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.