SBS 2003 Fax CLIENT wizard!

Not going to get an answer to this, am I? :)

Is that what you are looking for?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/185058

Hi Vico1

That looks helpful, but not sure whether I can use it or not...

We have a piece of 3rd party software, it can either output as a fax, email or print.
We are trying to remove the actual fax software that they are currently using (Tobit) from the equation. We can successfully pass faxes from the 3rd party app to tobit no problems, however, if we remove tobit - how can we send faxes from the 3rd party app?

I'm going down the route (trying to) of having the email address of clients within the 3rd party app as their fax number. So, if they were to try and send an email to this company, it would go via Exchange and fax it from the server.

Currently we have:
FAX: Invoices sent out via Fax to tobit to handle the faxes, the fax number is on the Contact address for each recipient
Email: Invoices are sent out to some customers via Email, this is done by the 3rd party software specifying an SMTP host IP on the network and relaying via it.
Print: Invoices that have to be physically mailed are printed and sent via snail mail.

We would like to remove Tobit from the situation, replace it with SBS Faxing (if possible).

Reading the post above, from Vico1, users with Outlook and the Fax Transport addin can use a fax number as the To address for example: [Fax:01553345678] and it would automatically start faxing via the SBS server.

Ok, so replacing all customer email addresses in the 3rd party software with [Fax:<their fax number>] would not work, correct?
I'm assuming it would not, as Outlook needs to be installed and the email needs to be sent via that?
Is there a way of Exchange being able to Fax just from having an outbound email address of [Fax:<their fax number>] ?

Please let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks.

The is nothing to it,
Say that you wanted to fax me at 555-1212,
From outlook, You just click on "New" like you were creating a new email,
In the field  "To", enter my number as follow:
[vico1@5551212]
with the brackets. of course you have to have a fax modem installed on the SBS server.
Let me know if thats what you where looking for.
Vico1

Hi Vico

Sorry, for not being so clear.

I can fax directly from Outlook fine.
We have client computers that connect to a database, the database gets updated daily and invoices get produced. These invoices get generated at the server level and get sent (currently) through an SMTP gateway that exists on the network. So thus far, emails are going out to email addresses and faxes are getting relayed to the fax service (tobit).

We want to move the fax service (Tobit) from the equation.
At the moment, the 3rd party software that is sitting on a server is outputting files with the codes @FAX NUMBER@ at the top and passing them to Tobit, so it knows where to fax it to. (tobit starts the queue and sends the faxes successfully)

So, what we are hoping to do, is set these faxes up as emails, pass the emails to Exchange and have it convert them to faxes ready for sending to the required Fax Number.
I was hoping to do something like the following:

Choose the invoice to be EMAILED instead of Faxed
Add the email address of the Invoice as a Fax number (as from the support document, for example: [Fax:010101010101]
Email gets produced by the software
Email transfered to Exchange
Exchange (not Outlook) will try and sent this via Fax, as its recognised the To address as a Fax format.

Is this even remotely possible without any further software?

Please let me know your suggestions again.
Thanks.

I am sorry I did not  read your question completely.
Just like your 3rd party software outlook is what communicates with the exchange server or you could us outlook web access.
The fact is you have to use some kind of software to communicate with the exchange server, and so far outlook is proven to be the best, that's why it comes with the packages of the SBS.

Vico1

The outlook software is not what faxes to the client. The exchange server is actrually what routes the email as a fax or as an email.
Meaning if your database can connect to exchange using SMTP , the exchange server would route those "FaxEmail" to a modem pool for faxing.
The only difference is your 3rd party software uses  the format @5551212@ to recognize faxes vs Email, Where SBS Exchage uses the format [Fax:Recipient@5551212]
So it is basically the same.
Vico1

Are you sure the SBS server doesn't do the conversion with the Fax Transport driver? Checking properties of this account in my Outlook, shows the \\servername\Fax as the print driver for it?

I'm trying to think how we would get the server to recognise it as a Fax and not an email if we pass it the email with the To: address in the fax format, do you think will do it?

If so, have you tested this yourself?

Thank you again.

The only way to know is to test it.
You can do that on outlook web access

Ah i see.

This doesn't seem to work from Outlook Web Access.