call. I need to know that the abandon transaction from 8pm is not from the same call as the call arrived transaction from 10am.

I hope this all makes sense.

If there are easier ways to do this, I'd love to hear about them.

Thank you again for taking the time to reply.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure what I'm trying to do is as simple as getting the number of calls coming into the system would be. Basically, I'm trying to create a report structure that would allow individuals to track their performance in answering calls.

Your standard agent report would provide most of the "core" metrics that an individual may find useful. If you need to customize this you could do it using something like Crystal Reports (say if you need Average Handle Time).

For example, our reference line manager would like to know the average amount of time between when a call is first received by Symposium and when an agent answers the call for the past month, year, or other time frame. She would like to then be able to drill down to see this average by skillset or by agent.


That's your Average Wait Time. It should be available on your standard application reports and could be ran on any application (queue/skillset). It's not an agent stat so you couldn't drill down to that level (agents can't control how often they get calls).


There are many similar things she would like to see within this, such as the amount of time callers are on hold after selecting a skillset and the amount of time callers are talking with agents, as well as more analytical reporting such as calculating wait time vs. rate of abandonment.


This is all available using stanard reports in Symposium. You would be looking for "Average Time to Answer" and "Average Talk Time".

In order to do this, I would need to identify which transactions belong to a specific call. I need to know that the abandon transaction from 8pm is not from the same call as the call arrived transaction from 10am.


Not really following what you are saying here.


My general advice is to try to track down a copy of the Historical Data Dictionary and read through it, you should find some good information there. Also take a good look at all the Stanard Reports in Sympsium and determine what, if any, of the gaps are between the information they provide and what you are seeking.

Crystal Reports is also the best tool to create custom reports and nothing you have mentioned seems that it would be overtly difficult.

Unfortunately, as my boss noted when I discussed your response with him, this isn't our call. For whatever reason, the users decided that the reports that come with Symposium combined with Crystal Reports will not give them everything they need. That part of the decision is out of our control, it's coming from people higher up the ladder than both myself and my boss. That means I'm left creating a data warehouse on SQL Server and using MSRS/MSAS to report.

I do greatly appreciate your help with this. Unfortunately, though, the option you offer - one I would honestly prefer to implement - is not one that those who call the shots are willing to accept.

I understand Ryan, though I feel I should stress that with my limited knowledge about your situation and slightly more than limited knowledge about Symposium that your company (and no offence is intended here, please don't take any) doesn't really understand Symposium or what it is looking for.

The route you seem to be taking as designated by the big shots is likely to be cumbersome, inaccurate and difficult. Nonethless I do hope it works out for you and meets all of your requirements.

Welcome to CCV as well, I hope to see you around and if you have any more questions please do not hesitate to ask! And don't let my seemingly negative attitude discourage you!

:^)

Justin, I'm not sure whether they don't know the system or they actually do want something the system doesn't give them. I simply don't know enough about Symposium's reporting capabilities to have that answer. All I know is I'm left to do this through a data warehousing environment. Hopefully, for the sake of the company, I'm not being paid to do something that is alredy readily available.

There's no doubt that the route designated for this project is cumbersome and difficult. It's a good thing I like challenges. Hopefully, even if it raises the difficulty, the inaccuracies can be minimized if not eliminated.

Thank you for the welcome. As for your "seemingly negative" attitude, I have a great appreciation for realism. At least I know where I stand as I embark on this project. It's better than being told it will be a breeze only to find out as the days and weeks pass that someone was just trying to paint a rosy picture so I would like them. I will most definitely return if and when questions on this or future related projects come up that I can't find answers for. I've already received several more report requests, so I'm sure I'll be working with Symposium and other call center systems for some time.