Course13:IT Connect - 09.1 Fax
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Book on Fax App
The Fax App
The fax app allows you to send and receive fax messages. Users can send faxes by uploading a pdf-file (this is the only supported file type) in their fax app. Received faxes can either be downloaded from the app or a notification with a PDF attachment can be sent via email.
In addition to the permission to use the fax app, extensions (PBX users and group fax Apps) need also a fax license (e.g. included in the UC license) to be able to send/receive fax messages. The license for a user can be assigned through the Templates PBX Manager plugin. For Group Fax Apps a fax license is assigned automatically on creation through the AP FAX PBX Manager plugin (we will see later what a Group Fax App is).
The Fax app relies on hardware resources to send and receive faxes. Many innovaphone gateway devices have a so called Fax interface that is used for this purpose. The amount of concurrent fax calls depends on the device type and is limited by so called Fax channels. You can check the Hardware section in the product data-sheet or use the Fax AP PBX Manager to find out how many fax channels your devices have. Also, it is shown on the device's home page.
You must assign a free number in your dialing plan to the fax App, all fax extensions will use this number as prefix. E.g. if 9 is your fax App number and you have a user with extension 10, the user fax number is 910. A fax message received on the 910 number will be displayed in the fax App of this user. Also when this user sends a fax, it will have the number 910 shown as sender-id.
Before you can use a fax App instance, you must adjust some settings in the PBX manager.
Configuration
- Name: the name of the Fax App. It must be unique in the system. It will be shown in myApps and should describe the function of this fax extension (e.g. Personal-Fax)
- SIP: this has no relevance for the user or admin and is used only for PBX intern mechanisms. It must be unique in the system, you can use the same name as above.
- Number: this is the already explained Fax App number. It must be unique in the system and is used as a prefix for the user's personal fax number.
- Internat. Fax number: When a fax is sent, the fax senders number is also transmitted and printed in the header line of the received fax. This number should be reachable from the PSTN, in case the recipient wants to send a fax message back. Your fax extension number is appended to this number.
- Company name: Similar to the internat. Fax number above, this info is also sent to the recipient and printed in the header line of the received fax
In addition to the parameters above, it is also necessary to define which Fax-interface to use.
If you click on "Search" in the FAX-interfaces menu, you will see all available FAX-interfaces in your domain. By selecting one FAX-interface, detail info like the device name, type, hardware-ID and more important the amount of FAX-channels is displayed. If you select multiple fax interfaces in the plugin, the fax interface that registered first is always used. If the fax interface fails or has no more channels available, it will automatically switch to the next fax interface. The next one is the registration with the second highest uptime.
All other configuration options can be left as is for the Fax App. We will talk about some of them later on in this book.
Now go on and configure your FAX-app with the following parameters:
- Name/SIP: leave as default
- Number: 9
- Internat. Fax number: +invalid member reference '.netccext' in 'netccext'invalid member reference '.netacext' in 'netacext'invalid member reference '.nete164ext' in 'nete164ext'19
- Company name: your company name
- In the Fax interface section: use the IP811 as device
- In the Configuration Templates section: Assign the the App to the Config User template
Here you select the configuration template to deploy the fax or group fax App to the required users. Of course, you could also use the Templates PBX Manager plugin.
To test our Fax app
- send a Fax from your myApps client to Mario.
You need to use Mario's fax extension (i.e. 913), sending a fax to a users name is not possible. If you need a pdf file you can use this one - wait for the transfer to complete
To see if your fax was successfully delivered, you need to login to Mario's myApps. We would recommend using a different browser than you already use.
Browse to http://hq.invalid member reference '.domain' in 'domain' and use the Username and Password you configured for Mario in the Users Admin App (probably mro and ip411).
Afterwards you need to confirm your login attempt for the two factor authentication.
