The principal method of causing CopiaFacts to initiate an outbound call is to drop an 'FS command file' into one of the TOSEND folders. The FS file contains information about the destination, the file(s) to be sent, and any customization and handling parameters. These folders are scanned for work in priority sequence, with an optional alternative priority mechanism based per-queue quotas. For details of this API, please see the CopiaFacts Fax Send API topic.
In addition an API is provided in the Job Administration DLL to cause an FS file to be generated based on the passed parameters, combined with job properties.
For large volumes of e-mail and SMS transactions, CopiaFacts also provides an option to deliver FS file images in MSMQ messages. When a queue is specified, the COPIAFACTS engine reads the queue and processes work, and if the queue empties, the TOSEND folders are scanned in the normal way until further items appear in the queue. When an e-mail or SMS fails and requires a retry, the FS file is written back to a TOSEND folder for re-processing on the normal timed basis. It is for this reason that the MSMQ is only enabled for e-mail and SMS channels, where retried failures are much less likely to be needed.
Neither of these initiation methods is ideal for initiating individual faxes on a specific channel for immediate processing, although the MSMQ interface might be adapted to do so. For this reason our preferred method for an external application to initiate an outbound task for a specific time and channel is to use an incoming message and allow each idle channel to wait for the message instead of waiting for the signal that work had been found and allocated from a queue. At the same time the channel can also wait for an incoming call (if so configured), as happens now.
The COPIAFACTS program can be configured to accept a WM_COPYDATA message containing the channel to be used, the destination number, the document filename(s) to be faxed, and other required parameters such as CSID or fax header text. This feature is not enabled by default: please consult CopiaFacts support for details.
For this application the message content is a string consisting of a set of FS commands, separated by newlines: this allows the main engine processing in the COPIAFACTS engine to process such messages with minimal differences from the normal processing of FS files. In this mode the scanning of all TOSEND queues for FS files is disabled and the external application is responsible for choosing both the CopiaFacts channel and the timing of the fax initiation.
Documentation Links
The Fax Send API (file-based)
