OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group

Did you know that we offer a Complimentary RightFax Administrator Course? A lot of you know about it because a large number of students have already attended this fantastic class which is offered at no additional cost. Many students have told us that the course gave them a well-rounded overview of the administration tasks related to RightFax. Attending the complimentary class also better prepares students about to attend the full three-day training.

There are many reasons though why some potential students may not attend a class. Often the classes are built around our schedules rather than yours. Since we hold them once every month, there is a good chance that other important projects will come up between now and then and a free course is sometimes pushed aside. We have been listening to our customers about these concerns and are delighted to now make the course available on your schedule.

The course is now available as a series of streaming videos. It has been split up into 7 sections, each covering a different aspect of the product. A total 22 feature-specific videos have been carefully designed to get you up to speed as quickly as possible. To help reinforce what you have learned, each section has a short quiz.

Here is how you can get started:

1. Visit http://faxdocs.tv/training and click the big blue button to register for an account
2. An email will be sent to you to help verify your account. Click the link to return to the site.
3. Now start watching the videos and answering the questions.

That’s it! And because the course is available as streaming video, you can come back to the site as often as you like to help refresh your memory. To get a better idea of what you will learn, check out this quick summary video.

If you have any feedback, let us know in the comments below. Your feedback is how we know what’s working and what needs improvement. I am really excited about this new offering and I look forward to hearing from you after you have had a chance to attend.

One of my goals each year for the last few years has been to create videos about our products. I really enjoy doing this, but it’s not always clear how our customers consume those videos. We can’t see if they like the video, or drop off after a few minutes. We can’t really control what our YouTube presence looks like or how to organize the videos beyond a certain level. And we have plenty of customers who just cannot see the videos at all, either because the corporate firewall blocks it or because they live in a country that forbids access to YouTube.

So we decided to come up with another solution that solves those problems. FaxDocs.tv is that new solution. It is a single site you can go to and watch all of the latest videos from our group. You can easily find all of the videos relating to each of our main product areas, as well as those targeting different audiences. We will create special pages as needed with pre-programmed playlists for topics like RightFax Fundamentals, etc.

At first (and for the foreseeable future) we will be cross-posting on YouTube and on FaxDocs.tv, but we expect most people will choose to view the videos on FaxDocs.

I hope you like the new FaxDocs.tv website. If you have any comments or suggestions on how to improve the site, share them with us here on the blog.

In the whirlwind of holiday cheer and shopping, I’m back to discuss something else exciting—the recent changes to Delegates Manager.  In my September blog post I covered just how to use the Delegates Manager; today I will cover three feature updates:

• Management tab now has been updated to contain
  • “Manage” area for adding, updating, and deleting existing delegates
  • “Copy” area for provisioning new and existing delegates
  • New report export type called “Simple CSV”
    • This is a one line export for each delegate instance which allows for easier back end integration and a condensed format for importing into other tools

Manage tab

Below you can see the updated “Manage” tab which contains instructions on key functions that can be performed.  The “New Delegate” control has been changed to a populated pull down that helps to eliminate potential typing issues.  This means you can add, update, and delete delegates from this tab.

With the addition of the “Copy” tab, the “Manage” tab can be used to create a template user and then the “Copy” tab can be used to provision other users using the template user.

Copy tab

This new tab’s purpose is to allow an administrator to copy a template user’s complete set of delegate instances/permissions onto one or more users.  This provides a powerful means for provisioning new and existing users with a standard set of delegates.  This area also has an information block that provides an overview on how this works for easier administration.

What do we mean by provisioning?  This means you can setup a user and assign all necessary delegates to that account.  Whenever you want to provision a new user or update an existing user, you can use this template account and push its delegates to new and existing target users.

As part of provisioning the target users, Delegates Manager removes all existing delegates that the target users have configured before proceeding with the updated provisioning.  This ensures the new and updated users contain only the delegates that the administrator wants them to have.

Simple CSV export

This is a new export format for the reporting feature (covered in my first blog on the Delegates Manager).  As you remember, the CSV export allows you to select users to report on as well as allowing you to choose the report type.  We can then generate a report that appears as a grid for initial review.

