OpenText Fax & Document Distribution Group

Last week I posted a blog about sending faxes from Outlook Web Access. I received a few questions about it so I figured it was worthy of a video to help explain everything. I really was amazed when I saw this work so well. I would love to hear what you think of this too.

It was going to be a fairly normal evening. I was reading about the Pareto Distribution and the Long Tail when I decided to check my RSS feeds for anything new and interesting. And guess what….I saw something new and very interesting. There was an article on the GoogleEnterprise blog about Google Apps Script. I had heard about this from a friend this weekend, but had put off looking into it. The article got me very interested and I decided to check it out right away.

I first looked at the page for the language and then started watching the video on that page. Very cool! Simple, yes, but very cool. So I wanted to try it out. I went to my Google Docs page and created a new spreadsheet called Outgoing GFaxes.

I added 4 column headers: Fax Number, Recipient Name, From Name, and Notes. OK, so nothing really interesting so far, right. Just like any spreadsheet.

Then I created a form from the Form menu. Google Docs automatically recognizes the headings of my spreadsheet to created a form for me. All I had to do was change the Notes field to be a paragraph of text and make the Fax Number required.

So now I have a form that people can fill out so that makes things a bit interesting, but I’m not sending faxes yet. And I haven’t touched Google Apps Script. Don’t worry, it’s coming. I can decide the publish this form for people to fill out, say on my Google App Engine site, or my Google Sites site, or even on my non-google website since it can be published in an iframe. Optionally I can also lock down the spreadsheet so people cannot see the inner workings, but can fill out the form.

Now save and close the form and go to the Script Editor under Tools -> Scripts. Enter this script:

function onFormSubmit(e) {
 var timestamp = e.values[0];
 var faxnumber = e.values[1];
 var recipname = e.values[2];
 var notetext = e.values[4];

 MailApp.sendEmail("/fax=" + faxnumber + "/name="+recipname
                       +"/@fax.otex.train", notetext,"");
}

This script is basically collecting all the fields you entered, then sending an email to the SMTP fax domain you set up with SMTP integration in RightFax. From watching my videos and reading my blogs, you know that the /fax=faxnumber/name=recipient/@yourfaxdomain.com is the addressing scheme for a fax when using SMTP integration. Save the script. I saved it as SendFaxEmail. But this script isn’t going to work…not yet. You need to do one more thing.

The script as it is won’t send emails and wont respond to submitted forms until you add an installed event handler. To do that, go to Triggers -> Current Script’s Triggers and create a trigger. You want a trigger that looks like this:

You’ll have to accept a dialog that says you trust the script, but then thats it. When someone goes to the live form, they’ll be able to type in the information, click submit, and the fax will be sent.

I’ll be adding a bit more functionality to this in the next blog post. Be sure to come back to find see the next step. But it’s not going to be tomorrow. I am teaching a Rightfax class this week, so my schedule is going to be a bit tight and I’ll need a couple days to prep the next blog.

I hope you found this post interesting. If you have any questions or thoughts, leave them in the comments section below. You can also contact me through Twitter where I go by the name technovangelist.

Today I added a brand new video to our video channel on FaxDocs.tv. This one is another in my Fax101 series, focusing on sending faxes from Microsoft Outlook with the OpenText RightFax Fax Server.

As you can see, its incredibly easy to send faxes from Microsoft Outlook. In fact, its even easier to send from Outlook than it was to send from SMTP since you have access to all of the Advanced Faxing Options on the Office Ribbon.

When you click the Fax button, you’ll get a condensed version of the New Fax Dialog. Enter the name of the person you are sending a fax to along with their fax number. This will begin to fill in the details of your fax cover sheet. Click done to close the dialog. When you return to the Microsoft Outlook message, you’ll see that the To: line has been filled in with a specially formatted string. Now you can enter your subject. The average fax cover sheet typically won’t have a subject, so we take that information to fill in the cover sheet notes for the fax. If you enter anything into the body of your email message, that text will become the first page of the fax.

So what about attachments? Attachments in your Microsoft Outlook message become each of the pages after the first page and/or the fax cover sheet.

One of the features you get in the Microsoft Outlook integration that you don’t get with SMTP is access to the Advanced Faxing Option. On this dialog you can set billing codes, other fields for the fax cover sheet, attach Library Documents defined on the RightFax Fax Server, and much more.

When you click on send, the message is sent. This message actually starts its life as an email and Microsoft Outlook hands it off to the back-end server called Microsoft Exchange. Exchange looks at the address that you entered at the top and sees that it includes the word: rfax. That’s a magic setting which tells Exchange to export the email to a special folder that the RightFax Fax Server monitors. Within a minute or so, the RightFax Fax Server picks up the message, processes it, and sends it out as a single, multiple-page fax, complete with fax cover sheet and attachments.

The integrations with products like Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, and SMTP are part of what makes the RightFax Fax Server so powerful.

So what’s the picture this time around? Well its the copper pots and pans hanging in my sister’s kitchen.

I hope you enjoy this video. If you have ideas for future videos, leave a comment here. If you use Twitter, then contact me there where I go by the name technovangelist .

UPDATE: February 3, 2012 – This post now points to our video channel at FaxDocs.tv instead of our channel on YouTube. The YouTube channel still exists, but FaxDocs.tv is the better place to go. While you are at it, check out all the other videos at FaxDocs.tv. You can find videos by topic, such as all RightFax or Alchemy videos or by audience such as Fax101 for new fax users. If there are any videos you think we still need, let us know.