By: Harshad Thakkar, Rincon India Solutions

Mr. Sanal Nair, Rincon India Solutions

Star Health is India’s first stand-alone Health Insurance Company and deals in Personal Accident, Mediclaim and Overseas Travel Insurance. It has tied up with over 5000 hospitals across India and do not have Third Party Administrators (TPAs) involved in settlement of claims.

When Star Health approached us, they had a problem with the incoming faxes on fax machines. Fax was the most convenient means for hospitals to send documents for processing but the quantity of faxes coming in was too much for a fast turnaround. They frequently complained of missed pages, busy lines, paper jams etc.

We deployed RightFax and also helped them integrate it with their back-end claims management application. While, they started off with a small solution, they were quick in increasing the number of ports and also bought a cold stand by server as fax is a very critical application for them.

After the deployment, they can now live without any missed or mixed pages. The users can retrieve documents quickly and easily and so can respond better to queries raised by doctors or customers. The response time improved tremendously. Read more.

UPDATE January 18, 2012: Just noticed the regkey is different on Windows Server 2008. I have updated this text below.

Ugh, it happens to me every time. I am in class and its the second day. Somewhere in the middle I start talking about signatures. And the signatures I mean are the pen to paper, John Hancock style signatures that you can automatically embed in a fax attachment, using this simple <signature:sigcodehere> embedded code. Super easy, and for some of our customers, extremely useful.

Creating a signature is also super easy, as I show in class. You just find a fax with the signature you want to use. If you don’t have one already, send a new one to yourself with just the signature in just the right size. Ideally, you should have a signature that’s on its own with no lines running through. Once you have the fax with a signature then you can proceed. If however you are not the administrator, forward the outgoing fax to one of your administrators and have them follow the steps.

With the fax open, select the signature using the selection box. Thats the square with the little plus sign at the bottom. Aha! But that could be the problem, and that was why I started this article with an ugh! Its one of the annotation tools and they don’t show up if you run FaxUtil from a server OS. I seem to remember fixing this used to involve a secret handshake to get a secret reg key, but the process is now very easy. Its still a reg key, but its brain-dead easy to tweak.

Close FaxUtil and then go to HKLM\Software\RightFax Client\VWR32 (if using Windows Server 2008, go to HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\RightFax Client\VWR32 instead) and find the EnableAnnotations key. Now change the 0 to a 1 in that key and you are good to go. Next time you start FaxUtil (You did close FaxUtil, right?), then open the fax, your annotation tools should be shown. Sweet!

Now draw your little box around the signature. From the Fax menu choose Store, then Make Signature. Now enter code you want to use for a signature code, perhaps the person’s initials, and enter the usernames of the people authorised to use the signature. Now you are good to go.

Remember I told you that you had to be an administrator to do this? Well, if you aren’t, this is not going to work. If it did, then anyone could make signatures, claim them as their own, and send faxes with other people’s signatures. If that started happening who knows what would happen.

Do you use signatures in your company? Share how you use it down in the comments below. Or tell me about it on Twitter, where I go by the name technovangelist.

Hello, I’m Michael Stover, and I’m a Technical Product Specialist here at OpenText, specializing in the Fax Appliance product line.  Fax Appliance 1.0 represents a simple turnkey solution for small to medium business faxing needs.  Feature Pack 1 is loaded with new functionality including DTMF Routing, Fax Forwarding, Fax Routing, Global Contacts and much more.  I’ve created this blog post to introduce you to two new features in Fax Appliance A10x 1.0 Feature Pack 1; Drop Directory for automated outbound fax delivery and the Fax Appliance SDK.  With this release, systems integrators will be able to write customized programming to allow the fax appliance to transmit faxes on behalf of other applications.

Drop Directory

Drop Directory will allow easy deployment of automated, outbound faxing in almost any environment.  In other words, the drop directory feature enables the fax appliance to send faxes without any user intervention.  Fax Appliance has simplified automated faxing through the use of a simple XML control file placed into network share that Fax Appliance monitors called the drop directory.  Once you upgrade to Feature Pack 1, the administrator will be able to easily set up the drop directory and set Fax Appliance to regularly poll it for fax documents to be sent.  To use Fax Appliance’s drop directory functionality, a third-party application, backend system, or device must send the XML control file to the share that has been set up by the administrator.  The XML control file supports eight unique fields that can be used to determine the sender, recipient(s), time of delivery, and which document(s) that will be faxed as part of a specific fax.  With this new functionality you will be able to automate the sending of any native document format that is supported by Fax Appliance.

