Very Computer

We have a company of about 25 individuals, with an expectancy of
growing close to 50 in a year or so.  Our company does a lot of
faxing...in fact, we rely heavily on faxing & e-mailing, the two most
important things in my opinion.

We have what I like to call "virtual" fax machines set up at 3
workstations:  3 Win98 PC's using Outlook 2000 to gather faxes and
then the faxes are distributed by printouts or rerouted to those
individuals who are capable of receiving forwarded faxes via Outlook
(everyone has Outlook 2000 but only a third have Win98 PC's...the
other two-thirds have NT workstations)  Just a quick note, we're not
quite sure how to set up NT PC's to receive forwarded faxes!  Only the
Win98 PC's can receive rerouted faxes--we were able to do that?!

So, we have 3 fax administrators at designated PC's that must deal
with getting faxes to the proper individuals.  My question is does SBS
fax server provide a way to consolidate the fax administration so that
faxes can be received and rerouted automatically?  We would basically
like central management (and I believe that's what SBS is all about,
yes?!) Or even if we have to do manual rerouting, would the SBS fax
server be powerful enough to meet our needs consistently on an
everyday basis?  If not, is there a third party fax software we can
endeavor to complement SBS server so that we can accomplish this?
Also, is there any substance to using SBS fax server for outbound
faxing?  Because we would like everyone to just the have the immediate
capability to fax from wherever that person is on the network.  We do
have several fax machines in house that we'll always be using, but
it's always nice to have that added capability at each PC.  

Sorry so many questions!  I'm a neophyte when it comes to SBS, and
right now we're dealing with the fax server issue and whether or not
the software that comes with SBS should be used or replaced.  Any
recommendations, etc, are much appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

yakko  (-:

If you are forced to use SBS Fax server, make sure you have a seperate modem
for sending faxes and second modem for receiving faxes and third modem for
remote data RAS calls if you need RAS over a phone line.  On the sending fax
modem, you can edit the phone ID it uses and paste new text boxes of the fax
number in the coversheet editor to match your receiving fax number.

Don't forget about checking Microsoft's hardware compatibility list for fax
modems.  SBS requires at least a class 1 fax modem.  You'll also need the
white paper
http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusinessserver/deployadmin/FaxModem.htm

I mostly use fax server when clients have low volume and still want to
receive on a regular fax machine.

Quote:> Hi, everyone!

> We have a company of about 25 individuals, with an expectancy of
> growing close to 50 in a year or so.  Our company does a lot of
> faxing...in fact, we rely heavily on faxing & e-mailing, the two most
> important things in my opinion.

> We have what I like to call "virtual" fax machines set up at 3
> workstations:  3 Win98 PC's using Outlook 2000 to gather faxes and
> then the faxes are distributed by printouts or rerouted to those
> individuals who are capable of receiving forwarded faxes via Outlook
> (everyone has Outlook 2000 but only a third have Win98 PC's...the
> other two-thirds have NT workstations)  Just a quick note, we're not
> quite sure how to set up NT PC's to receive forwarded faxes!  Only the
> Win98 PC's can receive rerouted faxes--we were able to do that?!

> So, we have 3 fax administrators at designated PC's that must deal
> with getting faxes to the proper individuals.  My question is does SBS
> fax server provide a way to consolidate the fax administration so that
> faxes can be received and rerouted automatically?  We would basically
> like central management (and I believe that's what SBS is all about,
> yes?!) Or even if we have to do manual rerouting, would the SBS fax
> server be powerful enough to meet our needs consistently on an
> everyday basis?  If not, is there a third party fax software we can
> endeavor to complement SBS server so that we can accomplish this?
> Also, is there any substance to using SBS fax server for outbound
> faxing?  Because we would like everyone to just the have the immediate
> capability to fax from wherever that person is on the network.  We do
> have several fax machines in house that we'll always be using, but
> it's always nice to have that added capability at each PC.