If you would like to export this data, you can select a format and click “Export”.  The supported formats are:

• PDF
• Excel
• XPS
• Simple CSV

“Simple CSV” is a comma separated list export.  Unlike the other export formats, this format contains only users with delegates; and all the details regarding each delegate is on one line.  Only users with actual delegates appear; if you run your report on users without delegates, they will not appear in this export. 

This format allows a condensed report to be imported into other tools and provides another means to import the data into back end systems.

The format is fully documented in our updated user guide.

So that’s it, the three most recent changes to the Delegates Manager, just in time for the holidays.  The revised manage tab, the added copy tab for provisioning and the new export feature for reporting which allows better back end integration are the three most recent changes to the Delegates Manager—just in time for the holidays.  I look forward to seeing you in January to let you know what else Professional Services has to help make your job easier.

To request a copy of the Delegates Manager, an evaluation license or to learn more about Professional Services, please contact fddg.ps@opentext.com.

Brian Langbecker, Sr. Solutions Engineer

Are YOU on Google+? In case you haven’t seen it, Google has a new online property that’s taking the world by storm. Is it a Twitter killer? A Facebook Killer? I don’t know, perhaps its’s too early to tell, but it certainly has a lot to offer.

About a week ago, they opened Google+ to businesses, whereas before that it was just for real human beings with real names. Businesses can have pages just like on Facebook. The pages are a bit different than the Facebook variety, but all of it is so new, what I say here today may change tomorrow. All that I can say for certain is that if you are not there yet, you should be. And now that everyone can join without an invite, there is just no excuse to not join in.

The Fax & Document Distribution Group has a page on Google+ now. When you get onto plus.google.com, do a search for FDDG (the full name is OpenText FDDG Videos and Training). Or just click on this link to go right there. Then add us to one of your Circles.

Whenever we post anything to our Google+ page, you will see the message in your main Google Plus page. Go look around for your friends as well and add them to your circles. Then you will see news from everyone. On the left you can click on individual circles to filter down the news. I have circles for co-workers at OpenText, for people in FDDG, and for those in my department at the company. I also have circles for friends from when I was at Microsoft, and at other companies, and photographers I find interesting. How you create your circles is really up to you. Then when you decide to share something, you can share it with only certain circles.

One of the most exciting things for us on Google+ is the idea of a Hangout. This is like a multi-way video conference. You can have a bunch of people (for now its up to 10) join in on a hangout. We might have a hangout to just talk about RightFax or Alchemy. Or we might interview someone, maybe a partner or someone interesting inside OpenText we though you might like to meet. Who knows?

Its a new platform and the first few times we try it, it might not work. But if you would like to join us for the first experiment, add our page to one of your circles. I’ll post the link to the hangout there. At a minimum, I will be on there (this is Matt Williams posting), and Joshua Butcher is planning to be there as well. If you join you can ask us a question about anything you like. I am thinking its going to be on Tuesday at a time thats not too inconvenient for both the US and Europe. But you’ll have to watch for the announcement on Google+ for the precise details. If you aren’t one of the first 10 to join, don’t worry. I plan on streaming the hangout on Livestream.com as well, but the details for that will be on Google. You’ll also be able to post questions to Twitter.

I look forward to seeing you add us to your circles. I’ll then add you to our circles so that I can see what you are up to as well (if you choose to share any news with us). And look out for the posting on Monday or Tuesday morning at the latest. And then we will see each other on the Hangout.

See you then!

UPDATE November 9, 2011 – Now with a video!

As you may know, we have offered training for the RightFax Administrator course online for quite a while. For those of you in the United States, the class was offered at a sensible time, meaning during the day when you would normally be at work. Due to some technical issues we just can’t get around, that was the only course offered. For those potential students in Europe, the online option started somewhere between 4 and 6 pm. Since these are often 8 hour sessions, you are going to be on the phone till as late as 2 in the morning. Students in Hong Kong or Sydney would be online from close to midnight all the way to when their coworkers are just waking up.