Fax Appliance SDK

With Feature Pack 1, OpenText is introducing a Web Services SDK to allow developers to write code with Fax Appliance’s API to make fax functionality appear native to their own application(s).  By releasing the Fax Appliance Web Services SDK we are lowering the barriers to entry for systems integrators to provide a high level of interoperability between their own unique systems and Fax Appliance.  Fax Appliance has been designed and built, by the leaders in the fax market, from the ground up to offer the best user faxing experience possible.  That same API is now available to systems integrators and should offer the easiest method of interoperability and integration available anywhere.  With the SDK you will be able to perform several functions; from adding and removing users, sending and receiving faxes, as well as applying custom tagging to your fax documents which will allow your third party program to quickly determine which documents need to be processed.  Support for the Fax Appliance SDK is provided by the OpenText Developer Network and our Professional Services team.

As a member of the OpenText Professional Services team, I spend a lot of my time speaking with customers on the phone. In a recent conversation, the topic of web services for RightFax came up. Our customer was commenting that they could “really use a web services-based way to fax.”

Our answer? We agree. Due to the interest and inquiries about web services for RightFax, we’ve made the decision to go ahead and build RightFax Web Services.

Through OpenText Professional Services,web services for RightFax are now available. The RightFax Web Services are based on .NET and support both .NET clients as well as Java clients.

The basic design philosophy is simple. Let’s build a set of web services that .NET and Java (and other languages and frameworks) can use to send and retrieve faxes, metadata and attachments. We wanted it to be simpleand easy for you to use and consume.

Our new RightFax Web Services enable web-based capabilities to:

• Send a fax
• Retrieve a fax
• Delete a fax
• Route a fax
• Forward a fax
• Get a list of RightFax users

…just to name a few things.

The RightFax Web Services is not entirely new though. It was a key component of the Content Server Fax Connector (built by OpenText Professional Services) and grew out of ideas from our SharePoint Connector for RightFax so although it is a newly packaged offering it has been extensively tested and has been expanded, simplified and re-purposed for use by frameworks like .NET and J2EE.

As a customer, you might ask: Why should I use this? I can just use the COM API or a different RightFax API.

Well, that is true…but our web services are simpler and easier to use:

• You no longer need to install FaxUtil and learn a complex API to support faxing.
• You can use HTTP or an alternative protocol to connect to RightFax.
• It provides a simple way to send a fax from a web client.
• It supports your mandate to make your enterprise applications support SOA (service oriented architecture).
• And it enables basic faxing while allowing you to avoid learning an API.

So your next question might be: “Where can I get these web services? And when can I start using them?”

For existing Developer Program customers, the answer is easy: you can download RightFax Web Services from the link below. It comes with extensive samples for .NET and Java, a detailed CHM, and more to name a few. Follow the instructions to get a 30 day license.

https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/llisapi.dll/fetch/2001/15080935/-15106263/15106294/16592199/16592869/16594625/CustomView.html?func=ll&objId=16594625&objAction=browse&viewType=1

For any other questions about RightFax Web Services or to learn more about Professional Services, please contact captaris.sales@opentext.com.

Still have questions? You can view the fact sheet here:

https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/llisapi.dll/fetch/2001/3551166/16512673/15703283/16881652/customview.html?func=ll&objId=16881652&objAction=browse&viewType=1

Stay tuned for my next blog: “I Need to Send a Fax, How Hard Can It Be?” where I’ll show you just how simple it is to send a fax with the RightFax Web Services.

As you may be aware, there is a new version of RightFax coming out very soon. Its pretty exciting for us because of all the new features. But its pretty exciting for us with every release of our software. And I don’t mean just the big releases like RightFax 10. Even the Service Releases and Feature Packs are pretty exciting. Sometimes its easy to miss them, but its well worth checking out the readme that accompanies each release. I sometimes forget to read the readmes too, but they show how much we care about improving our products on a regular basis.

