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COPIA'S FAXFACTS: A FANTASTIC FAX BLASTER IT DOES MAIL-MERGE
TO FAX! - 2/3
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Copia Does It
Steve arrived last Wednesday, wearing one of his company's
especially ugly purple polo shirts. Luckily for us, his software
is much better looking than his shirt.
Steve installed the different software components from
disk in rather short order, after we set up the correct network
drive mappings, found the right phone cords for the eight phone
lines, and set the jumpers on the two Brooktrout 114 fax boards.
Actually, the Brooktrout 114 ($3,295, 4 lines) boards
are the top of the line for CT applications, with IVR and other
bells and whistles we don't really need for blast faxing. For our
purposes, the Brooktrout TruFax ($795, 2 lines) boards would have
been just as good, and cheaper (4 x $795 = $3,180 vs. 2 x $3,295
= $6,590).
Steve installed all the software in a shared network
directory on one of our Novell NetWare 3.12 servers. The fax server
machine -- a Micron Millenia PC running Windows NT Workstation --
ran its software from this share directory. Steve also installed
the client software in the shared directory, allowing clients to
install it over the network, rather than from disk, if they have
access rights. We did this on one machine for test purposes.
Once installation was complete I said, "Great.
Let's blast a mail-merge." But Steve insisted on doing things
logically. First, he showed me how to fax one document using the
FFWin component of FaxFacts. This is just a print driver that allows
you to "print" a fax from an application or from the FFWin
applet. When you "print," FFWin comes up, allowing you
to type in the number, choose a cover sheet, and send. Or you can
start the FFWin applet and enter the same information. Both methods
worked well, no different than other Windows fax products. (In fact,
Harry installed it on his Win95 laptop and sent faxes from his laptop.
He loved it because the minute he hit "print," it went.
And he could get back to real work.)
Then Steve introduced me to broadcast faxing. Here,
we chose a list (you can import one from another application or
create one with the program), and an image to send (we used FFWin
to "print" a document from Word to the FaxFacts Image
Catalog). And then we sent it. Very easy. Very fast.
Finally, we were at the moment of truth: mail-merge
faxing. We decided to start small: a personalized letter to 450
of our favorite Computer Telephony advertisers. Rose gave us the
database, a dBASE file exported from TeleMagic. Harry wrote the
letter using Microsoft Word 97. Then we set up the mailmerge in
Word, naming the .DBF file as our database and placing the appropriate
fields throughout our letter. It's totally trivial to do in Word.
Then there were two additional steps. First, we placed
the fax number field on the top line of our letter (right near the
border of the paper) and set it in a new TrueType font, called FFMerge,
invented and provided by Copia and installed automatically with
FaxFacts.
Then we chose the "FFMerge on FAX" print
driver (different from Copia's other "FaxFacts of FAX"
print driver used above) and merged our document to the "printer."
Off it went. Thus, there was virtually no difference between mail-merge
printing and mail-merge faxing.
We launched 457 one-page faxes. The rasterization of
the pages and the mail merge took 21 minutes on our Pentium 100
workstation (though the faxing began as soon as the first page was
created). The rasterization would have been faster with a faster
machine. The files took 21 megs of disk space on the server. The
eight fax lines ran about 380 faxes per hour, and with retries the
job was done in 1.5 hours. At that rate, we could do Gerry's job
in just over one day (26.3 hours).
Only five faxes failed to reach their destination..
Better still, FaxFacts told us that voice numbers caused two of
the failures and no answers caused the other three (thank the Brooktrout
boards for getting this information and FaxFacts for displaying
it in plain English). We found the correct numbers, changed them
in FaxFacts, and re-sent them. Very simple.
There are two keys to the mail-merge fax process.
First, the combination of the FFMerge font and the FFMerge print
driver tell FaxFacts how to handle the document. The FFMerge print
driver strips off the information on the top line in FFMerge font
(it must be 12-point size). This information must include the fax
number, but it can also include a cover page or other images to
include with the faxed document. Having this information is key,
allowing FaxFacts to get a fax number off the document itself, without
referring to a second database of fax numbers. No other Windows
fax driver can do this because it cannot "read" the document.
Second, FaxFacts separates the mail-merge process from
the faxing process, allowing one machine (the workstation) to concentrate
on mail-merging and rasterizing while the other machine (the server)
concentrates on faxing. The FFMerge print driver writes two files
for every document to be sent, the image and an information file.
FaxFacts uses the information file to find the image file and direct
the Brooktrout boards. The FaxFacts Status program then tells you
what's happening with the boards.
After showing us all of this, Steve still was not done.
He took us, one-by-one, through each of our demands and demonstrated
that FaxFacts met every one:
- Personalized faxes via mail-merge:
Believe it or not, mail-merge faxing with the FFMerge font
and the FFMerge print driver is not the only way FaxFacts does
this. It also has something called a the Graphical Cover sheet
processor. This processor takes a base fax document or watermark
and applies variable information, such as company and name, with
the designer having control over fonts, position and angle of
the information placed on the page. That way you can put "Check
this out, Aaron" in script font, sideways, in the upper right
corner of your personalized fax.
