VoiceObjects has one of the strongest phone self-service reporting and analytics offerings in the market today. VoiceObjects Analyzer provides insight into application usage and system performance for developers, administrators, and business staff like no other. Full access to the rich features of this product requires a Business Intelligence platform underneath, such as Business Objects, Cognos, or MicroStrategy. But did you know that VoiceObjects 9.1 introduced a variety of reports available at your fingertips, right within your favorite GUI Desktop for Eclipse, with no further software or installation required?

If you’re using 9.1 already, you have insanely easy access to reports probably without even knowing it; reports that help you run a session analysis for your server cluster or a single instance, inspect memory usage over a configurable period of time, or even analyze business task completion rates for the service you’ve launched the other day.

Let me show you how it all works. Whether you use Desktop for Eclipse in standalone mode (which is what you get with the “Developer Edition”), or access a full VoiceObjects Server in network mode, you can utilize the so-called Control Center Reports either way. As the name implies, the Control Center is where this neat little feature hides. If you run in standalone mode, you may want to check out this post about how to setup a Control Center view of your embedded VoiceObjects Server before proceeding.

Reports are available for three different areas:

1. entire server cluster
2. single server instance
3. single service

To access the reports for the entire server cluster (the “logical server”), switch to the Server Manager tab of the Control Center view, right-click on the item preceded by “S: “ (which is your logical server representing the cluster, called “VOServer” by default), and click Reports. From the submenu, you can now select a report from the available list:

Once selected, the view switches to the Report Chart tab, where you now see your report:

Change the time frame as desired and hit the Refresh button to update the report. You can even export a PDF version of your report to share it with others! (Notice the little Disk icon in the upper right corner…)

Accessing the reports for a single instance works pretty much the same way: right-click on the server instance (denoted with an “I: “) of your choice and select the desired report from the Reports submenu.

Service reports can be accessed likewise: switch to the Service Manager tab, right-click on the service of your choice and select the desired report. For example, check out the following report on business task completion rates, telling you how successful your callers are using your service:

Note: If you can’t see the entry Reports in your menus, then you have turned off System DB Logging for your server, instance, or service. System DB Logging must be switched on in order to be able to access the reports. If it’s switched off but had been switched on before and you still want to see reports on that historical data, you can switch it on temporarily through the transient setting available in the DB Logging submenu of your server or service.


So there you go: reports at your fingertips, without the need to install a full Business Intelligence suite. However, keep in mind that VoiceObjects Analyzer provides a whole lot more reports, plus analysis features such as drilling, slicing&dicing, and more. The Control Center Reports do not replace the Analyzer, but provide valuable insight mainly for administrational staff right within your favorite IDE.

Alright, I’m outta here. I have to fix this module “Enter New Credit Card” in my application. The task completion rate is way too low as I just realized…