At-A-Glance

At-A-Glance is the central dashboard of the web console. It provides a summary of recent phone activity, the status of VOIP Recorder, the status of your voice mail box, and a report of any live phone calls.

The At-A-Glance Screen

Active Calls

The active calls section provides a list of any calls currently in progress and convient access to their audio. If no calls are currently in progress it lists "none". Each call is described by the time of initiation, the direction (inbound or outbound), the two phone numbers involved and the Caller-ID name of the caller.

In addition to the descriptive information there are three links provided for each active call. The "Listen from Start" link will play the call back from its beginning. The "Listen Live" link will play the audio from the call on your computer as it happens in near real time. The last link allows you to toggle the recording of this call - if the call is currently not scheduled to be recorded the link will say "Record Now", and if the call is currently expected to be saved it will say "Stop Recording". Clicking the link changes the status of that call and updates the label.

VOIP Recorder Status

This box displays information on whether or not VOIP Recorder is detecting a properly functioning Vonage™ connection. When properly configured the Vonage™ servers and ATA pass messages back and forth to each other once in a while even when you are not using the phone. This is so the Vonage™ servers know where your ATA is registered in case it needs to make the phone ring. When VOIP Recorder detects this activity it displays "OK - Phone Activity is Detected". When no such activity has been heard in a while that changes to "No Phone Activity Detected". When that latter message appears, recording will not work. It is normal to take a few moments to change to "OK" status after startup.

Voicemail Status

The number of new and old messages in your Vonage™ voicemail box is displayed in this portion of the At-A-Glance screen. It will read "No Voicemail Pending" if your mailbox is empty or "Unknown" if the mailbox status has not been determined. It often takes a while after startup for a voicemail notification to be observed and the "Unknown" value to be replaced with the accurate status. Accessing your voice mail tends to generate a notification and update the web console quickly thereafter.

Archive Status

VOIP Recorder automatically converts the recorded phone calls into .WAV sound files. This file archive can be managed either by the number of calls in the archive, the disk space they are taking up, or the age of the calls. Individual calls may also be deleted on the Call Recordings tab. The archive status box shows you how many calls are in the archive and how much disk space they are using.

Recent Calls

The recent call list is largely self explanatory. It shows the last 5 calls, either inbound or outbound. These calls are displayed whether or not they are recorded. The format is the same as for the live call list: the time of call initiation, the direction (inbound or outbound) of the call, the caller number, the number being called, and the Caller-ID name of the caller.

Recordings

The Recordings tab is the heart and soul of VOIP recorder. It is here where all the recorded calls are displayed in detail and may be played back, searched, and managed.

The Recordings Screen

Each call includes both basic and advanced information. The basic information includes the Caller-ID name and number and the number being called as well as the date and time of the call. The display of each recording also includes a unique serial number, a listen icon, the duration of the call expressed in minutes and seconds, a priority field, and a button used to purge the recording.

To play back a call just click the "listen" link for that call. A .wav file will be downloaded to your computer and your web browser will open whatever software you have configured for playing back sound files (e.g. iTunes, MoviePlayer, etc..). The sound file is constructed as a stereo .wav file with one party on the left channel and the other party on the right channel.

The display may be sorted on any of those criteria by clicking on the column heading. For instance, to sort the list by time click on the "Date" header. The default sort is A to Z. If you would like a reverse sort (Z to A) just click on the heading a second time.

In addition to automatic archive management (which is setup in the Configuration screen) calls may be manually deleted one at a time by clicking the button in the Purge column. A confirmation dialog comes up to double check you meant to delete the call.

The values set by the priority drop-down box are used during automatic archive management. The priority of a call may be set to either high, normal, low, or "save". When the archive manager needs to delete a call (e.g. you configured a 100MB limit to the archive size and it has grown to exceed that) it will first select from calls at low priority, then normal priority, and only after all calls in the first two classes are exhausted will high priority calls be deleted. Calls marked with the special "save" priority will not be deleted even if configured archive size limits have been exceeded.

Caller ID Log

The Caller-ID log screen contains a potentially large list of all calls observed by VOIP Recorder. These include both calls made and calls received. Calls are logged to this screen even if they are blocked, not recorded, or not answered - it is a record of all call activity.

The Caller ID Log Screen

Blocked calls contain the phrase "BLOCKED" at the right end of the line describing all of the other call info.

As with the Recordings screen the calls may be sorted in either forward or reverse by clicking (or double clicking for reverse) the column header you wish to sort by.

VOIP Recorder will maintain a list of up to 1000 Caller-ID entries. This extensive history is significantly more useful than the short histories typically embedded in a telephone handset.

If you would like to clear the Caller-ID history just click on the "Clear Caller-ID Log" link that appears in blue above and to the right of Destination Number column header.

In addition to the history log, the Caller-ID page contains the phonebook of all stored caller numbers. The Caller-ID name associated with each of these numbers can be changed to something more personal. For instance, "Jane Smith" could be changed to be "Mom". In that case each time Ms. Smith called (or was the callee) the associated pop-up and Caller-ID log entry on VOIP Recorder would show "Mom".