- Fast Faxing:
FaxFacts FFMERGE rasterizes at the workstation which sends
the mail merge and runs about 2-3 seconds per page. The Graphical
Cover sheet applies variable information to a starting fax page
in the background, also taking 2-3 seconds per page. Either system
can have attachments that are just file pointers that need no
processing to send the fax (they're already in faxable TIF format).
Note: FaxFacts allows the creation of the fax file to be
done on machine(s) other than the machine(s) sending the faxes.
Also under NT the creation of the faxes is a different process
from the processes that deliver the faxes. Finally, FaxFacts uses
industrial strength fax boards, not $100 store-bought fax modems.
- Multiple phone lines:
The Brooktrout boards handles this aspect of the system. But
FaxFacts will drive as many boards in as many machines as you
want, all working on the same job. T-1 is common.
- Reliability:
Steve says FaxFacts does not crash. He's had systems up for
more than a year at a time. We haven't seen a crash yet (one week),
but our TeleMagic fax server has crashed at least once a day.
Also, while broadcast, mail merge to fax, or Graphical Cover sheet
broadcast is running, it's normally at priority level 1. You can
set a higher priority level that allows other fax jobs to skip
to the head of the line, without having to restart the current
job. FaxFacts users do not have direct connections to modems.
The user launches fax requests and FaxFacts sees these requests
and acts on them. At any time the system can be started / stopped
/ added to; and work on failed faxes can start as soon as any
faxes fail. The user is never blocked from working on the system.
- Intelligent call handling:
This is one of the things that GammaLink and Brooktrout do
very well. It's call progress.
The status that FaxFacts gets from the fax cards is very detailed
and the Smart Retry features of FaxFacts allow the user to completely
control what action is to be taken for a given call progress status.
If a fax number listing is invalid, that status need not be retried
and can be failed at once.
Also the person who is working on the "failed" faxes
is given a complete history of each attempt and what the status
of the attempt was. The FaxFacts system even allows two or three
tries now and, if it does not go through, then eight hours later,
in case the person has shut off the fax machine for the night.
FaxFacts also checks for self-induced busy conditions, where another
line of the system is currently sending a fax to the phone number
that is to be dialed next. This feature saves a lot of unneeded
calls.
- Call Scheduling:
FaxFacts does this with a pre-process. It looks at the phone
number and looks it up in a table and adjusts the time to send
from the info in the table.
- Smart Exception Processing:
Again, FaxFact's Smart Retry addresses all of this as standard
handling operation. There's also no need to re-merge the data
because the operations are separate. You can fix the phone number
and push the resend button while the system is still sending the
original broadcast.
Normally the person to "fix" the failed faxes will have
a window open to the fax Status program and a window into the
database program that was the originator of the fax phone number.
- Call Volume:
FaxFacts can work directly from your database via mail merge
or you can do a database query and launch the broadcast. The FaxFacts
design has no limit on the number of faxes that can be queued
to be sent.
- Network Compatibility:
This is normal operation.
- Multiple Server Support:
FaxFacts can share the load across many "fax servers."
This allows for complete redundant systems and the construction
of very large faxing systems. Copia has many multiple server systems
with up to 700 lines being serviced. It also allows you to set
up multi-site distributed platforms. One very large airline currently
has FaxFacts servers in Texas and London working on the same "TOSEND"
queue.
- Print-Like Faxing:
FaxFacts uses a Windows printer driver to create fax images.
We do not emulate PCL, but third party products do. We also support
GoScript for PS to fax creation.
- Easy Management Software:
FaxFacts comes with a number of modules that give you information
about various processes. A small FaxFacts Monitor tells remote
users just what each phone line on a given FaxFacts server is
doing: waiting, calling, faxing, receiving, etc.
The FaxFacts Status application tells you about queued documents
and about those that have been sent. It also tells you about those
that failed, AND WHY. You can then go in an fix them and
resend them.
You can get all the management information from anywhere on the
network, including the server itself.
FaxFacts Is TOO Cheap
FaxFacts software is $330 a line. So, our system would
cost 8 x $330 = $2,640. On top of that you need $50 a workstation
license ($2,500 for an unlimited license) and a one-time $495 for
the mailmerge software. Harry believes all this is too cheap for
two reasons: First, this is complex stuff which no one else has
done well. Second, Steve's been at this since 1989 and seems to
stand behind every installation personally. (Tell him to come in
a different shirt). Third, this is far more than mailmerge/fax blast
software. His manual explains it: "FaxFacts is the most comprehensive
set of fax solutions on the market today. The system is infinitely
expandable, both in size and features. If you come across a task
that FaxFacts can't do, give technical support a call and they can
probably configure it for you."
The man is serious.
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