Re: flexfax: Managment System

[Peter Stamfest <peter.stamfest@eunet.at>]

On Tue, 2 May 2000, Andy Zbikowski wrote:

> Has anyone found a good system for managin incoming faxes? Now that I
> have HylaFax set up and working I'm trying to decide just how far I want
> to take it. Autoprinting recived faxes and letting the office secretary
> distribute them as usual will work, and is simple.
> 
> I'm also considering modifiny faxrcvd to e-mail pdf files instead of ps
> (using ps2pdf).
> 
> I think my eventual goal would be setting up/creating a web based
> managment system where recived faxes are converted to pdf files and
> indexed at a main site. Then the generall office list (every one in the
> company) get the notification and enough information to determine if the
> fax is for them. If it is, go to the webpage or printer and retrive your
> fax. 

I'm currently implementing both of this. My system can be configured to 

* generate an email containing the fax as PDF (using my very own GPL'd
  fax2pdf program)

* generate an email containing an URL to a web based interface to view a
  fax either as a series of gifs or as PDF (again)

* enter the fax into an index for the web based fax management

The trick with the web based interface is its access control. In order to
be allowed to view the fax, you must know the exact URL (including an MD5
hash of the fax, playing the role of a per-fax password). That way, there 
is some protection of faxes. The URL generated for the email has this
"password" included already. If the secretary receiving all the emails
from the fax system forwards the email, the actual recipient will be able
to view the fax, but nobody else.

This is very similar to the old way of handling faxes. If a fax contains
information not to be seen by everybody, it is simply given into ones
possesion by a secretary. The same thing can be achieved through my web
based interface. 

It has some more features. Given a suitable username/password the BigBoss
can view all the faxes, regardless of the MD5 password, for example.


The whole system is not entirely secure (given the existance of browser
histories, etc., but reasonably hard to get around without using the
computer of the person having the fax specific URL). But to view a hidden
fax from the old days (hiding the paper) you would also have to go the
office where it was stored - so this is quite similar to the paper-way
of doing faxes.


> 
> What have you folks out there done? Our setup is pretty simple, one
> modem, one line, though I'd like to add another line on the same number
> so we can recive two faxes at once. 
> 
> I'd like to hear what you folks who have been using HylaFax longer than
> I have done. 
> 


peter stamfest