Without even being told, Asterisk assumes that you want to store CDR information.[139]
By default, Asterisk will create a CSV file and place it in the folder /var/log/asterisk/cdr-csv/.[140] To the naked eye, this file looks like a bit of a mess. If, however, you separate each line according to the commas, you will find that each line contains information about a particular call, and that the commas separate the following values:
accountcode
Assigned if configured for the channel in the channel
configuration file (i.e., sip.conf
). The account code is assigned
on a per-channel basis. You can also change this value from the
dialplan by setting CDR(accountcode)
.
src
dst
dcontext
clid
channel
dstchannel
lastapp
lastdata
start
answer
end
duration
Total time in system, in seconds (integer), from dial to hangup.
billsec
Total time call is up, in seconds (integer), from answer to hangup.
disposition
amaflags
What flags to use (DOCUMENTATION
, BILL
, IGNORE
, etc.), specified on a per-channel basis, like
accountcode
. AMA flags stand for
Automated Message Accounting flags, which are somewhat standard
(supposedly) in the industry.
userfield
[139] If you are wondering why such an obviously simple thing seems to be such an achievement, the reason is simply that many traditional PBXes do not have this capability built in. With those systems, you have to purchase some sort of third-party appliance even just to capture the raw call data. Asterisk simply stores it. No drama. No cost. No kidding.
[140] A Comma Separated Values (CSV) file is a common method of formatting database-type information in a text file. You can open CSV files with a text editor, but most spreadsheet and database programs will also read them and properly parse them into rows and columns.