This document describes the Faximum Client/Server product for Sun, HP, and other workstations supporting X and Motif.
Please refer to the Faximum PLUS Questions & Answers document for information on Faximum for IBM AIX RS/6000, SCO XENIX, SCO UNIX, and other SVR3.2 and SVR4 UNIX systems.
This document provides a general background to the Faximum Client/Server product and addresses the most commonly asked questions about the product. The questions have been divided into sections to enable you to find the answers to your questions more rapidly and easily:
For detailed product specifications, please refer to the Specifications for the various versions of the Faximum product. Please note that Faximum Software is constantly enhancing and improving its products. Please contact Faximum Software for the most recent information on our product line including lists of workstations, operating systems, and modems currently supported.
It allows users to send faxes directly from their workstation or X terminal without having to print the document first, without having to type up a cover sheet, without having to line up for the fax machine, and without having to nurse the document through the machine. Faximum cuts costs to make you more efficient and your company more profitable.
Faximum will also receive faxes that can be viewed on the workstation or X terminal and/or printed on plain paper using almost any laser or dot-matrix printer.
If you thought fax was wonderful, just wait until you try Faximum!
Users will start sending faxes of short notes instead of picking up the phone. And since fax calls are almost always shorter than voice calls, phone costs are further lowered.
Applications can easily be fax-enabled using the line print intercept which can capture the output of accounting and other applications and fax invoices or other documents (optionally overlaying invoice, letterhead, or other business form images) without any customisation or programming.
Finally, Faximum allows you to trace costs by providing detailed call accounting by user and project that can be tied to your CDR (call detail recording) or phone system accounting mechanism.
Almost any office that is concerned about their fax phone bill, the presentation quality of their faxes, or about the time and money wasted printing documents and then coaxing them through the office fax machine.
Office workers will benefit from being able to send faxes without leaving their desks. Purchase Orders, Invoices, Confirmations, and Requests for Proposals can all be sent via fax directly from the operator's terminal. With our new line printer interface, your accounting program can feed invoices and other business documents directly to Faximum as if it were just another printer!
Take a moment to calculate the number of invoices your office sends out in a week. Multiply that by the number of stamps and envelopes that are used, and add in the cost of lost productivity of your employees as they shuffle paper, stuff envelopes, and "move the mail". The earlier your client gets the invoice, the sooner 30 days is up!
In addition, calculate the number of faxes that your office sends out in a week. What portion of those faxes are urgent, and what portion could wait until lower phone rates are available? Even today's most advanced fax machine can only delay, at most, 50 pages of fax material all of which has to be fed into the machine manually. With Faximum's Intelligent Delayed Transmission (IDT) the user specifies if the fax is urgent, can wait, or should be sent at the lowest cost.
There is no limit to the number of faxes that can be queued for later transmission. Selecting least cost ensures that when the greatest discount period is in effect for that particular destination, the fax will be sent at that time. All this without operator intervention.
Significant cost savings can also be realized by taking advantage of our exclusive Least-Cost Routing (LCR) feature. Least-cost routing is the ability to select the telephone line that is the least expensive for a given destination. For example, a multi-line installation might have a normal long-distance (DDD) line, a foreign exchange line into another city, and several WATS (wide-area telephone service) lines into different regions of the country. With least-cost routing, Faximum will automatically determine the line that is cheapest for each call.
Professional sales people who need to send sales literature by fax will benefit not only from the convenience and immediacy but also from the desktop publishing quality of Faximum-generated faxes. Organizations invest a lot of time and money in creating documents to have the greatest impact on their clients. Imagine the sales edge that your organization will have over the competition, when laser printer quality documents, complete with pictures, graphs, diagrams, and schematics, are delivered to your client's desk, at the same time as you are speaking to your client! Intangibles and concepts instantly become hard-copy facts.
Using Faximum further benefits those organizations that send faxes to many people at once. Broadcast a new price list or other announcement to just ten or even ten thousand fax machines. The number of lines you may use is limited only by your hardware.
