Imagicle Call Recording is the Imagicle solution for centralized call recording for Cisco UC platforms.
Dedicated to any company that needs to record audio calls either for critical services with legal requirements, for operator training or just to keep track of important calls.
It offers three recording modes:
Imagicle Call Recording can also record calls received on mobile phones (Single Number Reach).
Recorded calls are encrypted by the AES-256 bit algorithm and stored locally on the UC Suite server, where they can be searched and retrieved through the web interface. They can also be automatically saved on an external NAS location.
Recording audio streams are using the same voice codec of the conversation being recorded. If such codec is not supported by Imagicle Call Recording, Cisco UCM transcoding resources are needed by the recorder SIP trunk to handle them. If the codec is not supported and transcoding resources are not available, the recording fails.
Imagicle Call Recording supports multiple technologies to enable audio conversation recording on different phone devices. Each technology enable different features and available recording modes, summarized in the following comprehensive table, highlighting all Imagicle supported recording methods and relevant requirements:
Built-in Bridge (Cisco UCM) |
Network Based Recording (Cisco UCM + VGW)(8) |
Dial-In (conference recording) |
CUBE(7) SIPREC |
CUBE Network Recording(1) |
|
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Recording equipments (Phone sets and VGW) |
BiB-enabled(5) IP Phones, Jabber Desktop/Mobile, Webex Teams | BiB-enabled(5) IP Phones, Jabber Desktop/Mobile, Webex Teams; VGW/CUBE | Any phone device | Any phone device; CUBE |
Any phone device; CUBE |
On-Demand Recording | Yes(4) | Yes(4) | Yes | Yes(2) | Not Supported |
Always-On Recording | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | |
Internal (on-net) calls recording | Yes | No | Yes | No | |
External (off-net) calls recording | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Recording announcements | Yes(3)(4) | Yes(3) | Yes | Yes(3) | |
Supports Cisco MRA | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Supports 3rd party SIP phones | No | No | Yes | Yes | |
Supports Analog phones | No | No | Yes | Yes | |
Can provide a periodic recording tone |
Yes | Yes | No | No | |
Bandwitdh requirements(6) (additional voice streams) |
2 | 2 | 1 | 2 | |
CUCM requirements | CUCM ver. 8.0(1) or later | CUCM ver. 10.0(1) or later | Conference resources | SIP Trunk to CUBE | |
Voice Gateway requirements | N/A | ISR-Gen2 (29xx-39xx), IOS 15.3(3)M or higher; ISR-Gen3 (40xx), IOS 15.3(3)S or higher |
N/A | CUBE IOS 15.6(1)T or XE 3.17S or XE 16.3.1 |
(1) Cisco proprietary recording method. See here for more details.
(2) Available through Imagicle Live-Keep mode
(3) Available only to TAPI-enabled Cisco IP phones. Jabber Desktop is supported from rel. 12.9 onward.
(4) Available to Jabber Mobile clients from CUCM rel. 12.5.1 (SU2) onward
(5) The list of BiB-compliant phone devices is available here.
(6) 100Kbps bandwidth required per recording stream, using G.711 codec
(7) Requires as many CUBE-T-STD licenses as the number of expected concurrent recordings; if a redundant CUBE is in place, CUBE-T-RED licenses are additionally required.
This technology leverages the built-in bridge: a voice-processing component included in almost all Cisco IP phones and softphones. In particular, it allows the "media forking" mechanism described above.
The Built-In Bridge technology can be used for Always On, Live Keep and On Demand recording.
Using the Always-On (automatic) recording mode, when the IP phone line enabled for call recording establishes a conversation, two SIP calls are automatically placed by the CUCM to the Call Recording application through a standard SIP Trunk.
Each call carries a one-way RTP audio stream by one of the involved parties. Both RTP streams are originated by the IP phone, leveraging the phone built in bridge.
Similarly, if the phone is configured for On-Demand recording ("selective recording"), the user can start recording the established call, at any time, simply pressing the programmed "Record" softkey or button on his/her IP Phone. Depending on the phone model and UCM version, also the "Stop Record" recording softkey is available on the phone (otherwise the recording stops when the conversation is ended).
Built-In Bridge recording requires CUCM rel. 8.x or higher for Always On and 9.x or higher for On Demand.
The Cisco Network-Based Recording leverages the Cisco Voice Gateway capabilities to fork media, sending the audio streams to the Call Recording SIP application.
This technology can be used for Always On, On-Demand and Live Keep recording.
This method is recommended when the IP phone subjected to recording is configured for Single Number Reach or calls are transferred to an external fixed/mobile number. In this case, two recording RTP streams are originated from the gateway, each including a call party. If the call is answered from IP Phone, then recording is automatically switched to Built-in-Bridge method.
This mode requires the use of CUCM rel. 10.x or higher and Cisco Voice Gateway ISR-Gen2 Gateways (29xx-39xx), IOS 15.3(3)M or higher, which can be configured in Voice Gateway or CUBE mode. See https://developer.cisco.com/site/uc-manager-sip/documents/requirements/ for details.