I was reminded of this in a recent class. In class I usually use the base product, without updating to the latest feature release. But this time we got up to date on the first day. On day two, I brought up Wireshark to demonstrate the difference between the TCP/IP and Secure TCP/IP connection types. The difference between these two options is that everything is encrypted with Secure TCP/IP, at a minimal cost in bandwidth. One of the most obvious differences between these in RightFax 9.4 base is that the password is transmitted in cleartext. If you are interested in learning more about this, see my earlier blog right here.

There are three ways to solve this issue. First, you can switch to Secure TCP/IP. Although there is an increase in bandwidth, everything is encrypted. Second, implement Integrated Security, where you associate the RightFax user with a Windows user. Then we don’t need to verify any password. The third, and probably best option, is simply to update your installation.

That’s right, we changed this behavior. And we did it very early on. Way back in Service Release 2 this was addressed. I am not sure what the date was on that but it was probably around the time of the blog where I talked about it.

So go ahead and check out the Service Releases and Feature Packs and their readme files. You can find them at http://knowledge.opentext.com. Right now as of this posting we are at RightFax 9.4 Feature Pack 1, Service Release 3. It looks like we addressed some pretty interesting issues in there and I am already looking forward to at least one of the updates in the next one too.

Of course, be sure to test these updates in your environment before you roll it out to the entire enterprise. We have done thorough testing on our side, but we don’t have the same environment as you. You might have some other application running that may cause a conflict with our updates. So just like any updates from any other manufacturer, please test them in your test environment first before a complete rollout.

Are there any recent updates, fixes, improvements that you found most useful? Share them with me in the comments below. Or contact me on Twitter where I go by the name Technovangelist.

Last week a colleague asked if SecureDocs worked with SSL. I said, of course it does. Everything works with SSL, since IIS provides the support. Guess what….I was wrong…sort of…but with a few lines of HTML, I was actually right.

SSL, or Secure Sockets Layer, is a feature supported by most web servers and browsers out there for the last 10+ years. It basically encrypts the connection between the host and the client making it nearly impossible for a third-party to see the information. You know you have an SSL connection when you see the URL begin with https instead of http. I say nearly impossible because it is possible to fool some users into thinking they have an SSL connection when they don’t and hijack the connection. Look for a Hak5 episode on Man in the Middle attacks with SSL for more on that.

Since this is a browser and web server feature, there isn’t any need for the site software to support it directly, right? Well, normally that would be true. SecureDocs, as I have mentioned in this earlier blog post, creates a website automatically for a document you send to someone else. This website gets created automatically regardless of whether you use SSL or not. A problem with SSL and SecureDocs comes up when we send out the notification email. That email includes the URL to the website and that URL begins with http:// and not https://. There is no way that I know of to change this URL in the email so it might seem that we don’t support SSL, right? Well, it turns out that IIS gives us a solution in the form of custom error messages.

Here is how you solve this for SecureDocs (and for any other website).

1. Enable the SecureDocs website for SSL. This involves either creating a local certificate authority or paying for a real certificate. There are plenty of pointers on how to do this online.
2. Create a file in c:\inetpub\wwwroot called sslredirect.htm
3. Enter the following text into that file:

   <script language="JavaScript">
   <!-- begin hide
   
   function goElseWhere()
   {
   var oldURL = window.location.hostname +
        window.location.pathname + window.location.search;
   var newURL = "https://" + oldURL;
   window.location = newURL;
   }
   goElseWhere();
   
   // end hide -->
   </script>

4. In IIS Manager, go to the SecureDocs website properties. Click the Custom Errors tab and double-click on 403;4
5. Change the Message Type to URL and type the following for URL: /sslredirect.htm

That’s it. Now when you click the link that starts with http:// you will automatically be redirected to the https:// version instead.

Now before you go thinking I am this amazing genius for coming up with this, I have to let you know that most of this information comes from this page. But the text shown on his page doesn’t work quite right. I had to add the window.location.search myself to get the SecureDocs parameters to show. If you still think I am a genius, well, I can’t stop you…

If this helps you, let me know in the comments. If you have any questions about this or anything else about Rightfax and Alchemy, share those with me in the comments as well. Or contact me on Twitter where I go by the name technovangelist.