Companies that need to send sales literature by fax will benefit from the desktop publishing quality of Faximum-generated faxes. By generating the fax image in the memory of the computer and sending it directly to the other fax machine, Faximum generates faxes that are clearer and sharper than anything that can be sent using a standard fax machine. The result out of the other fax machine is just like desktop publishing.
People who have to broadcast a new price list or other announcement whether to ten or a thousand fax machines will benefit from the broadcast capabilities of Faximum.
Managers will benefit from the lower telephone costs that result from the automatic scheduling and least-cost routing.
Software developers will benefit from the easy integration of Faximum with their software, permitting invoices, statements, or other computer-generated forms to be faxed automatically.
There is just no comparison. Faximum is as far ahead of the traditional office fax machine as desktop publishing is ahead of the manual typewriter.
In addition to winning every comparative review of UNIX fax software to date, our company has been selected by two different major UNIX workstation vendors (details available upon request). No other UNIX fax software company has won one (not to mention two) such competitions.
"SCO Canada uses Faximum to automate its distribution of sales and marketing literature to our customers. Our staff can now handle more calls with better efficiency and throughput." - Jim Sullivan, Manager, Systems Engineering, SCO Canada
"The software itself is a joy to use, and has definitely improved productivity in the office. We no longer see our staff trekking down the hall to the fax machine, standing over it feeding documents into the hopper, or whiling away the hours waiting for a redial. Being able to fax a WordPerfect document from within WP by using a simple macro is a real boon as well." - Peter Rogers, Wilson King (a law firm)
"We have been using...Faximum...and have sent faxes all over the world....the system has performed several times in excess of 24 hours (continuous faxing) without any problems. The results were very impressive to us as well as [to] the people who received them." - Robbie Gilbert, Stingray Powerboats (a manufacturer)
"Between November and July 1993 with one CPU and ten lines we sent over 1.2 million faxes! We have now sent over 6 million faxes! Our subscription fax business would not be possible without Faximum. In fact, we're planning further expansion throughout North America." - Rick Rolston, CONFAX (a construction bid information service)
"Thank you for your marvellous product. It has saved this company
much time. The Faximum product is exceptional. It is created with both
the programmer and end user in mind."
"As a programmer, it is refreshing to find a product that is both. We
were able to put it into a working environment in less than 24
hours."
"Our users immediately started using it. Our primary application had
Faximum integrated into most areas and creating automated faxes in less
than two days from installation."
- Cheryl Gross, Red River Parts & Equipment Co.
"I wanted to let you know I think Faximum is a super product which is easy and fun to use. In fact, it's the best office efficiency product I've run across in years." - Jay Sanders, Zorfas & Sanders, CPAs
Faximum has been designed from the beginning to be as easy as possible to use. The Motif GUI uses pull-down menus, point-and-select lists, and an extensive context-sensitive help system to make Faximum accessible to all office users.
Most users will be faxing away after only a few minutes' instruction from the system administrator.
Users of WordPerfect are able to prepare documents and have them sent by Faximum merely by running a WordPerfect macro provided as part of the package.
Faximum provides PCL-5 (HP LaserJet III emulation) and/or PostScript support, depending on your platform. Please check the specifications sheet for details or contact Faximum for the latest information.
If you are using WordPerfect, then all you have to do is invoke the fax macro supplied with Faximum and your document will be formatted and transferred from WordPerfect or Word to Faximum automatically. The Faximum user interface will then appear for you to address the fax. Once the fax is addressed, it will be sent in the background and you will be returned to WordPerfect/Word.
With other word processing packages the first step is to format and print your document to a file in one of the supported formats: ASCII, PCL-4, PCL-5, or PostScript.
The next step is to run Faximum and select the saved file as the file to be faxed. That is all there is to it.
With the line printer intercept it is also possible to use the mail-merge feature of your word processing program to generate fax broadcasts. Faximum will take the output of your mail-merge, extract the fax numbers from the print file, separate the print file into the separate pieces intended for each recipient, optionally overlay your letterhead or other business form, and manage the broadcast.
