Required Subscription: Mitel MiVC
Required Permission Level: Reports and Dashboard Creator
The differences between Call Data and Call Party Activity can be a little confusing. When should you use one over the other? This article explains the differences and use cases for these two data sources.
Call Data
The Call Data source is great for reporting on call volumes and finding a variety of factors that concern calls in aggregate. It is used in the Call Detail Report and Call Summary Report.
| When to use | When you want the number of calls for a period of time for an organization or specific group. |
| Limitations | In the Mitel database design, Call Data only associates one party with the call — always the last party added. |
| Example | If Mary answers a call and talks for 2 minutes, transfers to Jim who talks for 3 minutes, who then transfers to Bob who talks for 5 minutes, Call Data will show Bob on the call for 10 minutes. This is fine for total call counts and overall talk time, but is inaccurate if you want to know that Mary, Jim, and Bob all participated. |
| Where it's used | The report templates using this data source are highlighted in yellow below. You can identify the data source by looking directly beneath the report name. |
Call Party Activity
The Call Party Activity source tracks everything that happens on calls and reports on each party individually.
| When to use | When you want to report on or visualize the productivity of individual users. |
| Limitations | If you try to summarize call volume for a group using this source, it will be inaccurate — it repeats call record counts for all parties. In the example above, Call Party Activity would show 3 calls (Mary, Jim, and Bob) even though there was only 1 call. |
| Example | Following the same example, it shows Mary had a 2-minute call, Jim a 3-minute call, and Bob a 5-minute call — giving you a clear view of how busy each person was from that single call. |
| Where it's used | The report templates using this data source are highlighted in yellow below. You can identify the data source by looking directly beneath the report name. |
Both data sources are also available when you click New Detail Report or New Summary Report:
Call Party Activity is a major change to how Mitel reporting is done. It's particularly valuable because:
- It gives you the perspectives needed to really understand what's happening with each individual team member.
- It provides management tools for encouraging, recognizing, and identifying training opportunities within your team.
- It offers a variety of values and dimensions for detailed information — for example, how calls got to any extension or party in the system (Prev Party Name) or where they went after any extension (Next Party Name).
- It accurately traces each leg of each call and shows not just call counts per party, but what part of each call they participated in. Note: this means total calls would be counted for each call party on any single call.
For more information see our blog article and our article on all data source instances:
- Brightmetrics Call Party Activity — written by our development team
- Understanding Mitel Data Instances — MiVoice Connect
Questions or feedback? Please email us at support@brightmetrics.com.