Planning for outgoing faxes

When deploying Windows Server 2003 family Fax as a fax solution in your organization, consider the following issues for planning outgoing traffic from your fax servers.

Configuring outgoing fax devices and rules

To gain an understanding of your outgoing fax requirements, consider measuring the number of users sending faxes, the frequency with which faxes are sent, and the length of outgoing faxes. In addition, consider if outgoing faxes are mission-critical for your organization, and what kind of delay is acceptable when sending faxes.

Once devices are in place, you can configure them to optimally handle your outgoing fax traffic. For example:

• Fax devices can be enabled for sending only, so that you can dedicate hardware resources to outgoing faxes only.
• Fax devices can be defined as a group. Outgoing rules can be applied to a fax device or group, to help optimize the use of your fax devices. For example, all traffic to a specific country or region, and area code, can be routed to a particular fax device or group. For more information, see Managing outgoing routing.

Understanding user requirements

It is useful to understand how users are most likely to send faxes in your organization. Users can send cover page faxes from Fax Console, send fax documents directly from Windows applications, or send faxes by e-mail. Users may send faxes to multiple recipients, and might need to attach documents to faxes or scan documents for faxing.

Sending fax documents

Users will send faxes in the following ways:

• Users with computers running a Windows Server 2003 family operating system or Windows XP will install the Fax component and send faxes with either a local fax device, or with a remote fax printer connection to a Windows Server 2003 family computer acting as a fax server. For more information, see Add a remote fax printer connection in Fax Console Help.
• Users with computers running Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows NT 4.0 (Service Pack 4 onwards), or Windows 2000 will install the Shared Fax Client from the Windows Server 2003 family computer, and send faxes through a remote fax printer connection to the computer. For more information, see Deploying Shared Fax Client.

Users who want to send faxes through Microsoft Outlook must have Outlook installed and configured for Fax transport. For instructions, see Sending faxes with e-mail in Fax Console Help.

Scanning fax documents

Users might send faxes by scanning documents, which requires some consideration when deploying Fax. Consider the following scenarios:

• Users put documents through a central scanner. Users can then either send the fax from the scanning application, or copy the scanned file over to their own computer and send it from there.
• Connect a central scanner to a computer. Redirect the Documents and Settings\username\My Documents folder for each user profile on the scanner's computer, to point at the My Documents folder on the user's local machine. Users can then use the scanner and save the documents to their My Documents folder, which is then easily accessible from their local computer. As part of the deployment process, every user must log themselves on to the scanner's computer.

The option chosen will depend how your fax resources are deployed, and the amount of traffic scanned faxes are likely to generate.

Managing cover pages

As part of your deployment, you need to decide how cover pages are to be used and managed in your organization. You might want to limit users sending faxes to choosing cover pages centralized on the fax server, or to provide them with the ability attach cover page templates from their own computer to outgoing faxes. For more information, see Managing cover pages.

Configuring fax receipts

As part of your fax deployment, you can configure receipts for outgoing faxes to be delivered to fax senders. These fax receipts inform users when their outgoing faxes have been sent successfully, or if an error occurs. You can configure receipts in the form of pop-up messages, as e-mail receipts, or both. If you choose to use pop-up messages, you must ensure that the Messenger service is enabled. For more information, see Fax Service dependencies. To configure e-mail delivery receipts, you must specify the settings for the SMTP server and e-mail address that will be used to deliver receipts to users sending faxes. Once e-mail receipts have been configured, a user will have the option to select that an e-mail be sent to confirm whether a sent fax has been delivered. The user will specify an e-mail address to which the receipt will be sent. For more information, see To configure delivery receipts.

When you specify SMTP server settings, you must also select which authentication method will be used for accessing the SMTP server. For more information, see Managing delivery receipts.

Configuring an archive policy

To keep a record of outgoing and incoming faxes, Fax provides an archiving feature. You can enable archiving of all outgoing and incoming faxes. You can configure the archive folder location, a policy for monitoring archive size, and periodic automatic deletion of the archives. For more information, see Managing archiving.

Monitoring Fax activity

During deployment, consider how your organization's fax activity will be monitored. The fax activity log can be used to provide detailed information about incoming and outgoing fax traffic in your company. You can use the log to track user's fax activity, monitor performance of fax resources, and identify problems and bottlenecks. The log can be imported to a database, and database tools can be used to create reports. You can specify the location of the activity log, and how it will be managed. For more information, see Fax activity logging.