> Sorry so many questions!  I'm a neophyte when it comes to SBS, and
> right now we're dealing with the fax server issue and whether or not
> the software that comes with SBS should be used or replaced.  Any
> recommendations, etc, are much appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

> yakko  (-:

This is just another curiosity about SBS fax server but might you know
whether SBS fax server can handle more than one fax telephone number
for incoming calls?  In the previous post, I detailed how we were
using 3 Win98 PC's to handle faxes.  Each PC has a unique phone number
tied to its own direct line, hence I was just wondering if SBS can
handle more than one fax number.

This is just for my own novicial information, thx!

yakko (-:

Quote:>I would definently look at a third party solution and not use SBS fax.  It
>does not handle a heavy load and when someone tries as fax/mail merge, it
>can hang somwhere over 30 pending faxes.

>If you are forced to use SBS Fax server, make sure you have a seperate modem
>for sending faxes and second modem for receiving faxes and third modem for
>remote data RAS calls if you need RAS over a phone line.  On the sending fax
>modem, you can edit the phone ID it uses and paste new text boxes of the fax
>number in the coversheet editor to match your receiving fax number.

>Don't forget about checking Microsoft's hardware compatibility list for fax
>modems.  SBS requires at least a class 1 fax modem.  You'll also need the
>white paper
>http://www.microsoft.com/smallbusinessserver/deployadmin/FaxModem.htm

>I mostly use fax server when clients have low volume and still want to
>receive on a regular fax machine.

In your situation, you should forget SBS fax, it isn't adequate.

SBS 2000 will contain an revised product for fax which is supposed to be an
improvement, but the answer right now is 3rd Party.

I would recommend Zetafax from my own experiences. You can download an
evaluation version from their website.  www.equisys.com  There are others
that are quite good as well.

yakko (-:

On Mon, 10 Jul 2000 17:44:22 -0500, "Jeff Middleton  [SBS-MVP]"

Quote:> Hi, everyone!

> We have a company of about 25 individuals, with an expectancy of
> growing close to 50 in a year or so.  Our company does a lot of
> faxing...in fact, we rely heavily on faxing & e-mailing, the two most
> important things in my opinion.

> We have what I like to call "virtual" fax machines set up at 3
> workstations:  3 Win98 PC's using Outlook 2000 to gather faxes and
> then the faxes are distributed by printouts or rerouted to those
> individuals who are capable of receiving forwarded faxes via Outlook
> (everyone has Outlook 2000 but only a third have Win98 PC's...the
> other two-thirds have NT workstations)  Just a quick note, we're not
> quite sure how to set up NT PC's to receive forwarded faxes!  Only the
> Win98 PC's can receive rerouted faxes--we were able to do that?!

> So, we have 3 fax administrators at designated PC's that must deal
> with getting faxes to the proper individuals.  My question is does SBS
> fax server provide a way to consolidate the fax administration so that
> faxes can be received and rerouted automatically?  We would basically
> like central management (and I believe that's what SBS is all about,
> yes?!) Or even if we have to do manual rerouting, would the SBS fax
> server be powerful enough to meet our needs consistently on an
> everyday basis?  If not, is there a third party fax software we can
> endeavor to complement SBS server so that we can accomplish this?
> Also, is there any substance to using SBS fax server for outbound
> faxing?  Because we would like everyone to just the have the immediate
> capability to fax from wherever that person is on the network.  We do
> have several fax machines in house that we'll always be using, but
> it's always nice to have that added capability at each PC.

> Sorry so many questions!  I'm a neophyte when it comes to SBS, and
> right now we're dealing with the fax server issue and whether or not
> the software that comes with SBS should be used or replaced.  Any
> recommendations, etc, are much appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

> yakko  (-:

Zetafax will accomplish this for $500 US.  Common misunderstanding about
Zetafax is that you don't count the number of computers or users to
determine how many Zetafax users you need to purchase.  Zetafax users =
administrators for Zetafax.  This is the number of user identities that can
logon to the Zetafax administration program or be designated as the first
hop on an inbound fax to act as the fax receptionist.  Any of those users
can forward the fax to anyone in the LAN (or the world) via Exchange. All
Exchange users can send faxes out regardless. Zetafax allows for designating
an administrator as a user group, therefore you can actually have everyone
in the LAN monitor a mailbox that receives email from Zetafax.