5. Installing, Connecting, Configuring and Testing FaxFacts
Installing Hardware
Installing FaxFacts hardware should present no problems for anyone who is reasonably familiar with installing boards in IBM-compatible PCs. If there is only one board of each type (voice or fax) to install, then it is usually sufficient just to plug them in to two free slots on the motherboard.
When you have multiple ISA boards of one type to install, you will usually have to change the ‘jumper’ or DIP switch settings on the board for the second and subsequent boards of each type, so that they can be addressed separately by the software. The FaxFacts manual has diagrams and tables of settings for most boards, and your FaxFacts supplier will provide a check-list of things you may have to change.
Conflicts with other hardware
In some cases, you may initially find conflicts with other hardware in your computer. This is a normal consequence of the design of the IBM PC. There may be conflicts on the I/O ports or the IRQ levels between the boards you are installing and other network, mouse or serial or parallel interfaces already in your machine.
Almost always, there will be no difficulty in resolving these conflicts by changing settings on one or more of the boards. In a few cases, you may also need to disable an unused parallel or serial port so that its IRQ becomes available for use. Also, PCI boards avoid these problems.
Your FaxFacts supplier will be able to assist you with any problems you encounter in this area.
Conflicts with other software
Just installing the FaxFacts voice and fax boards has the potential to cause problems with a few items of system software. Windows NT normally protects you from these conflicts, butunder DOS, the most likely difficulty is if some of the high memory areas used to communicate with the board have been reserved for mapping with a memory manager such as QEMM, 386MAX or the upper memory managers provided with DOS 5 and 6. Tinkering with CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT may be needed.
When you have installed the voice and fax hardware, you will need to install the board-manufacturer’s drivers and test and configure it using the utilities provided with the boards. This should be done before you attempt to start up FaxFacts, to ensure that the hardware diagnostics reveal no problems. The check-list provided by your FaxFacts supplier will give instructions about how to install the necessary drivers and run the diagnostics.
Under Windows NT, FaxFacts has an automated installation procedure from the supplied CD-ROM. You may also need your NT Workstation CD-ROM available if you have not already installed operating system options required by the drivers. The installation procedure is described in the FaxFacts reference manual and from the the ‘more info’ buttons in the CD installation program.
DOS installation files are also included on the FaxFacts CD. You can either install from these files or copy files to diskette first if your DOS machine has no CD drive.
Connecting Telephone Lines
Before you move on to configure the FaxFacts software you will also need to make the telephone connections required by your system. In the UK, BABT-approved boards usually come with a captive cable terminated by a standard BT 4-way plug. If not, they will have an RJ11 (USA telephone) socket on the board and will have a BT-to-RJ11 cable which becomes ‘captive’ when you insert the RJ11 plug into the board socket (because the catch which releases the plug has been removed to comply with BABT requirements). Do not swap such cables from board to board. They may look similar but can be wired differently.
Each analog line cable will need to be connected to a wall socket. For one-call systems, and for single-line callback systems, both a voice and a fax channel will be connected to the same socket using a standard double adapter. The necessary adapters will be supplied with your FaxFacts system if it is to be configured in this way.
Instructions for connection of ISDN boards will be provided in the board manufacturer’s installation manuals.
Network Connections
If you will be using the FaxFacts machine on your network, you will have to make the necessary network connections and install the network drivers before you start on the FaxFacts software installation.
When you configure the network, it is strongly recommended that you try to arrange for the FaxFacts document files and control directories to be referenced by the same drive letters on all systems on the network which need to reference them. The recommended way to do this is to set up a C:\COPIA\FAXFACTS directory on the fax server and to share C:\COPIA with a share name of COPIA. Then on other networked machines you should map this share to a drive letter such as Q: which is common to all of then. On the FaxFacts machine, use SUBST in a startup command file to map Q: to the same directory. Then Q:\FAXFACTS is a common name across your network.
As an alternative, The Windows NT versions of FaxFacts now allow UNC file names of the form \\servername\sharename\filepath to be used in most places where a path with a drive letter was valid. This technique also allows a common naming convention over all nodes.
A little care at this stage can pay dividends many times over if multiple users need to access the FaxFacts system, whether for document updating or for sending faxes locally.
Installing FaxFacts Software
A check list and instructions will be provided with your FaxFacts system to help you install the software from the FaxFacts distribution CD-ROM. This process will create the directories you need in the recommended layout. This makes it easier to set up client users accessing the fax server from your network. Client user software is normally kept on the file server and installed using the FaxFacts SETUP program at each workstation.