Therefore,
- go to
training-mail.innovaphone.com: owa and use the following credentials to log in: - click the confirm link in your received mail
- You can then open Mario's Fax App and see the document in the in-box
Email username: mario.rossi.invalid member reference '.name' in 'name'@class.localEmail password: invalid member reference '.pw' in 'pw'
Additional options
Default recipient
If you go back to the configuration of the Fax App, you find the section Default recipient. If a fax message is sent to a number that does not exist, directly to your Fax App number (i.e. missing the user extension) or to a user that is not allowed to receive fax messages (no fax license), the fax is rerouted to the Default recipient. This can be either a user or a Group fax app.
You should, for obvious reasons, make it a habit to always configure a default recipient.
Node and PBX
In this course, we won't use nodes or multiple PBXs anyway. So you can (and should) leave the settings as they are by default.
Coder channels
Closely related to Fax-channels are the Coder channels (sometimes also called DSP-Channels) of a device. Each Fax call may require in addition to one Fax channel, 2 of this coder channels. This depends on whether the fax destination supports T.38 or not (in that case the so-called audio-fax mode and 2 coder channels are used).
The amount of available coder channels depends on the device type (you have already seen that in the Conferencing book). You therefore should check the Hardware section in the respective data-sheet on how many DSPs your gateways have. You can also see it on the device's home page.
It is important to know that coder channels are also consumed/used by conference calls (1 per participant) and ISDN calls (1 per participant). If there are not enough channels available at the moment, a fax-call will be retried later.
App Service configuration
A received fax can not only be displayed in your fax app, but also forwarded as an e-mail. For this to work, we need to configure a SMTP connection to the mail server in addition to the user themselves allowing e-mail notification.
App Service Configuration
The configuration of the SMTP connection is done in the fax PBX Manager plugin. Simply click on the Configuration button and a new window will appear. You need to configure the following options in this dialog.
- Hostname: The best practice is to configure the DNS name of the app platform, for example, apps.invalid member reference '.domain' in 'domain'. Alternatively, you can also specify the IP address of the app platform in square brackets. Please note that you must configure the external address of your router here if the SMTP server is on a public network
- Server: You have to configure the address of the SMTP server here. If no port is specified, port 25 is used. If you want to use a different port, add the port to the address and separate it with :
- User name: In order to authenticate to the mail server, you must configure a user name here. Please note that this configuration cannot be omitted
- Password: Like the username, this configuration option is also used for authentication and cannot be omitted
- Sender address: Any e-mail address you configure here will be displayed to the recipient as the sender e-mail address.
- Sender name: Any name you configure here will be displayed to the recipient as name of the sender.
For our scenario please configure the following options:
- Hostname: apps.invalid member reference '.domain' in 'domain'
- Server: training-mail.innovaphone.com
(or training-mail.innovaphone.com:587 if checkconn.ps1 inHow to verify IP port availability said SMTP available on port 587 but not on port 25) - User name: invalid member reference '.longuser' in 'longuser'@class.local
- Password: invalid member reference '.pw' in 'pw'
- Sender address: invalid member reference '.longuser' in 'longuser'@class.local
- Sender name: Fax Service
Additional options
Delete fax jobs automatically
All faxes are stored in the database and are not deleted by default. In the configuration part of the Fax PBX Manager plugin you can enable automatic deletion of faxes after a certain number of days.
In many cases, it is a good idea to enable the automatic deletion of fax jobs. Otherwise, accounts which send or receive faxes but do not take care to delete them in time may flood the Application Platform's database storage.
Customized texts
Since the fax app will generate e-mails on demand, you can define texts to your own liking in the configuration part of the fax PBX Manager plugin. Section Customized Texts in Apps/PbxManager/App Fax explains the available options. Customized texts cannot be localized to other languages.
User specific configuration
Now open your own fax app again and click on the burger menu on the top right. As long as the user has e-mail address configured each user has the possibility to enable these options.
