Fax Lines

lchyi

Senior member
May 1, 2003
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This might be borderline off the "network" topic, but I know since most of you that browse this, you're already an IT specialist or very proficient in office settings.

Anyway, I work as an admin for a law office that is getting swamped with outgoing faxes. The problem is, when they're busy sending tons of those out, they do not receive incoming faxes. Is there a faster fax solution out there? Digital faxing, online faxing, or just faster machines? I know since they run on a 33.6 telephone line it doesn't get that much faster.

Thanks
 

lchyi

Senior member
May 1, 2003
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So I'm guessing hardware isn't going to get me anywhere... instead I have to go with a FoIP solution?
 

JackMDS

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 25, 1999
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Talking about computers.

The major issue is that many Fax recipients are on Phone Fax.

So computer and Broadband Internet can not get to the directly and you need to use a regular direct DialUp connection which turns you computer into a ?Glorified? regular Fax machine.

There are Internet Fax services.

You send the faxes to them and they sent it to phone faxes from their servers using their specially set phone lines.

Since you use the Internet connection to send the docs. to the service your Tel. Faxes are free for incoming.

There are also variations that send the faxes through email your own Website and similar tricks.

Example: http://www.faxaway.com

These services are not Free. It is fee for service.

:sun:
 

lchyi

Senior member
May 1, 2003
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Considering we fax to a vast multitude of places, I don't see how that helps. How does that help most businesses? A lot of them send to a variety of places, most with ancient fax machines.
 

Fiveohhh

Diamond Member
Jan 18, 2002
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Unless you wreally wanna keep it inhouse, Look into Venali(or another service like that). I doubt the place I setup puts out as many faxes as you, but they get about 100 incoming a day and send out around 15 a day, and it works great, and no hassles if your fax server goes down, and all your faxes come in pdf(or tiff), for easy archiving, or forwarding.
 

Night201

Diamond Member
Apr 23, 2001
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Have you looked at E-Fax.com? Maybe you can use that for incoming faxes and they can be routed to each individual person as well.
 

Garion

Platinum Member
Apr 23, 2001
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One thing that could radically affect the solution is how many of those documents exist in soft copy alone. All of these solutions are great, but they don't replace a fax machine if you need to send/receive fax documents that have things like signatures, hand-written notes, etc.

One thought: Keep your old fax machine for outbound stuff and look at a solution for inbound faxes. You could either go with an Internet service (more expensive long-term) or a device on your network for inbound. Something like a Castelle FaxPress would so just fine.

There is, of course, another option.. Get another fax machine and it's own dedicated phone line. Use one for outgoing and one for incoming. You could also talk to the telco and get them to setup a hunt group for you - if fax line #1 is busy, roll the call to fax line #2.

In short - Look at what you really need to do and what kind of faxing you do (soft vs. hard copy) and look at the various options - Stick with manual fax machines, moving to an Internet service or installing a fax appliance on your network.

- G
 

lchyi

Senior member
May 1, 2003
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I heard good things about Venali. Are their prices fairly reasonable? Are there any limits on the number of faxes sent and received? (I would call, but I'm still pretty busy researching, plus I rather deal with serviced customers instead of customer service)
 

Fiveohhh

Diamond Member
Jan 18, 2002
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give em a call and they'll give you a price, depends on how many faxes you send/receive.
 

HKSturboKID

Golden Member
Oct 20, 2000
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Originally posted by: Night201
Have you looked at E-Fax.com? Maybe you can use that for incoming faxes and they can be routed to each individual person as well.

My friend uses efax and they love it. No need to worry about spam fax to your fax machine. Couple of suggestions is tell them to invest into a Canon Ecopy machine which can scan and fax a doc, scan and email the scan doc to anyone on the machine itself. Its pretty cool.