Advanced Fax Delivery

Many organizations output documents from mainframe or other host systems to printers and then deliver these documents by conventional mail or via fax machines. The applications that generate these documents may be packaged solutions provided by software vendors or custom software written by IT staff. Modifying these applications to accommodate new methods of delivering documents may be impractical and costly.

DocFlow provides organizations with alternative methods of delivering documents via fax and email without the need to modify or recode existing applications. DocFlow is a software application that operates in conjunction with the FAXCOM Queue Services and the FAXCOM Server. Data to be faxed is outputted from an application to DocFlow. DocFlow interprets the data, and submits the fax to the FAXCOM Queue Service, which in turn sends it to the FAXCOM Server for delivery.

The ability to interpret application output - without modifying it - makes DocFlow useful in improving document delivery, particularly for applications or processes that cannot be changed in any way. DocFlow includes a templating tool, through which rules are defined for each document. Based on these rules, DocFlow creates a template for each document type. When a document is received to DocFlow, the document template is applied, fax recipient and other data is extracted, and the document is submitted to the FAXCOM Queue Service.

Organizations can accelerate the delivery of important documents via DocFlow, and also improve the efficiency of business processes that might otherwise be considered unchangeable. The operating costs of printers and postage can be eliminated, and the speed of document delivery can be greatly increased by implementing DocFlow with a FAXCOM Server.

.NET & Web Services

The .NET API includes a .NET library that can be accessed by any programming language that supports Visual Studio Common Language Runtime. The API includes Web Services sample code for connecting to a FAXCOM Queue to send a fax and then retrieve a transmission status on the sent fax, and also C# sample code for accessing message status collection, the pending queue, and received faxes.

COM API

The COM API provides an easy interface to the fax queue service from Visual Basic, C/C++ or any other programming or scripting language that supports COM objects. Because the COM API supports programming to standardized Windows programming environments, developers have an easy-to-use API with which to write their own applications or simple macros.

The COM API has been used by Diamond Head Software to create the Diamond View application with which users fax and view documents managed by DOCS Open from PC DOCS.

JAVA API

The Java API enables developers to interface their Java applications to the fax queue service. Biscom's Java API works with any Java Virtual Machine (JVM) running on any platform.

ENVELOPE SPECIFICATION

The Envelope Specification is a "file-drop" API, whereby an application locates the file or files to be faxed, as well as the fax destination details, in a specific directory within the fax queue service. The fax queue service retrieves the Envelope, or file containing the fax destination details, and the attachments, or files to be faxed, and packages these together for delivery to the FAXCOM Server.

SMTP

Biscom's SMTP fax gateway which is a component of FAXCOM Suite for Windows, allows users and applications to send faxes generated via SMTP mail. Mail messages are addressed using the T.37 standard for fax delivery via SMTP, for example: FAX=1-978-250-4449@aspfax.ma.biscom.com. The body of the email message, and any attachments, are converted to TIFF and delivered via fax. A completion status message is returned via email.

MAPI

Simple MAPI (from Microsoft) includes functions for developers to make applications mail-aware and to facilitate building custom applications. Simple MAPI contains functionality for sending, addressing, receiving and saving messages. A MAPI program (or client) can be created using either Microsoft C or Microsoft Visual Basic. The MAPI 1.0 specification can be obtained by mailing mapi@microsoft.com.