Re: [hylafax-users] Bulk Faxing Like Tobit?

["Adam Fox" <adam.fox@gribbles.com.au>]

Hi Noel,

Our company set up something very similar to what you want using sambafax.
We had to set up a fax system that would interpret "GoldFax" header
information because the program producing the faxes only support GoldFax.
Each file had a header with the fax information (like the sender name, the
recipient, and the fax number to send to). What we did was use sambafax as a
base and modified the code to recognise these GoldFax commands. The fax job
was printed to a samba printer shared from our fax server. When the fax gets
to the fax server you can modify the sambafax perl scripts to look at each
submitted file and pull out the fax number (and any other information like
the name of the sender, the name of the receiver, etc). The fax is then
passed on to sendfax with the parameters out of the file passed as
parameters to sendfax.

The only problem is going to be getting the fax number out of the data file
if you're sending a word file. My understanding is that when a MS Word file
is printed to a postscript driver, Word converts the print image to a raster
image and embeds it in the postscript source. If the postscript file
contains the phone number enclosed in the "@@" then it shouldn't be too hard
from there.

Regards,

Adam Fox.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Noel Kelly" <hylafax@lolith.net>
To: "Karl Denninger" <karl@denninger.net>; <hylafax-users@hylafax.org>
Sent: Friday, January 24, 2003 1:22 AM
Subject: Re: [hylafax-users] Bulk Faxing Like Tobit?


> Thanks Karl.
>
> I have actually stumbled across SalsaFax -
http://www.purpel3.com/sambafax/
>
> This actually does something similar to Tobit in that it looks for the fax
> number in the actual fax data file.  Salsa is the Perl successor to
Sambafax
> so might be quite flexible as well.
>
> Anyone have any experience of these tools?  I know a lot about Samba so
> might be the best route for us?
>
> Thanks,
> Noel
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Karl Denninger" <karl@denninger.net>
> To: "Noel Kelly" <hylafax@lolith.net>; <hylafax-users@hylafax.org>
> Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 2:10 PM
> Subject: Re: [hylafax-users] Bulk Faxing Like Tobit?
>
>
> > The easiest way to do this would probably be to print to a Postscript
> > output file, then use faxcover to merge in the "custom" information.
> >
> > You would need to hand-edit the postscript of the "base" document to
> > accomplish this, and setting it up originally would be a bit of a pain
in
> > the butt, but once it was set up for a particular document it would be
> easy.
> >
> > "faxcover" would then be used to produce both the cover page and the
> actual
> > document (two invocations), with the output then being queued via
sendfax.
> >
> > Not horribly difficult to accomplish.
> >
> > --
> > --
> > Karl Denninger (karl@denninger.net) Internet Consultant & Kids Rights
> Activist
> > http://www.denninger.net Cost-effective Consulting
> > http://childrens-justice.org Working for family and children's rights
> > http://diversunion.org Improving relationships between Divers and Shops
> >
> > On Thu, Jan 23, 2003 at 11:58:35AM -0000, Noel Kelly wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I have a new Hylafax server which we are planning to use to complement
> our
> > > existing Tobit Faxware server.  The Tobit server runs under Windows
2000
> and
> > > continually gets 'jammed' when the marketing people run a bulk fax
job.
> > >
> > > The new Hylafax server has two Eicon BRI server cards and everything
is
> > > working great.
> > >
> > > My question is to do with how to submit bulk fax jobs to Hylafax.
Using
> > > Tobit our marketing people can do a mail merge from Word and insert
the
> fax
> > > number as a merged field at the top of each page, bracketed with '@@'
> like
> > > this:
> > >
> > > @@0044203030303@@
> > >
> > > The whole mail merge document is then 'printed' Tobit  from Word and
> Tobit
> > > will automatically dial the number it finds bracketed at  the top of
> each
> > > page.  Thus each fax recipient receives a personalised fax page.
> > >
> > > Is there something like this I can do under Hylafax?  I have looked at
> > > 'sendfax' and 'faxcover' but these only allow a custom cover page
rather
> > > than the actual fax content.  I have looked at Cypheus and WHFC but
they
> do
> > > not seem to interpret the document being printed to them.
> > >
> > > I can see a way to do it might be to produce the TIFF file from the
> merged
> > > Word document (or an individual TIFF file for each page) and then try
> and
> > > marry each page up with a list of fax numbers but there is too much
> chance
> > > for someone to end up receiving a fax addressed to someone else.
> > >
> > > Any suggestions would be most welcome,
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > > Noel
> > >
> > >
> > >
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>


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