OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group

At the 2011 Open Text Global Fax Summit, I sat in on the Introduction to Hosted Fax Services and Leveraging Fax Technology thought Google, Microsoft, SAP, and FileNET session. The session, as you can see by the name, covered several topics but the focus was really on two new offerings now available with RightFax.

The Hosted services is a cloud based fax offering that allows customer to have a fax environment without having to dedicate the resources and rack space to manage it. Why is the Open Text hosted services model better than other solutions? Well, this is not your store-and-forward-mass-fax offerings where faxes from all clients sit on a common server to be sent out. With the Open Text model each customer has their own dedicated RightFax server environment that can operate as an on-premise RightFax server.  This means you can connect MFPs, Exchange, Various Integrations, and RightFax Clients and allows the Hosted customers a feature-rich private fax environment that is robust, secure, and has virtually no system maintenance. It is also offered in two flavors. You can move your current RightFax environment to the hosted solution or, if you are a new customer, you can “rent” the software in the hosted environment. The Hosted offering also has three service levels from Standard, Enterprise, to Premium with increasing SLAs for each. This offers another great benefit in having a solution that has a very high SLA for those customers where fax is considered mission critical.

The second offering the session covered was a new feature available in RightFax 10 that allows users of Microsoft Office365 and Google Apps to integrate with fax. For those of you that don’t know what Office365 and Google Apps are, they are cloud based office suites that include mail and applications for creating documents, spreadsheets, etc. So how does that work? RightFax 10 now offers a secure connection using SMTP/POP3 with SSL that allows both suites to connect to the RightFax server just as if everything was on-premise.

Why is this important? Because Microsoft is committing quite a bit of resources to grow the Office365 subscription service and Google now has 30 million clients or 3 million businesses subscribed,  there are quite a number of people that can now take advantage of this new feature. Also since they are RightFax then can maintain their company faxes for compliancy where needed.

I found the session very informative about both solutions as the speakers went into great detail on each subject. The hosted offering offers a new way for customers to manage, increase their SLA, or get started with a fax server environment. With Open Text’s eleven years of hosting enterprise applications you can defiantly sleep well at night knowing that the experts will be managing your fax environment.  Also, the many users of Office365 and Google Apps now have the industry leading  enterprise fax server at their finger tips with the new integration abilities of RightFax 10.

Hopefully you may be able to use one of these technologies in your business to help expand, manage, or start a new fax server environment. If any of you have had experience with these new offerings please post and let everyone know how it worked for you.

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.

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.

A very Happy New Year to one and all! In an article by Debra Aho Williamson posted on 27 Dec 2010 on eMarketer, she writes that companies will be spending more than ever on social media marketing in 2011. But to succeed in having any sort of depth in a relationship, one needs to engage in a dialogue; share their thoughts, opinions, and experiences. In short, they need to spend time together & communicate. According to Wikipedia, “Human communication was revolutionized with speech perhaps 200,000 years ago^{[citation needed]} while symbols were developed about 30,000 ^[1], and writing making an appearance about 7,000. Telecommunication has run on a much shorter scale, it is only in the past few centuries that there have been major developments in this field.”

The outlets (Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace, Twitter, Flickr) currently available to engage in social media seem overwhelming and endless. But social media is not a new thing; we’ve been doing it for thousands of years. Thinking of it this way hopefully puts things in perspective and makes engagement in the field less daunting. Just like the evolution of telecommunication platforms and instruments, the social media platform is a new way of communication. Be wary however, of approaching social media with the notion that it is something you have to do or it can easily become a chore, creating frustration that may lead to overspending just so you can be in the game. Instead, try embracing the new platform using the social networking channels you’re already engaged and in conversantion with. Place more emphasis on the outcome you would like first and you’ll begin to see and experiment with how you can use the new platform.

Start by selecting an area in your business where a social media platform can be easily integrated. For example, when integrating with existing marketing initiatives, consider creating or posting an entry to an existing blog in order to reinforce the theme of a campaign. Promote a webinar or an event and then be sure to continue the conversation afterwards to generate momentum in the discussion of the topic. Additionally, you can raise awareness of your company by contributing articles in external blog forums. If you’re in Product Management and would like to obtain more insight to the environment of your (potential) customer, you can create a social community, like a forum, to encourage regular and informal dialogue.

It is natural for any business to focus on ROI and rightfully so. With so many organizations still testing the waters, the rules of engagement have not yet been fully established within the social media platform. For this reason, if one can first focus on ROO – the return on objectives – one would be able to better develop a sense of ROI over time.

The last few years have shown us that the presence of social media is only growing more prevalent; and the platform will mature even more over time. But don’t worry; it need not be costly or an ordeal as long as you remember that you’re already engaged in social media. The next step is just an update as you integrate a new platform into your existing strategy.

By Matthew McWhirter with Axient, an OpenText Partner

The Transport Booking and Invoicing Transformation (also known as Transport Booking, or TBIT) project is the first of a number of projects which fall under the Choice and Maintainability Services program for the Federal Government Department.