During the installation, the FFHWL program will be run to allow you to configure the hardware and line operations permitted by your FaxFacts licence. Here is where you specify the boards you will have in each machine and the operations for which you will be using each line. The ‘Help | About’ menu for this program will outline the operations you need to perform, and each dialog field has context-sensitive help which you can bring up with F1 or with the usual Windows help arrow.
Setting up Configuration and User Profile Files
The simplest method of setting up the configuration and user files is to use the SERCONF (server configuration) program which is run as part of the FaxFacts installation under Windows NT. This will set up default values based on your licensed lines and options which are normally sufficient to begin operation immediately. It will also create all needed directories and control files. When you become more familiar with the FaxFacts commands, you may prefer to modify the control files directly to better suit your requirements.
You will need a minimum of one configuration file and one user profile file for a simple system. If your lines will be used for different purposes (for example some lines receiving requests and others sending out faxes) you might need separate user profiles for each use, depending on how complex your system is.
System Messages
You can locate system messages in a directory named by the $vmsg_dir command in the user profile. If you will have a number of separate user files with just a few different messages, you can also place system voice prompts in any directory named in a FAXMSG or SVP environment variable. These directories will be searched after that named as the voice message directory.
We suggest that you start by using the supplied system messages and then, when the system is operating, record your own messages as required. Place your own messages in the VOICE subdirectory and leave those supplied in STDVOICE. This ensures that you do not accidentally overwrite the wrong messages.
Testing
If you start with configuration and user files generated automatically by SERCONF you will be able to test the small number of sample images and IIFs provided with FaxFacts. If you start with your own images, it is important to first make sure that the fax board you are using can recognize and send the image using the utilities provided with the board.
If there are errors in the configuration file and user profile FaxFacts will not start up. An error message will indicate the line number of the file, and you obviously need to fix these errors first. If no errors are found, the FaxFacts status display will report the initialisation of each board and then should get to the point where it displays a status of ‘await call/request’. At this point it is ready either to answer the phone or to process an outbound fax. To send a fax, you can use FFWIN on the same NT machine or another workstation.
For systems with voice facilities, you should find that you are able to call in, request a document, and have it faxed to you. If you find you cannot do this, the next best thing would be to hear a spoken message telling you why nothing is being sent to you. For example, you might have put the document in the wrong directory, and you should then be told that the document selected is not available (system message number 5). Or you may not have entered correct phone masks in the configuration file, and you should then hear system message 23 when you enter the fax number for a callback delivery. All these sorts of problems should be relatively easy to fix in the configuration files.
If you find that FaxFacts does not answer the incoming call, or if all outbound faxes fail, the first thing to check will be that your wiring is correct. If you don’t take enough care in wiring up the boards there are inevitably opportunities to make a ‘right plug in wrong socket’ mistake. Failure to answer the call could also (but rarely) be caused by an interrupt or IRQ conflict, an incorrect option choice during the driver installation, or under NT by a driver startup problem. If you can find nothing obvious wrong, you will need to run the board diagnostics again and then contact your FaxFacts supplier. Note that some boards require different jumper settings depending whether or not they have been connected through a PABX.
Any remaining problems are likely to involve unexpected FaxFacts behaviour, like accepting a request but not calling back. The first step will be to view another level of messages on the status screen, by pressing F4 and then F9. This will display the sequence of operations, and may also reveal additional status reports which are normally suppressed because they do not occur in normal operation of a working system. See the next chapter for more details of system monitoring.
Preparing to ‘Go Live’ with Fax-on-Demand
Once you have a fax-on-demand system running successfully on sample data and on your own test documents, it will be time to work towards getting your intended system up and running. As with all new projects, it helps if you can have a gradual build-up of usage. For some applications, there will in the end come a moment when you have to send out the 100,000 catalogues with your fax-on-demand details in them for the first time. But most fax-on-demand systems can be planned so that you can iron out the problems before a big volume of calls start coming in.
It is most important to get some ‘real’ users to test your menus, prompts and procedures thoroughly. The more branches you can test the better your system will be. Get users to do silly things, like hanging up the phone in the middle of a request, or keying something you have not asked them to key, and verify that the system handles the problem correctly and in a way that you can subsequently detect. If you will be charging for information requested, you will have to make sure that you can get all the information you need from the logs, and that you are going to detect and not charge for failed calls or hang-ups.
When everything is working to your satisfaction, you will make a final check that you have in place the monitoring procedures described in the next chapter, and you will finally be ready to open the doors of your ‘information warehouse’ for business.
If you will be running a public fax-on-demand service, make sure that Copia and/or your FaxFacts supplier are fully aware of your application details. There are a number of directories and magazines which list available fax-on-demand services and if it will be useful to you we can help to publicise the service you are offering in these listings.