2. Planning for FaxFacts Fax Server Operations
Sending Faxes from Network Workstations
FaxFacts is a highly capable network fax server, whether or not any voice or fax-on-demand features are enabled. The server normally runs on a one or more network workstations and can process requests from clients elsewhere on the network. These server features may sometimes be combined with fax-on-demand, allowing users to add documents from their information base as attachments to a custom fax.
FaxFacts has available various utilities and drivers for use as ‘clients’, all of which generate FS files in the FaxFacts ‘to send’ directories.
FFWIN
FFWIN is a Windows program which can be configured both for standalone use and as a Windows printer driver. It is licensed as a FaxFacts option for use on a specified number of network workstations and is available for Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT. As a standalone program it can be called up to initiate a fax transmission, which can include both a custom cover sheet and attachments. As a printer driver, it can send a file from any Windows application. FFWIN can use a different cover sheet template for each licensed user, and also maintain phone-books with lists of the names and fax numbers of people to whom you send faxes regularly.
When FFWIN is used as a printer driver it can be integrated with the WBC program described below, to allow a the fax being created to be broadcast to multiple recipients.
FFMERGE
FFMERGE (U.S. Patent No. 5,715,069) is a printer driver specially designed to make ‘mail-merge to fax’ as simple as any other mail merge. It is available in versions for Windows 3.1, Windows 95 and Windows NT. A provided FFMERGE True-Type font is used to display the fax number at the top of a document created in your word-processor, contact manager, or in a custom Windows application that you may have developed. The font contains special marker bars above each character:
.JPG){kind=small}
The driver extracts the fax number and other optional data such as an attachment list, by examining just two scan lines of this special font. From this it generates an FS file to schedule the fax transmission. FFMERGE completely eliminates the overhead and complexity of OCR or DDE solutions and makes faxing entirely ‘pop-up free’ as well as maximising fax throughput.
A utility is also available to collect output from a special Microsoft Exchange mailbox and launch outbound faxes through the FaxFacts server engine.
Fax Broadcasts
FaxFacts includes extensive fax broadcast facilities and is currently used to control broadcasts at sites with as many as 500 lines. All broadcasts are initiated by writing FS (fax send) control files into a TOSEND queue directory. You can use the $request_dir command to set up multiple TOSEND directories (TOSEND1 to TOSEND9) which are scanned with different priorities. By putting broadcast jobs into these queue directories you can adjust the priorities as required, and prevent your broadcasts from delaying fax-on-demand callbacks or other urgent tasks..
You can enable and disable specific directories for different machines and at different times. This allows ‘parking’ a broadcast job until you are ready to send it. The $phone_mask command in the configuration file can also select different lines for different types of call, so that you could use a different phone company for local, long distance or international calls.
FaxFacts is optimised to minimise network traffic, so that scanning several thousand FS files from multiple outbound FaxFacts systems does not overload your network.
FaxFacts includes a number of broadcast-generation programs:
FFBC
For high-volume broadcasts, the FFBC program is supplied to launch the broadcast by generating FS files from a comma-separated-value (CSV) list. Lists with TAB characters separating fields are also supported, and under Windows NT the ‘list-separator’ character can be changed in the regional settings. CSV files can easily be exported from all popular database programs. The CSV file can contain an unlimited number of variable fields per line as well as the phone number and recipient name. Simple record selection based on field data is supported, and telephone numbers can optionally be checked against a ‘do not send’ file.
The program can either be used interactively to edit the FS template file and select the list, or can be used to launch a broadcast automatically, perhaps as a request from a caller who has faxed in a document and selected a list to send it to. In both modes of operation, single test transmissions can be specified before the complete broadcast is launched. The system is designed for large volumes and can typically generate at least 100 FS files per second. It runs under Windows 95 or Windows NT only.
FFBC also supports generation of a ‘poll broadcast’ in which FaxFacts will call to a sequence of remote fax machines and collect a document or batch of documents which they have ready for transmission. When voice boards are installed, FFBC can also generate FS files which make a sequence of voice calls to a list of numbers, either to broadcast a fixed message or to initiate an IVR interaction controlled by the person who receives the call.
WBC and FAXBC
The WBC program is designed for simpler broadcast tasks and interactive operation only, under all Windows versions. It is typically used with smaller CSV lists, which can be maintained and edited in the WBC program, as can the FS template file. A test transmission can be made before the broadcast is launched.
FAXBC is a DOS-based broadcast generator which also works with a CSV file and an FS template file.
Job Management
The provided fax launchers such as FFBC, WBC and FFMERGE can be configured to record a ‘job owner’ and ‘job id’ for each broadcast. Each run of the job then becomes a new instance of the job, which can be monitored and manipulated as a unit.
The FFJOBMON program runs on any machine which can see the FaxFacts queue directories. It scans the active jobs and looks for pending un-sent FS files for each one. When a job is complete (no items waiting) the program can automatically launch a completion task specified for the job. This might involve sending e-mail or a fax report to the originator, or generating records for a billing system.
The other job management activity is performed with the FFJOBADM administration program. This allows all the items in the job to be processed as a group, allowing tasks to be performed such as delaying, restarting, cancelling, or changing the priority of a job. This program is also used to set up the initial properties of the job, such as priority, delayed start time, completion action, and so on.
Monitoring Outbound Faxes
The provided STATUS program shows the transmission status of faxes or groups of faxes currently active in the system. When a fax has failed after the specified number of retries, its FS file moves to a FAIL directory. STATUS allows you to examine and manually resubmit the fax (for example after fixing a phone number you find is incorrect).
