Enhanced Monitoring of Performance for Unified Communication Services

1 . A computer system configured to monitor conditions and availability of electronic communication services, the computer system comprising:

one or more server computers configured to execute a communication monitoring service;

one or more agents configured to execute synthetic transactions to mimic real-time communication of end users; and

one or more server computers configured to implement a database comprising synthetic transaction results.

2 . The computer system of claim 1 , wherein at least one of the synthetic transactions mimics a conference dial-in.

3 . The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the communication monitoring service is configured to process the synthetic transaction results.

4 . The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more agents comprise a plurality of agents deployed in different geographical locations.

5 . The computer system of claim 1 , wherein the communication monitoring service is further configured to generate an alert in case of a failure.

6 . A computer system comprising one or more computing devices and computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions configured to cause the computer system to:

generate tasks based on a rule definition, wherein each task defines an end user real-time communication scenario executed in a geographical location;

add the generated tasks to a task queue;

send the tasks to a plurality of agents for execution; and

balance workload between the agents in accordance with a rule-load balancing algorithm.

7 . The computer system of claim 6 , wherein the tasks are generated periodically for each rule with a defined scheduling interval.

8 . The computer system of claim 6 , wherein the computer-executable instructions are further configured to cause the computer system to register the agents.

9 . The computer system of claim 6 , wherein the agents are registered agents.

10 . The computer system of claim 6 , wherein the agents are registered agents configured to poll a monitoring service for new tasks.

11 . The computer system of claim 6 , wherein each agent is configured to send its configuration to a monitoring service, and wherein the configuration includes agent characteristics and capabilities.

12 . The computer system of claim 11 , wherein the agent characteristics include deployment location.

13 . The computer system of claim 11 , wherein the capabilities include a maximum number of tasks to run in parallel.

14 . The computer system of claim 6 , wherein the rule-load balancing algorithm is configured to enforce a least maximum of rules to be executed concurrently at the same time slot.

15 . The computer system of claim 6 , wherein the rule-load balancing algorithm comprises a multiple-points-of-presence constraint.

16 . A computer system comprising one or more computing devices and computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions configured to cause the computer system to:

obtain a customer's statistical availability of a communication system for a customer of the communication system;

obtain an average statistical availability of the communication system for a plurality of customers of the communication system; and

compare the customer's statistical availability with the average availability to determine whether a drop in the customer's statistical availability coincides with a drop in the average availability, wherein the customer's statistical availability and the average statistical availability are represented as percentages.

17 . A computer system comprising one or more computing devices and computer-readable storage media having stored thereon computer-executable instructions configured to cause the computer system to:

collect voice quality metrics for one or more voice-related synthetic transactions; and

by a monitoring service, generate an alert based on the voice quality metrics.

18 . The computer system of claim 17 , wherein at least one of the voice-related synthetic transactions comprises a conference dial-in.

19 . The computer system of claim 17 , wherein the voice quality metrics include packet loss, jitter, and latency.

20 . The computer system of claim 17 , wherein the alert includes, a date, a time, and a descriptive name.

21 . The computer system of claim 20 , wherein the descriptive name includes a region, a caller, and a callee.

22 . The computer system of claim 17 , wherein the alert includes a table for reporting packet loss, jitter, latency, and degradation for inbound and outbound streams.

23 . A computer system configured to monitor conditions and availability of electronic communication services, the computer system comprising:

one or more server computers configured to execute a communication monitoring service, wherein the communication monitoring service maintains a knowledge base with data related to real-time communication system availability disruption; and

one or more agents configured to execute tasks and send results to the communication monitoring service,

wherein at least one of the results comprises a set of parameters that describes a task failure, and wherein the communication monitoring service is configured to use the set of parameters to classify the task failure.

24 . The computer system of claim 23 , wherein the set of parameters includes one or more of: an execution step, a diagnostics code, an exception type, and a SIP code.

25 . The computer system of claim 23 , wherein potential root causes and resolution steps are mapped to the set of parameters.