Configuration

The most complicated part of the web console is the configuration screen. Many powerful features can be setup and adjusted here. The good news is that for basic operation you can just ignore this screen - everything just works out of the box. However, if you are having problems or would like to use some advanced features then you should read on.

The Configuration Screen

Save or Restart

The "Save Config" and "Restart VOIP Recorder" links at the upper right corner of the configuration screen are used to persist and activate changes made on the configuration screen. After updating the configuration values that interest you just click "Save Config" and the changes will be reflected in the operation of VOIP Recorder immediately.

Values that require a restart will normally have that restart executed automatically when the configuration is saved but a restart link is provided in case VOIP Recorder seems to be still using old values. An example of such a circumstance would be a change in the automatically discovered IP address of the Vonage™ ATA. If that very unusual event were to happen you would need to restart VOIP Recorder to pick up the change.

Network Addresses

Normally the network addresses needed by VOIP Recorder are automatically probed during startup. The results of that auto-configuration are displayed here in the VOIP Address, VOIP Port, Local Address and Gateway Address fields. The VOIP Address and port refer to your Vonage™ ATA, the Local Address refers to the IP address of your local computer, and the Gateway Address is the IP Address of your home networking router.

When these values are auto discovered the fields are displayed read-only in the console. If you would like to override the auto configuration then simply click the field name to make it writable. Internet Explorer will display the field name in grey when it is read-only. After making it writable you can set the value to the address you prefer. After doing so click the "Save Config" link. Do not make the field read-only again, doing so will re-enable auto configuration.

Routing and Forwarding

The Active ARP Redirection and Active Packet Forwarding options control how VOIP data is redirected to your computer. Most configurations should leave both of these options set to enabled.

Disabling ARP redirection will cause the Vonage™ ATA and servers to communicate directly without the help of another piece of network equipment. If no other equipment performs this re-routing, then VOIP recorder will not be able to see any phone data. You may want to disable this function if you are operating with an enterprise grade switch in port mirroring mode, or if the VOIP recorder code is running directly on a router or bridge.

Forwarding should only be disabled if the VOIP recorder code is running directly on a router or bridge which is already forwarding the VOIP data.

Maximum Archived Call Age

The maximum archive call age parameter is used to establish an expiration policy for call management. Calls older than this value are automatically removed. This can be used to enforce a data retention policy.

If this parameter is set to disabled then recordings are never purged because of their age. Otherwise, the expiration period can be set to one day, one week, thirty days, or ninety days.

Maximum Archived Disk Use

The maximum archive disk use parameter is used to establish an expiration policy for call management. The archive is only allowed to use the amount of disk space specified by this parameter before calls are expired. Calls are selected for expiration according to their priority pools set in the Call Recordings screen.

If this parameter is set to 0 then recordings are never purged because of the disk archive size. Settings greater than 0 represent the number of MegaBytes stored in the call archive before expiration is attempted.

Maximum Number of Archived Calls

The maximum number of archived calls parameter is used to establish an expiration policy for call management. The archive is only allowed to store up to the number of calls specified by this parameter before calls are expired. Calls are selected for expiration according to their priority pools set in the Call Recordings screen.

If this parameter is set to 0 then recordings are never purged because of the number of calls in the disk archive.

(Do Not) Record This Call Touch Tone

VOIP Recorder has the ability to change the record status of calls while they are in progress when the local party (i.e. the owner of the Vonage™ ATA) presses certain touch tone sequences. All calls are set to yes-record status by default but that default might be changed by a filter. See below for more on filters. Whether or not the call is set to record when it begins, that status can be changed with the Record-This-Call or Do-Not-Record-This-Call touch tone sequence.

The sequences may be up to four key presses using 0-9 plus the # or * keys.

The default Record-This-Call sequence is ##1, and the default Do-Not-Record-This-Call sequence is ##2.

There is no limit to the number of times the record status can be toggled back and forth during a single call. Any configured announcement (see below for announcements) is played the first time the call obtains yes-record status. Announcement time might be when the call is established if the filters indicate yes-record status, or it might be when the Record-This-Call sequence is pressed for the first time.

If a call is committed to the archive the recording always begins at call initiation time and contains the entire call regardless of when yes-record status was established.

Use Caller-ID Pop-ups

A desktop pop-up with Caller-id information is created at call initiation time if this configuration item is set to enabled.

Change Admin Password

This setting controls the password for the web console. To change it you will need type the new password into the Change Admin Password field as well as the Confirm Password field. This redundancy is to make sure you do not accidentally introduce a typo. Afterwards click "Save Config" and you will have to re-login with your new password.

The username of "admin" is not alterable.

Update License Key

If you have obtained a new license to replace an expired one or you have purchased a production license to upgrade from a demonstration license you will need to use this field to update the license file of VOIP Recorder. Just paste the new license string into this field and then press the "Save Config" link.

Recording Notifications