Get some help with Skype for Business Online/Microsoft Teams CQD Building Files…

This post is based on the new tool created by Martin Rinas of which more details can be found here:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/CQDTools-PowerShell-Module-helps-with-CQD-building-file/ba-p/210808

Call Quality Dashboard is great. Anyone that has had to use it in anger can appreciate how useful it is to find and diagnose issues. It has two drawbacks though:

1. There’s a bit of a learning curve. I’m still finding new ways of finding the data I need.
2. It can only be truly useful in your environment if you provide a good building file with all your organisation’s data.

Issue number 1 can be helped by using the CQD template from what used to be called the Skype Operations Framework (SOF). This can now be found under the MyAdvisor section of FastTrack here: https://myadvisor.fasttrack.microsoft.com/CloudVoice/Offers/?pageState=ProactivelyMonitorthesolution

Once you have that template, you can use all the stuff in there as a guide to make you’re own reports. You can clone reports and amend to get the info you need. To be honest, it’s a pretty good template so should be able to suit most of your needs.

Call Quality Dashboard (CQD)

To make CQD properly useful you need to supply a good building file. This will include subnets, cities, countries, regions etc so that you can bring together specific reports relevant to your own organisation.

Until now, creating a building file was pretty manual. You had to get all your subnet data and spend time in Excel crafting your masterpiece. Getting the data isn’t always easy, especially in a large organisation.

Luckily, the online version of CQD supports supernetting, so you can get a good start on your building file using the data in Active Directory Sites & Services.

This is where the awesome new tool from Martin Rinas comes in. CQDTools has 3 main scripts:

Create-BuildingMappingFromADSites

1. Create-BuildingMappingFromADSites: Create a new CQD building file based on AD Site information. Building names can be retrieved from the site name, site description or subnet description in AD.
   You can also check an existing building file for any duplicates or overlapping subnets using the example below: Create-BuildingMappingFromADSites -InputFileName CurrentBuildingFile.csv
2. Find-MissingBuildingsInCQD: Check CQD in Skype Online to identify any missing subnets in the mapping. This is done by searching for un-mapped subnets that show the same public IP as already mapped subnets. Note: This will only work if you already uploaded a building mapping file (see 1 for this) and if the missed subnet is using the same internet egress as an already mapped site.
3. Get-BuildingMappingFromMsftDHCP: This a useful start if you use Microsoft DHCP. It will connect to your DHCP server(s), get all the scopes out, check them for duplicates and then build you a file you can’t then get ready for import to CQD. You’ll need to make sure you have the RSAT tools installed wherever you run this.

As a person with CQD already working fairly nicely, I found the second command particularly useful when I was testing this for Martin in my environment. It managed to find about 15–20 subnets which were missing in my building file. These were new subnets in existing sites I didn’t know had been created as well as completely new sites I didn’t know had come online.

So, if you’re looking for help with your building file for CQD, the CQDTools by Martin Rinas are a great place to start:

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Microsoft-Teams-Blog/CQDTools-PowerShell-Module-helps-with-CQD-building-file/ba-p/210808

https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/CQDTools/1.0.0