fax to pdf, instead of wasting paper/toner

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scottatwittenberg

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Ok, I am sure that there are quite a few ways to accomplish this.

We recieve a large amount of faxes that don't need to be printed per say.

So how do we get faxes that are in pdf form, and sent directly to the appropriate person's e-mail address?

There are multiple efax type services around, It appears that you pay a monthly fee, and they give you a phone number, then redirect all the faxes to an e-mail address.

Our copy machines even appear to have a funtionality to do this. They can at least recieve faxes and print them.

Are there hardware devices, networked fax machines, that can take faxes, pdf them, and e-mail them?

The 2nd problem is how to get the appropriate fax to the right person. I know that it would be simple to just set up either a shared folder on the network, or a shared e-mail address and instruct people how to go in there and get their faxes, but there could be quite a few problems with this also.

So what solutions are out there for this? OCR software that reads who it's to and sends it to the appropriate person? Can a fax be sent to an extension? 800 123 4567 x301 is mike, and x302 is shirley?

I know nothing about this, Its pretty bad that I am an "IT" guy and barely know how to use a fax machine..
 
scottatwittenberg said:
Ok, I am sure that there are quite a few ways to accomplish this.

We recieve a large amount of faxes that don't need to be printed per say.

So how do we get faxes that are in pdf form, and sent directly to the appropriate person's e-mail address?

There are multiple efax type services around, It appears that you pay a monthly fee, and they give you a phone number, then redirect all the faxes to an e-mail address.

Our copy machines even appear to have a funtionality to do this. They can at least recieve faxes and print them.

Are there hardware devices, networked fax machines, that can take faxes, pdf them, and e-mail them?

The 2nd problem is how to get the appropriate fax to the right person. I know that it would be simple to just set up either a shared folder on the network, or a shared e-mail address and instruct people how to go in there and get their faxes, but there could be quite a few problems with this also.

So what solutions are out there for this? OCR software that reads who it's to and sends it to the appropriate person? Can a fax be sent to an extension? 800 123 4567 x301 is mike, and x302 is shirley?

I know nothing about this, Its pretty bad that I am an "IT" guy and barely know how to use a fax machine..
Click to expand...
Depending on the phone ssytem in your office, it may be possible. Or you could set up the efax service. Thats all I have for ideas.
 
Here at work, we have a fax gateway doing exactly what you described. However, it's not possible to send the fax pdf directly to the exact person, only to a certain inbox so what we did here is to send faxes from a outside fax phone number to a common fax email box. The box was managed by our secretary who will forward to the proper person. But on the other end, we can send fax via email by appending a scanned pdf document (which our photocopier can do by doing a scan/email).

However, I cannot explain how everything is setup since I dunno exactly how it's done since it is maintained by a networking team in another city.
 
Contact your phone company... ours offers this, and we're in the middle of NOWHERE!! :eek: :eek:
 
I had a simple version of this somewhat working with Asterisk. Good reading Here and Here . Mine was even more simple setup that that If I remember corectly. Getting sendmail to work was the hardest part. Mine did not work perfectly, but I was using an unsupported FXO card as well as originating from a Voip service. GIGO

Mine worked like a regular fax. The files were both stored in a directory on the Asterisk box as well as sent to a central E-mail address (In other words it was only as secure as the location.) This posting may answer some of your questions on Fax to E-mail per Extension. Something I was not doing.
 
i found a listing of fax services that integrate into outlook.. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/EY010035751033.aspx

they are going to cost way too much though..

we have 3 fax machines currently.. 2 of the fax machines are doing approimately 10,000 pages in and out each month. the other one is at about 5,000 in and out..
so basically, we are at 50,000 pages a month.. it is pretty hard for me to believe, but the more i think about it, the more it makes sense.

the services will give a ton of phone numbers, but not many pages.. we want only a few phone numbers and a whole lot of pages..

so, the cheapest one i found was 4.9 cents a page.. that puts us at $2500 a month for internet faxing.. so, i am reqesting a quote from efax corporate to see what they can do..

our current costs are about this..
paper: $40 for 5000 sheet box.
toner: $70 each
Drums: $120 each
phone: ?????


Monthly Useage:
Paper: $120 (25,000 sheets)
Toner: $240 (4 toners)
Drum: $120 (1 drum)
Phone: ???

that's $480.. and i am sure we arne't spending $2000 on the phone bill for faxing..

then about once a year we have to buy a new fax machine becuase one of them wears out, that's $300...

so, i am going to look at making a server with some fax/modems in it, and software.

is there software already out there that works with outlook like all of the services in the link above do? that would be ideal.. i am sure that there are other ways such as "printing" to the fax server..

i will start looking at those links above, now that i have reaserached the outsourced internet faxing and see that it is probably not for us
 
scottatwittenberg said:
i found a listing of fax services that integrate into outlook.. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/EY010035751033.aspx

they are going to cost way too much though..

we have 3 fax machines currently.. 2 of the fax machines are doing approimately 10,000 pages in and out each month. the other one is at about 5,000 in and out..
so basically, we are at 50,000 pages a month.. it is pretty hard for me to believe, but the more i think about it, the more it makes sense.

the services will give a ton of phone numbers, but not many pages.. we want only a few phone numbers and a whole lot of pages..

so, the cheapest one i found was 4.9 cents a page.. that puts us at $2500 a month for internet faxing.. so, i am reqesting a quote from efax corporate to see what they can do..

our current costs are about this..
paper: $40 for 5000 sheet box.
toner: $70 each
Drums: $120 each
phone: ?????