In the last 6 years, I have done upwards of a half million miles of airtravel, so I know a thing or two about changing timezones, and that kind of stuff kills you. I have heard some people give figures of it taking upwards a day to adjust to each hour in a timezone shift. The more I travel, the more accurate I think that gets. So asking our customers to do this is a tough sell.

But now we are offering online courses in whatever timezone you are in. At first, it will be in my timezone. I live in Amsterdam, so the first course will be from 9AM my time (Thats CETor Central European Time) until about 4 or 5 in the afternoon. You lot in the US should not sign up for that course.

The first of these online courses in Europe is going to be held on November 22-24 and you can sign up at this link on the website. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and you’ll see the RF Fundamentals course with a location of Virtual Classroom – Netherlands. These courses, like all of our courses, are open to customers and partners alike.

We will be adding some of the other courses to this system in the next few months as well, but if you need to take one today, start adjusting your sleep patterns for that US-based session.

If you would like to see a Fundamentals class in your timezone and you are in Mumbai, or Kathmandu, or Hong Kong, or Sydney, or anywhere else, contact us (best to contact your usual OpenText representative) and we can work on delivering that for you. If you want to do a more customized class, focusing only on Integrations, or end users, or anything else, contact me so I can work on getting that setup for you. I am reachable at mattheww atopentext.com or on twitter at technovangelist.

Have you ever tried to use the keystroke, Control-F10 in FaxUtil. If you have, you might have wondered why such a useless keyboard shortcut was added to the product. I wondered that myself for the first 5 years I worked here. But then I stumbled on to a variant of the normal command. It all happened about a year ago.

I was teaching a three day RightFax Admin class and mentioned the keystroke, kind of as a side note. But I was shocked when it looked different than what I was used to. I think I was on a different service pack than usual, so I attributed it to that at first. But then one of my students said his looked the way I was used to and we were both on the same version. That student’s name was Fritz and he noticed that he sorted his list of faxes based on Date and I sorted them based on phone number. It was amazing.

I tried changing the sort order and with each Ctrl F10, I got a different view. Very cool. That night I decided to make a video documenting what I found. I set up a tripod in my kitchen and recorded my monologue. And then I sat on it….for 9 months. I’m not sure what happened, but I stumbled on the video last weekend. A little clean up and it was ready to publish. And here, at long last, is my Ctrl F10 video.

Let me know what you think. Did you know CTRL F10 did this? Was I the only one in the dark? Share it with me in the comments.

Its the beginning (give or take a few days) of the month and that means its time for me to check the stats for our videos. Each month I go check out the YouTube Insight reports for each of the videos I have published over the last few years. I enjoy doing this because it shows me what people are interested in right now. As the name of the reporting engine implies, it gives me insight into what I should be looking at for future videos. Some of the results are as I expect, but there are always surprises as well.

Despite it being one of my favorite topics, I can understand why the video on Creating Custom Administration Tools is not at the top of the most watched list. It never has been anywhere close to most popular, but I think its fantastic. That video covers using the Microsoft Management Console to create a remote building tool for Alchemy. But you could just as easily use the concepts to build a tool for RightFax or any other application you need to manage. I plan on updating this with a Server 2008 management tools version in the next few months.

My most popular video for the last few months has been one about sending faxes from Outlook. That shouldn’t be a surprise. Outlook is one of the most popular ways our customers interact with the RightFax Server. The fact that it gets 200 times the hits of the MMC video is understandable.

Another interesting stat is that the second most popular video for August 2011 was one that was posting in October of 2009. Its the one about Installing and Configuring Fax over IP. That has been one of the most consistently popular videos since it was posted, though it didn’t start out that way.

Not only do I look at stats per video per month, I also look at how the videos do in their first 30, 60, and 90 days. The Install & Configure FoIP video didn’t do very good on its first 90 days, but the Faxing Just Got Easy video performed the best for that time span. Again, thats understandable, because it was embedded on a few different properties.

Do you have any favorite videos over the last couple years? Anything you wish I would cover? Let me know in the comments below.