With the line printer intercept Faximum can now take the printed output from your accounting or other application, extract the fax numbers from the print file, separate the print file into the separate pieces intended for each recipient, optionally overlay your invoice or other business form, and manage the broadcast.
This permits you to have your invoices or other business information faxed automatically without any customisation or programming required.
Faximum allows you to store the images of your various letterheads and specify the letterhead image that is to be used when the fax is sent. This can be done automatically without requiring any change to your existing documents.
Faximum will print faxes on any printer that is compatible with HP Laser Jet or PostScript printers. Refer to your printer manual for your printer's compatibility, or call your dealer.
Yes, unlike many other computer-based fax systems, Faximum permits multiple cover- sheet designs to co-exist and be selected by the user from a list. Faximum's coversheet design language supports multiple fonts, arbitrary placement of routing information, white on black text, lines, circles, and boxes. In addition, Faximum permits a short message (usually up to 20 lines) to be placed on the cover sheet. This means that short faxes can be sent as a single page. Other systems require two pages (one for the cover sheet and the second for the message itself).
Faximum can support up to 16 or more external fax modems, depending on the power of your computer system.
Some customers are using Faximum to send 5,000-10,000 faxes every night, with more planned. Note, however, that Faximum is priced according to the number of fax lines supported.
Customers planning systems with more than ten lines are urged to contact their reseller to obtain special pre-sales information from Faximum in order to configure the system properly.
With Faximum, the ID string (TSI) from the sending fax machine is used to look up a table of possible actions. The action list can request that the received fax file be copied to any directory (on the local machine or over the network); printed on one or more printers automatically; forwarded by fax to another fax machine or computer; or passed to any arbitrary program or shell script for further processing. In addition, e-mail can be sent to a list of users alerting them to the incoming fax.
Faxes that cannot be automatically routed are placed in "general delivery". Users with sufficient authorisation may examine the first page of each fax in general delivery and route it to the appropriate user.
Faximum stores all received faxes in TIFF-F format. This format is compatible with most graphics and word processing packages and fax images may be included with WordPerfect, FrameMaker, and other WP documents.
Faximum will accept and transmit images stored in most variations of the TIFF file format for black and white bi-level images. Images which have been created at resolutions other than 100 x 200 or 200 x 200, however, may not appear to scale. Most compression methods are supported except LZW and Group IV.
Faximum also supports Sun Raster files.Faximum includes a command line interface that allows programs written in the shell or other languages to generate and send faxes automatically.
Faximum also support a line printer intercept which can capture the print streams generated by applications, extract the fax number and other coversheet information, and fax the print file as an attachment to the automatically generated cover sheet.
Intelligent dialling is the ability of the fax software to add (or remove) dialling prefixes as necessary. When intelligent dialling is enabled, all phone numbers are entered fully qualified (that means with the country code and area code) even if local to the calling system.
Intelligent dialling would recognize that if a San Francisco number `555 1212' were to be dialled, say, from San Francisco, all that needs to be dialled is `555 1212' (or possibly `9 555 1212', `9' being dialled to get an outside line). Similarly, if the same number were entered into a Faximum system installed in San Jose, then Faximum would dial `1 555 1212'. And if the number were entered into a Faximum system installed in New York, Faximum would dial `1 415 555 1212'.
Similar automatic transformations occur with overseas numbers.
The automatic addition (or removal) of dialling prefixes and area codes is referred to as intelligent dialling.
The obvious benefit is that dialling directories can be shared between different locations without requiring editing to add or remove prefixes and area codes. A less obvious benefit is that the use of fully qualified numbers permits Faximum to recognize the exact location of each destination so that it can perform least-cost routing and intelligent delayed transmission (see below).
Faximum is the only fax software package we are aware of that supports intelligent dialling.
Least-cost routing is the ability to select the telephone line that is the least expensive for a given destination. For example, a multi-line installation might have a normal long-distance (DDD) line, a foreign exchange line into another city, and several WATS (wide-area telephone service) lines into different regions of the country. With least-cost routing, Faximum can automatically determine the line that is cheapest for each call.