Monthly Useage:
Paper: $120 (25,000 sheets)
Toner: $240 (4 toners)
Drum: $120 (1 drum)
Phone: ???

that's $480.. and i am sure we arne't spending $2000 on the phone bill for faxing..

then about once a year we have to buy a new fax machine becuase one of them wears out, that's $300...

so, i am going to look at making a server with some fax/modems in it, and software.

is there software already out there that works with outlook like all of the services in the link above do? that would be ideal.. i am sure that there are other ways such as "printing" to the fax server..

i will start looking at those links above, now that i have reaserached the outsourced internet faxing and see that it is probably not for us
Click to expand...

With this volume, I would be looking for a dedicated fax server. The only spending is on a computer strong enough for a fax server, software and the maintenance costs.
 
Xilikon said:
With this volume, I would be looking for a dedicated fax server. The only spending is on a computer strong enough for a fax server, software and the maintenance costs.
Click to expand...
and the dedicated fax lines going to it.. but we pay those anyways..
 
Checkout GFI Faxmaker. It has the capabilities to do OCR, DID, and DTMF routing of faxes. Throw a 2 or 4 port digital brooktrout card in a server (dedicated preferred for that volume), assign a DID# to each person, and enable routing in faxmaker for each DID.

GFI Faxmaker is priced based on the number of users and a decent 2-4 port Brooktrout card will run $400 to $1100.
 
uzor said:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/311529
Click to expand...
This seems the most feasible, because it doesn't require additional software. Just add a service to a 2k3 server..

this would work with one of the brooktrout cards too, right? is the pretty much the only "business class" modem? or the only multiport modem?

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=381507
i see a 2 port brooktrout here.. it seems that it can only handle 1 fax number at a time though. one only recieves, one only sends..

i know how to share a common mailbox in outlook..
i will go home and set up the fax service on a comptuer at home to see what it can / can't do.. and go from there..
 
scottatwittenberg said:
This seems the most feasible, because it doesn't require additional software. Just add a service to a 2k3 server..

this would work with one of the brooktrout cards too, right? is the pretty much the only "business class" modem? or the only multiport modem?

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=381507
i see a 2 port brooktrout here.. it seems that it can only handle 1 fax number at a time though. one only recieves, one only sends..

i know how to share a common mailbox in outlook..
i will go home and set up the fax service on a comptuer at home to see what it can / can't do.. and go from there..
Click to expand...

I use that Brooktrout card and it can send/receive on both channels fine. If your using two analog lines, then plug them both in to the card and configure for send/receive on both channels.

Brooktrout cards are much more likely to have compaitbility with the majority of dedicated fax devices unlike cheaper fax/modems.
 
scottatwittenberg said:
actually, when looking at this some more.. how does one send outgoing faxes?

this still would be helpful though.. we would use a ton less paper and toner.. and sending the faxes out via the fax card or the fax machine would cost us the same as far as phone charges go..
Click to expand...
You "print" your document to the shared fax printer. Basically it looks just like a network printer in your print dialog. When you print to it, it pops a fax wizard that allows you to select recipients from your address book (or enter manually, and select and apply a prebuilt or custom cover sheet. Finish the "print" and the fax (with cover sheet, if selected) gets sent to the shared fax server, which dials the recipients one at a time over the attached analog modem (connected to your outgoing fax line), and faxes the document. Error reports can be reviewed in the fax console that is installed with the fax "printer".

 
At my job, I used Snappy Fax Server (http://www.snappysoftware.com/). It's cheap at $69 and supports unlimited modems. So if you had a big-ass machine with multiple modems (can be USB modems daisy-chained as well), you can set up Snappy Fax Server to send the fax to the person's e-mail address in pdf format based on the number which received the fax.

Never had any problems with the software and it was a breeze to set up.

I think you can use it to send faxes as well, but I never used that feature.
 
Something that would do this would be a nice multi-function printer/copier. (shameless plug for my company). Most of our photocopiers have fax options available to them, and one advantage of having the fax kit is that there is a nice function called fax forwarding. using the scan functionality on the copier (scan to email, scan to smb, scan to ftp and scan to user box), you can tell the copier to forward the fax to a predefined destination (email, ftp, windows share, or user box) so you can preview the fax. The forwarding options include print, forward, and print and forward. It's pretty versatile, and works really well. unless the email server or windows server goes down. then there's a lot of faxes stuck on the machine waiting to be forwarded. Something to look into if you have the need for a copier/fax/printer and want some neat scanning and fax features
 
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