STATUS can be used by an administrator to monitor the complete FaxFacts system, or can be configured to display only the faxes originated by a specific user. The normal display of the FaxFacts server engine program can also be used by the administrator to view the summary totals of the number of FS files in each of the TOSEND queue directories as well as the SENT and FAIL directories.
Logging and Reports
FaxFacts produces a comprehensive call log which contains details of each transaction. There are also several programs provided to view and print the log file, which is in standard dBASE format.
VL and VLP
A new log file is created each day when the first transaction of the day occurs. The filename is made up from the current date as yyyymmdd.DBF. The VL (‘view log’) DOS program or VLP Windows program will display the log file record by record. They start with the current day’s log file and you can browse back and forward through previous days’ files.
CATDBF
The CATDBF program is used to concatenate a batch of the daily files into a single file for the week or month. You specify the target DBF file name and a filename pattern for the files to be concatenated.
FFREPORT
This optional package consists of a collection of useful standard reports created with the ‘R&R Report Writer’ product. The reports tabulate most of the information available from the DBF files.
Many users gain great value from simply loading the FaxFacts DBF format logs directly into Microsoft Excel or Access. Sorting and displaying this file in different ways allows many insights into the way your system is operating, even before you start to generate any summaries or simple reports.
Another source of logging information is provided by the FS files which are normally retained by FaxFacts in a ‘SENT’ directory until you purge them. Some optional responses from your callers are only available in FS files, not in the log file. Normally, these responses would be used in your own pre-process functions, but if you need them for statistical purposes they can be extracted from the FS files. Utilities and C library functions can be supplied to handle the reading of the FS files and extraction of the data.
Smart Retry
FaxFacts under Windows NT allows full customisation of fax retry procedures. Up to eight different retry strategies can be defined, and every possible error type from call placement or fax transmission can be allocated any of the retry strategies. The default settings cover most eventualities, but you can change the defaults either for your fax-on-demand outbound operations or separately for any other application such as broadcasts.
Among the retry strategy parameters you can set are:
Inbound Fax Server Tasks
FaxFacts can receive faxes either on designated lines or on any free fax line. Most supported hardware allows automatic detection of an incoming fax on a line that is shared with voice calls. Various options are available to deal with incoming faxes:
Accept Fax
The simplest system involves assigning all incoming faxes to a single ‘mail box’ which records the date and time of receipt, the remote answerback, and any other data available from the remote fax. The FaxFacts viewer, FFVIEWER, can then be used to list the contents of the mail box, view the faxes, and move the fax files to a selected recipient directory. The recipient can then also use FFVIEWER to view, print or forward the fax.
Fax Routing with DDI
When a system has available the telephone number called by the caller (through DID, DDI or MSN), FaxFacts has an inbound fax mail option which allows automatic selection from multiple numbered mail boxes. The mail box numbers are assigned to match the final digits of the called number. Recipients can again view their mailbox lists and incoming faxes using FFVIEWER.
Printing incoming faxes
The FaxFacts FFPRINT utility can be set up to print all incoming faxes. Multiple instances of FFPRINT can be used on the same or different machines to drive different printers from different groups of mail boxes, allowing printed incoming faxes to be delivered direct to the correct department.
Fax-to-Email
FFPRINT has a special option to print faxes to Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files. Coupled with a custom ‘post-receive’ process, you can use this feature to forward faxes to an e-mail address for viewing with a browser that can handle the PDF format.
Interactive Routing
In a FaxFacts system with voice facilities, standard messages are provided to interact with a caller and invite the selection of a recipient mail box using DTMF keys. This type of application usually only works with a closed group of callers, because most people who send a fax just by pressing a ‘send’ button do not expect to be questioned about mail boxes when FaxFacts answers the call.
OCR Routing
FaxFacts can be set up to process incoming faxes specially in a ‘post-receive’ operation. This feature can be used to launch an OCR recognition operation which can be used to determine the recipient of the fax. Given a list of expected recipient names, third-party OCR applications can even decipher handwritten names with adequate reliability for workgroup routing purposes.
Special Post-Receive Tasks
Other examples of post-receive processing might be to use the incoming fax to start a re-broadcast of it to a selected list. You can either use the provided FFBC broadcast generator for this, or launch a custom program.
Various pre-defined post-receive tasks are available, including one which automatically transfers incoming faxes into the appropriate Microsoft Exchange mailbox.
Fax Store and Forward
The full FaxFacts ‘Fax Mail’ option turns FaxFacts into a fax store and forward system. The mail boxes used for receiving inbound faxes can be allocated to an ‘owner’ who can call in and retrieve faxes stored on the system. As with fax-on-demand, faxes can be collected either on a one-call or a callback basis. The FaxFacts line operation named ‘pickup’ operation is analogous to ‘onecall’ fax-on-demand and allows collection of stored faxes by calling in from a fax machine. The ‘retrieve’ and ‘deliver’ operations match the ‘request’ and ‘outbound’ line operations used in fax-on-demand and allow stored faxes to be transmitted on a callback basis.
Fax mail delivery can either be made to a standard fax number assigned for each ‘owner’, or can be overridden at retrieval time to forward faxes to a different number.
Hub-to-Hub
A special application built on top of the FaxFacts fax mail feature allows multinational organisations to transfer faxes in bulk at low cost. Incoming faxes are received at one hub and the caller is asked to key in the final destination telephone number. After the saved faxes and destination data have been grouped and sorted, they are transferred in bulk over the Internet to the destination country, along with FS files which drive a FaxFacts system at the destination hub.
It is a measure of the openness and configurability of the FaxFacts system that fax reception and transmission parts of the hub-to-hub application could be implemented using only standard features of the FaxFacts system, and without any modifications to the FaxFacts server itself.
Details of this application are beyond the scope of this book: please contact Copia or your FaxFacts reseller if you require more information.