- Incoming notification: A e-mail will be generated if the user receives a fax
- Forwarding as PDF: When the user receives a fax, an e-mail is generated containing the fax as a PDF
- Transmission confirmation: The user will receive an e-mail when the fax has been successfully delivered
- Transmission report as PDF: The user will receive an e-mail with the fax in PDF format when the fax is successfully delivered
- Error Notification: The user will receive an e-mail in case of a failure
- The last line (which shows English (Standard) currently) allows you to select the language of the above mails sent to you
Please set the Forwarding as PDF check mark and Transmission Report as PDF check mark in your fax app.
To test the e-mail configuration, please send a fax to 913 again. When you log into your personal Outlook account ( training-mail.innovaphone.com: owa/ , user invalid member reference '.longuser' in 'longuser'@class.local, password invalid member reference '.pw' in 'pw'), you will receive a transmission report that the fax was successfully delivered.
Please log into Mario's myApps account (best in another browser, user mro, password ip411) and send a fax to 910 (which is the fax number of yourself) and you will receive an email notification that the fax has been received.
Fax group App
This feature allows you to configure one fax number for a group of users. By assigning the Fax Group App to users you decide who can read and send faxes on this specific extension. You can create new Fax Group Apps in the AP fax PBX manager plugin.
Fax Group Configuration
The configuration of a fax group App is very similar to the configuration of the fax app.
- Name and SIP: their role and restrictions are the same as with the Fax App
- Number: it must be a free number in your dial-plan, similar to the extension of a new user
- Internat. fax number: like for the normal fax App, this shall be the international number of your group fax but with its own Number omitted (e.g. not +invalid member reference '.netccext' in 'netccext'invalid member reference '.netacext' in 'netacext'invalid member reference '.nete164ext' in 'nete164ext'918 but +invalid member reference '.netccext' in 'netccext'invalid member reference '.netacext' in 'netacext'invalid member reference '.nete164ext' in 'nete164ext'9 if 9 is your fax number and 18 is your fax group number)
- E-Mail Addresses: the email address(es) where incoming faxes shall be sent to. Here you cannot enter the individual recipient addresses but you should use an email distribution group (or both) defined in your email system (or leave it empty). If you need an address for your distribution list, we recommend to call it like <SIP>@<domain>, e.g. orders@invalid member reference '.domain' in 'domain'
Please note that you have to enable email forwarding for every email address in the fax group App the same way we did for the personal fax App.
External Resource
You may have noted that the fax group App has no selection of a Fax interface, there is only the selection of an External resource. This is because the group App will use the fax interface defined for the normal fax App. You need to select the name of this fax object as External resource therefore.
The fax group App behaves somehow like an extension in the scope of the related fax App. To send a fax to the fax group therefore, you must put the fax prefix (that is, the number of the fax App object) in front of its own number. For example, if your regular fax App object has the Number 9 and the fax group App has the number 18, you would call 918 to reach the fax group.
Now let's configure a fax group App
- called orders
- with Number 18
- Internat. fax number +invalid member reference '.netccext' in 'netccext'invalid member reference '.netacext' in 'netacext'invalid member reference '.nete164ext' in 'nete164ext'9 (see note above in the Fax Group Configuration section)
- assigned to all users inheriting from Config User
- with a Company name of your choice
- without any E-mail addresses (as we have no distribution group email address at hand and also can not configure the email system)
To test your configuration, open your fax App and send a testfax as pdf to the new fax group orders as shown in the video. Since the Fax prefix is 9 and the fax group number is 18, you will use 918 to send a fax to the fax group.
Afterwards you can log in to any other user. Since all of your users share the Config User Template you can open the orders App and check if the fax was successfully received.
Of course, you can also send a fax using the fax group App. In this case, the fax identification will not show your own identity, but the group's identity. Note that the Number of the fax group App is appended to the Internat. fax number you configured for it.
A Fax Group App needs a fax license as well. The license is already assigned to it when it is created by the PBX Manager, you only need to calculate this license when buying licenses for a customer installation. If the user has no personal fax extension and will only receive faxes through the fax group, the user itself needs no fax license.