One of the questions that sometimes comes up in my RightFax classes is in regards to figuring out which faxes are in the images directory. There are a lot of related questions. “I have a fax in FaxUtil, where is the image file?” or “I have an image file, which fax does it correspond to?” or “who are most of these faxes for?” or “when did these faxes come in?”. There are probably a lot more questions that could be asked about the same topic.

So my question is how do you come up with that answer? In the coming days, I’ll post a few of the answers that I know about, but I hope you come up with a few I hadn’t thought of. All of my answers will only use software included on the installation media, but if you have a custom app you have built, tell us about it here.

Here is my first answer, but don’t let that stop you from posting your own answers.

1. Answer #1: A Built-in Keyboard Shortcut
2. Answer #2: From the Command Line

Trick question: In FaxUtil, what does the status message: “In FCS Conversion” really mean??? Well the answer appears to be obvious. If you look inside the Program Files/RightFax directory, you’ll see a FCS directory. Inside that directory, we store all the Fax Cover Sheets. So it would make sense that In FCS Conversion means that the Fax Server is converting a cover sheet. It would make sense, but you would be wrong. In FCS Conversion actually means that we are converting the attachments for that fax. There is another status message: “In Conversion” that tells you that the fax cover sheets are being converted.

How about In Phone Expansion? Any idea what that status message means? Well the answer becomes a bit more obvious when you figure out what happens when a fax is sent. When you type in the fax number, name, and other info onto the Fax Information Dialog, you can enter in a group from your phonebook. At this point, the ‘fax’ is still a single object. That group could represent one person or 50 people.

One of the first things that RightFax does when you click Send is figure out who you are trying to send a fax to and split it out to however many faxes are needed. So Phone Expansion can probably best be thought of as In Phone BOOK Expansion. The system is looking in the Address Book for your account to figure out if it needs to expand the one fax to 5 or 500 actual faxes.

I think all of the other status messages are a bit more obvious, but these always confuse everyone. These are some of the things that you learn when you take the Fax Flow course where we teach you what really happens behind the scenes on the RightFax Server. If you are interested in learning more about RightFax and how it really works, join us for one of our classes.

Just go to faxsolutions.opentext.com, click the Support and Services menu item and choose Learning Services. Then click Courses, then RightFax. Now choose the actual course you want to take. Looks like we are calling the course RightFax Architecture these days. Also, I just noticed that the URL is far simpler now: http://faxsolutions.opentext.com/open-text-fax-server-rightfax-edition.aspx but I prefer telling people how to find it in case that URL changes.

If you have taken a Fax Fundamentals class from me in the last few years, I may have shown you how the list of users in Enterprise Fax Manager is a little different from what is shown in the SQL Server user table. There is one user called RFINLUSER that doesn’t show up in EFM. That’s an internal user that we use and you shouldn’t ever touch. But it shows that users can be added to Rightfax and remain hidden from EFM.

I am not going to tell you how to create one of these hidden users. At least not on this blog…it’s just not appropriate. But let’s say that you have a former administrator who left under bad circumstances. You want to figure out if they have left a hidden administrator which they can take advantage of sometime in the future. Finding these users is incredibly easy, just run a simple SQL query on the database:

select * from users where (UserFlags2 & 16=16)

That will give you a list of all the users who are in the database which can’t be seen in EFM. You should always be able to see RFINLUSER in that list. If you see anyone else listed here, you might want to consider looking in to who created it. For help with this, contact our technical support team.

You might be wondering if a feature like this represents a security risk in the product. I don’t think so. Setting a user to be hidden requires that you can write to the RightFax tables in the database directly which you shouldn’t ever do. But even more important is that you shouldn’t even be allowed to get to the database directly. The only user who should be able to write directly to the database is whatever account you have set up to run your Rightfax services. In my classes, I always use an account called RFService to run all the services. RFService is a local administrator and domain user who does not have the rights to log in to Windows as an interactive user.

If RFService is the only user who can write to the Rightfax database, there is no danger of anyone creating one of these secret users. If you haven’t been quite as careful with your SQL permissions, go ahead and run this query just to make sure there are no secret users that you don’t already know about.

If you have any questions about this or anything else in Rightfax, leave a comment here. You can also contact me on Twitter where I go by the name Technovangelist.