In addition, Faximum supports priority promotion. This means that if the least-cost route remains busy for a specified period, a high-priority fax will be sent by a slightly more expensive route rather than delayed waiting for the least-cost route to become idle.
Faximum PLUS is the only fax software package we know of that supports least-cost routing and priority promotion.
Intelligent delayed transmission is the ability to determine when to send a fax based on the discount period specified and the destination. Many fax machines and most fax software permit the user to delay a fax but by having to specify the exact time for the fax to be sent. This is usually done to take advantage of the lower phone rates available in the evening and overnight.
With Faximum, the user does not need to know when the phone rates drop or to try to calculate when to send. The user merely indicates the cost he is willing to pay (i.e. "Highest, No Delay", "Low Cost", or "Lowest Cost") and Faximum automatically determines the appropriate time to send the fax.
For example, from Vancouver the cheapest phone rate to Edmonton starts at 11 p.m.; to New York starts at midnight; to London, England starts at 6 p.m. Faximum remembers all of this so that users can benefit from telephone discount periods without having to remember the details.
Intelligent project accounting is the ability to interface with telephone systems that require accounting information to be dialled before or after the long distance number.
When Faximum is configured to provide the additional accounting information, it will automatically dial the account associated with the user and project assigned to the fax. The account number can be dialled at any point during the dialling sequence and the system can dial different account numbers depending on the project the fax is to be charged to, the long distance service used, and the area called.
Faximum will work with most external fax modems that comply with the Class 2 or Class 2.0 (EIA/TIA-592) standards for fax modems. Please see the following table which lists a number of Class 2/2.0 modems and indicates the support provided by Faximum. If your modem does not appear in this table, please see How can I check if my modem is Class 2/2.0?.
It is important for users to understand that with Class 2/2.0 modems, the firmware within the modem is responsible for handling the low-level communications protocol between the fax modem and the fax machine. If there is a defect with the modem's firmware then the user's modem may experience compatibility problems communicating with certain fax machines. This is obviously beyond the control of the Faximum software. While Faximum Software Inc. will work closely with the user and the modem manufacturer to resolve any such compatibility problems, we trust users understand that solutions to certain fax compatibility problems may depend entirely on the modem manufacturer and not on Faximum Software Inc.
For this reason, users with mission-critical applications are urged to consider Class 2 modems made by either Multi-Tech, Telebit, or ZyXel if they wish to be reasonably assured of reliable operation and prompt support from the modem manufacturer.
The following table lists some Class 2 modems and their current level of support by Faximum. Please note that the information in this table is rapidly changing and users ought to contact Faximum Software for the most up-to-date information.
The following fax modems are recommended for use with Faximum:
Note also that Faximum does support the Everex Everfax 24/96D (Part Number EXO 960-51), and the Everex Everfax 24/96E (Part Number EXO 967-02) for existing installations but does not recommend their use for new sites since the manufacturer has discontinued support for these modems.
The following fax modems are known to work with Faximum but may exhibit compatibility problems with certain fax machines:
Please note:not all U.S. Robotics fax modems support the Class 2.0 interface (many models are Class 1 only). Before attempting to use a USR modem with Faximum please verify that the modem does indeed support Class 2.0 (see How can I check if my modem is Class 2/2.0?).
The following fax modems have been been used by Faximum users with mixed results. Some have experienced problems while others are satisfied with their operation with Faximum. This variation may be caused by different ROM revisions or other differences between different versions of the same modem.
At the time this document was prepared, Hayes Microcomputer Products had not yet announced a Class 2 or 2.0 modem.
For reliable operation with UNIX we recommend modems with at least 1K of buffer.
If you have any doubts or questions about your fax modem, please contact Faximum Technical Support, providing the response to these five commands.
Faximum makes it possible for a single modem and phone line to handle fax, data, and uucp traffic. This feature is, however, only available with certain modems and systems. Contact Faximum Software for details.
While most workstations have sufficient power to handle a fax modem connected to the serial ports built into the machine, an intelligent communications board is recommended for heavy use or for systems that must support more than one fax modem.
Faximum can also work with some network terminal or modem servers. Contact Faximum for current information.