The Transport Booking project will deliver a number of business and technical outcomes by replacing an outdated and unsustainable technical booking system. It will also ensure a consistent quality of service delivery as it is driven by nationally consistent business process implementation. With a number of centralized customer service centers supporting the Department’s regional, state, and national operations, fax is a widely used communication channel.

The project will be delivered in two parts – an initial pilot rollout to a selected location in January 2011, as well as a national rollout which will follow the initial pilot. There is a strategic imperative to demonstrate the ability to embed the necessary change management, governance culture, project and program management capabilities using this project; as well as ensuring the Department’s continued efficiency and discipline in maintenance of operations and service delivery in an environment of significant ICT-enabled change. This particular project was chosen because it offers large potential benefits in terms of process efficiency and IT support risk reduction.

So where does Fax fit in? Fax is a required and commonly used service delivery channel. Using the XML and Integration modules, a web-based fax interface is being deployed. Functionality used in these modules includes XML Submit, Action and Query. This will allow the Department to submit faxes from within their IIS application and give them the capability to monitor the fax through their own business process. It will also allow them to deliver real time updates to the web within Book Car With Driver service.

The OpenText RightFax solution, implemented early last year, is a dual server V9.4, SR140 Collective integrated with Avaya.

For additional information or to learn more about Axient, please contact Matthew McWhirter, mmcwhirter[at]axient.com.au or visit www.axient.com.au.

By Jim Weiser

With the launch of the new OpenText Fax Appliance A102 and A104, we have developed a very cost-effective fax solution. As we’ve just wrapped up our extensive beta program period, consisting of end customers and Value Added Resellers in the US, Canada, Europe, China, and the Middle East, I’ve been in the process of interviewing and gathering the participant’s thoughts on the appliance. One comment which continues to be raised throughout the sites and surveys is the sheer affordability of the appliance, especially when compared to a subscription fax solution. A subscription fax solution, we know, has per page and/or per user costs, which can increase significantly over time, something that our Fax Appliance avoids.

One customer involved in the beta program particularly stands out in my mind. He stated that they had 20 users for their subscription fax solution. Each department was then forced to absorb the cost of the service by having those 20 employees submit expense reports each month. The Managing Director was unaware that his organization was spending, on average, $600 per month on faxing for only about 100 pages per day! This customer, like many, didn’t realize how quickly the per page and per user costs were adding up over time. They have since implemented a Fax Appliance A104 and believe that they have cut their fax spending by at least half. The customer has calculated that the A104 will pay for itself in less than 9 months.

Like above, by switching to the OpenText Fax Appliance, customers will still be able to receive the same low maintenance benefits as a service—without the hidden fees racking up. Most see a return on their investment in as little as 2 months; now that’s a significant savings.

In addition to creating a cost-effective product, we’ve also created one that is remarkably easy to use. Simplicity is the game and reviews from our beta sites have returned, without exception, comments on just how easy the A102 and A104 products are to deploy, maintain and use. Our 35 page Admin Guide is enough, circumventing a need for a User Guide altogether.

Uncomplicated and cost-effective, it really doesn’t get any better than that.

Whenever I take on a brand new project, I like to put it off as long as possible. This is great at first, but then usually backfires on me when I realize that the job was actually going to be more difficult than I expected. So when my manager asked me to put together a video on configuring the brand new Open Text Fax Gateway 308, I did the usual: put it on the backburner. The day before deadline, I started to panic because I thought it was going to be a little more difficult. I was shocked at what actually happened.

The Open Text Fax Gateway 308 is an 8-port FXO device designed to be as easy to use as possible, while allowing heaps of functionality from even the most demanding customers. When I hear that a product is “easy to use,” the phrase is not always entirely … hmm what’s the right word … accurate? It is with this product!

I plugged in the device to power, Ethernet, and a phone line and made three changes in the friendly Web-configuration tool. Within three minutes I was able to successfully send and receive faxes in Open Text Fax Server, RightFax Edition. I am amazed at how easy to use this thing really is. I have spent hours or longer with some other devices trying to get them configured just right, even with a certified engineer from that vendor sitting right next to me. Based on my previous experience, it is not supposed to be this easy.

Usually when something is this easy to use, huge sacrifices have been made to limit functionality. But that is not the case here. With a three minute configuration, my gateway is not acting very intelligent, but I could have spent a bit more time adding all sorts of other functionality. I could have configured digit manipulation, gateway redundancy, alternate routes, and much more. You can contact a Sales Representative for more information on capabilities. Open Text’s Partners have been thoroughly trained to implement Fax-over-IP and the new Fax Gateway product line.

As explained in this in-depth White Paper, Open Text Fax Gateways are designed to easily integrate into virtual Fax Server environments. To show what they look like and how they work, I’ve created this high-definition Video that illustrates how to configure one to send and receive faxes.