Quarantine Doctor
The Quarantining process has a major limitation though. Similar to how spammers change the message to defeat anti-spam software, those sending junk faxes change the TSID. Since quarantining can only be based on TSID, Caller ID, fax port, or dialed digits, and doesn’t actually scan the content of the fax, its use is limited. The addition of a fax content scanning engine, similar to that of anti-spam filtering software, would be a welcomed improvement.
Least Cost Routing (LCR) & Attachment Translation
For those larger organizations, which might be looking to implement multiple fax servers in multiple locations, the use of LCR can reduce long distance costs. LCR is functionality provided by FAXCOM Server that allows for outbound faxes to be routed to an alternate fax server right over your own network. The alternate fax server then transmits the fax. This is useful in the situation where you have servers in different geographic areas. For example, you wouldn’t want your server in New Jersey to transmit a fax to a California number when the server in California could have done it. Simply stated, LCR saves you money! But LCR isn’t the only feature which deserves recognition, let’s look at Translation Server.
Think about what the traditional fax sender transmits. Typically, the content of a fax is a based on a printed document. The sender composes a fax in a word processing application, prints it out, and then walks it over to the fax machine and faxes it. This entire process is streamlined with FAXCOM Server’s child component, Translation Server. Translation Server allows for the outbound faxing of typical file types such as doc, ppt, xls, and pdf. Provided the associated application is installed on the fax server, Translation Server will translate the attachment converting it to a faxable format.
Outbound Faxing
Up until now, only an overview of outbound faxing was discussed. You are probably wondering how outbound faxing actually works. There are several offerings from Biscom that can manage outbound faxing. These range from custom APIs to E-mail integration. For purposes of this discussion, the focus will be on the functionality provided by FAXCOM Suite for Windows.
FAXCOM Suite for Windows is a combination of products marketed in a single package. FAXCOM Suite provides many methods for enabling outbound faxing. Faxes can be sent using a web portal, Microsoft Exchange connector, Win32 fax client, or SMTP Gateways. A brief overview of each can be found below:
Web portal - Using the FAXCOM Suite for Windows MMC console, you can automatically create and configure an IIS website which will serve as a web portal for sending outbound faxes.
Microsoft Exchange Connector - Using the MMC, a connector can automatically be installed in Exchange 2000 or 2003 enabling faxing right from the Microsoft Outlook client. The user simply formats the To: field of the message properly, and the Exchange connector automatically handles the fax message.
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