The two mentioned recording technologies can also be combined together, in the same environment, to better fit your call flow scenario. See the PBX configuration chapter or the Cisco documentation to understand how to combine them.
In facts, if both the technologies are enabled on CUCM, the PBX chooses call by call for the specific conversation the best technology to record it.
Imagicle Call Recording manages both of them without any configuration change.
However, when designing you recording environment consider that:
IP Phone | Jabber Desktop (Windows / Mac) |
Jabber Mobile (iOS / Android) |
Webex Desktop (Windows / Mac) |
|
Built-in Bridge - On Demand (requires TAPI control) |
YES (1)(2) | YES (1)(2) | YES (2)(3)(4) | YES (2)(4) |
Built In Bridge - Always On | YES (1)(2) | YES (1)(2) | YES (1)(2) | YES (1)(2)(3) |
NBR Recording - On Demand (requires TAPI control) |
YES (2) | YES (2) | YES (2)(3)(4) | YES (2)(4) |
NBR Recording - Always On | YES (2) | YES (2) | YES (2) | YES (1)(2)(3) |
(1) Requires Expressway ver. X8.11.4 or higher and CUCM 11.5 (SU5) or higher
(2) Call Recording announcements requires Expressway ver. X12.6.2 or higher
(3) Requires CUCM 12.5.1 (SU2)
(4) Requires the gadget for Jabber/Webex to start/stop the recording. See here for the further details.
In addition to the two Cisco technologies mentioned above, a third recording technique (hereafter named "Dial-In") is possible with Imagicle Call Recording. This is an "On-Demand" recording mode that can be used for devices that do not support the built-in bridge and network recording (analog phones, 3rd party SIP phones, etc).
This mode involves a 3-parties conference call engaged by the operator that includes both the remote party and the recording application.
Available since 2018.Winter.1, this mode allows the operator to trigger the Dial-In recording mode by just pressing a Service Button URL configured on the IP Phone.
Compared to Manual Dial-In, Automated Dial-In removes two limitations and provides:
Imagicle Call Recording supports the "free seating" scenario: nomadic users can work on different desks/locations using the Extension Mobility feature of Call Manager.
To enable call recording in such scenario you only need to:
When a recording completes, the service both stores some data in the application suite database (recording index) and in the local file system (MP3 audio file). The main processing steps are:
Recording of 2 audio streams ⇒ Mix and MP3 compression ⇒ AES Encryption ⇒ DB Indexing
The encrypted recordings are saved into a subfolder of the installation folder, in particular: ...\StonevoiceAS\Apps\Recorder\Records
Files are further subfolder by year, month and date:
The filename of each recording include some useful information, in particular:
Hint: please contact the Imagicle support service if you need to move recordings to another folder or disk unit
The disk occupancy of each recording is about 16 MB per hour.
Consider that when sizing the server disk, the overall occupancy should be calculated accordingly with the estimated traffic figure and planned data retention. In facts, the disk space needed to store the call recordings depends on:
Imagicle provides an Excel worksheet which allows you to calculate the required disk space.
Following some examples of occupancy figures, for different recording scenarios.
Recording Scenario | Simultaneous conversations (agents) |
Daily recording |
Data Retention (months) |
Necessary disk space (GB) |
Help Desk (8x6) |
4 | 6 | 6 | 54 |
20 | 6 | 6 | 270 | |
Emergency service (24x7) |
2 | 2 | 48 | 90 |
10 | 2 | 48 | 450 | |
Teleselling (8x6) |
8 | 6 | 12 | 216 |
30 | 6 | 12 | 810 | |
60 | 6 | 12 | 1.620 |
In our Storage Calculator, we also display the amount of Calls Per Second (CPS) globally engaged by Call Recording users. CPS is calculated for both channel-based license (ERLANG calculation applied) and user-based license. Please make sure to keep CPS value below 3, to avoid overloading Imagicle recording engine with too many concurrent recording requests. If your calculation returns a CPS value over 3, please contact Imagicle to learn about specific hardware requirements to fulfill your traffic needs.
Recordings are compressed and stored in MP3 format, with a constant bit rate of 32 kbps.
The following table contains the list of the ID3 tags valued in the MP3 recording files and their meaning.
Content |
User friendly |
ID3 tag name | Example |
---|---|---|---|
Record ID | Title | #TIT2 Title, songname or content description |
2019000001344 |
Owner IAS username |
Copyright | #TCOP Copyright |
john_doe |
Owner first & last name |
Composers | #TCOM Composer |
John Doe |
Owner extension number | Contributing Artists | #TPE1 Lead performers/Soloists |
2501 |
Remote number | Album Artists | #TPE2 Band/orchestra/accompaniment |
+1555820132 |
Associated screen recording id (If Screen Recording add-on is enabled | Conductors |
#TPE3 |
EVT_63120430e0e4d3 |
Start date-time | Subtitle (ISO format, UTC) |
#TIT3 |
2019-10-04T14:52:29 |
Start date-time |
Recording time |
#TYER #TIME |
2019 04/10/2019 16:52 |
Duration | Length/Duration | #TLEN Length (in ms) |
138000 |
Call direction (IN/OUT) | Genre | #TCON Content type/Genre |
OUT |