Re: [hylafax-users] Iternet-Fax WG Anyone?

[Bill Binko <bill-sender-4b2fd6@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 4 Aug 2004, Matt wrote:

> -------------------
> > > That way, whenever possible, his people could put in a
> > > document, and email it rather than faxing it.  Since 80% of his
> > > outbound faxes go to 10 recipients and 9 of those agreed to accept the
> > > email, this goes a long way to reducing costs.
> -------------------
>
>  Sorry for the misunderstanding, it was the above snippet from Bill's
> message that threw me out on the email bit.
>  So, to all intent and purpose, the (T.37) method is a standards compliant
> version of the email to fax system.
>
>  Again, sorry for the misunderstanding :)
>

Sorry if I threw you.  We have three goals in our effort:

1) Capture and store all commincation (fax, email, etc) and integrate the
documents into the customer database.  This is critical as "lost"
documents (usually sent/received from a desktop fax) are a significant
problem, and the hard-copy storage system is getting untenable.

2) Reduce telecommuncation costs.  Desktop faxes need a phone line to the
desk + the long distance charges.  Funnelling faxes through a Hylafax
server makes for fewer lines (Hylafax queues up requests).  The device
we're using also allows "Scan to E-Mail" at the machine (it has a
soft-keyboard and hot-keys) so that 9 of the 10 most common recipients can
be setup to receive email instead of faxes (using IP bandwidth rather than
PSTN time/$$).

3) Capture paper documents into the customer database.  They get lots of
paper documents that are not currently being captured electronically.
I've written a script that will let them scan to the "email"  address
'c_1234' which will attach the image to the customer with id '1234'.

None of this needs T.37 - we had already decided to do it when I found
that the device supported T.37.  I had planned on using an address like
'f_18005551212' to send a fax.  When I saw the interface on the machine
had an "Internet Fax" option and would automatically send the TIFF-F to
"FAX=+18005551212" when the user typed in a phone number, I thought I'd
ask who was using it.

When I looked further, I saw a TON of devices that support T.37.  Many of
them are far cheaper than the copier we're leasing.  Now, we need the
copier and the high-volume printer, so we're moving ahead.  But if I get
Hylafax to support T.37, I'll put smaller, cheaper devices around the
office to replace those (outbound) desktop faxes.

Another significant benefit would be to add a LITTLE bit of logic in the
T.37 script to check the area code and see if another mail server in the
company is a better choice to send the fax.  We send about 5% of our faxes
to two local areas (in TX and FL) and saving that might be worth looking
at.  In larger organiations, it could be a real boon.

Anyway, given the low cost and high potential, I'll probably work on this
shortly.

Bill


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