Introduction

Call recording is the process whereby a telephone conversation between one or more participants is recorded for future reference. Call Recording can become a very valuable feature in an office or business environment that requires high security, high quality, and large volumes of data.

A company can use Call Recording (CR) for:

• Legal Compliance: To meet legal and contractual obligations.
• Security/Liability: To settle disputes quickly and save on insurance expenses by limiting or reducing risk and liability. Fast and accurate capture of conversations provides businesses with proof. Banks and credit card companies record telephone conversations for this purpose.
• Data Management: To create an archive of all important business conversations, and save time on writing and locating notes.
• Staff Training: To get important information on employees' communication skills and help them to improve.
• Quality Assurance: To capture the callers' experience by monitoring call handling.
• Customer Satisfaction: To improve customer loyalty by creating a professional corporate image. Be accountable to clients and earn their respect.

The majority of telephone systems sold today are either IP-based or IP-enabled. Very soon, digital and analog-based PBXs will become obsolete as IP-PBXs take precedence due to their low maintenance cost and greater functionality. The rapid adoption of IP-PBXs has been the catalyst for the development of a myriad of new technologies and capabilities, among which VoIP call recording is one of the most compelling. Demand for call recording capability has increased dramatically in recent years, due to the business needs mentioned above. Call recording and monitoring, feature sonce available only to big business with big budgets, is now going mainstream.

Lowering Costs

Previous to the VoIP revolution, recording calls was an expensive proposition. Since most PBXs were either analog or digital, recording calls required the installation of proprietary telephony cards to enable the tapping of telephone lines in order to process the digital signals necessary to record the calls. The high cost of these proprietary telephony cards, in addition to the costs of purchasing, installing and maintaining specialized servers, made call recording prohibitive for most businesses.

Today, as the market for IP-enabled PBXs grows, price barriers have dropped and call recording is now affordable for most businesses. Recording calls on IP and/or IP-enabled PBXs is much less expensive than on analog or digital PBXs because the voice traffic is packetized and travels across the corporate data network (LAN/WAN), not over traditional copper, twisted pair wiring.

To record a call, an IP-based call recording system monitors the corporate data network looking for voice packets as they travel across the corporate LAN/WAN to and from the IP-PBX. This “packet collecting” technology allows call recording systems to identify and extract only the voice packets for recording. Packet-collecting also enables specialized monitoring features, such as the ability to trigger recording once certain conditions are met, or to flag calls by name or date according to particular requirements.

How It Works

The administrator will determine that all incoming or outgoing calls at a certain phone will be recorded by Dial-Media (media server running dynamic IVR applications). In the Web interface they should be able to be checked off or selected and the destination for these files is also configurable in the Web interface. They’re stored in a (G711 uLaw codec) 8 bit mono .wav format. Dial-Relay (RTP proxy) always needs to be running for this service to work. Dial-Manager (SIP proxy server, SIP registrar server, and Presence server) checks in the database when an outgoing call is made to determine if this service is enabled. If it’s enabled, Dial-Manager will request from Dial-Media the recording ports that will be used. Then this information is communicated to Dial-Relay via Dial-Manager.

As soon as the call is answered the recording begins and when the call is disconnected the recording stops. The administrator will go to the predetermined area on the hard drive to retrieve the recorded files. The name of the files will be the caller_callee_date of the recording.

If you dial the Dial-Media alias plus the default 90 (the name of the RTP recording service) plus the destination which you want to reach anyone with voicemail can use this service. The recordings are saved to the caller’s voicemail. If you dial the Dial-Media alias plus 91 the voice mailbox where you want the recording saved, followed by the destination, then you can execute the dynamic RTP recording service command. This command enables the caller to save recordings to voice mailboxes other than their own.

Key Benefits

• Less expensive: VoIP recording/monitoring is typically two to three times less expensive than digital recording solutions because it is software-based, requiring no station or trunk taps or expensive third-party telephony cards.
• Simple installation: THere is no complex installation required with VoIP recording/monitoring. Only a customer-supplied server is needed to run the recording software which is a feature of the IP-PBX. Dialexia’s Dial-Office IP-PBX has call recording built right in.
• Easy maintenance: VoIP call recording systems are managed and maintained like any other software program. No punch-downs, cross-connects, or any expensive telephony cards are required. Just use your handset.
• Record remote sites: With digital recording solutions, the cost of recording remote sites may be prohibitive. With VoIP recording solutions, however, the incremental cost of adding any remote site is negligible.
• No interference: VoIP call recording/monitoring is totally unobtrusive. As it merely collects packets, and it will not interfere with the IP-PBX or any other mission critical system.
• Scalable: VoIP call recording systems are now scalable without limit. Digital recording systems are limited in scalability based on the number of telephony cards that can be installed in any server and the number of calls that can be handled by each card.

Conclusion

The real benefit of IP-PBXs is the fact that software applications can connect to them across the data network, thus eliminating the need to use very expensive and proprietary telephony cards. Now small and medium sized businesses can take advantage of innovative software solutions, like packet-based call recording built-in to IP-PBXs at price points they can afford.