[hylafax-users] What's the best solution

["Jeremy Fowler" <jfowler@westrope.com>]

Ok, I have a problem and I need to get some opinions. Our current fax setup is a
single Linux Box with 4 modems that receive incoming faxes from a hunt group on
our Nortel Meridian 1 Option 11C PBX for our one main fax number that everyone
uses. Hylafax receives the faxes and emails them to our receptionist to be
sorted and forwarded. Recently there was a mix-up and someone received a fax
they shouldn't have. This upset some VIPs, so now we are looking for a solution
so it "never happens again". The idea was thrown out that everyone gets their
own fax line and then manages their own faxes. Besides being very costly, I
think it would be a nightmare to implement. What are our options?  Caller ID
and/or TID routing isn't an option since people may use the same external fax
machine to fax different people in the office. I have some ideas, but I don't
know if it's possible since I'm not a Telco guy and don't have very much
experience with corporate fax solutions and what products are available.

Ideal solution 1 (probably doesn't exist):

A person faxes to someone here at their normal DID (voice) extension. The PBX
auto-detects that the incoming call is a fax and routes it to a digital fax card
on our Linux box. Hylafax sees the DID extension that the fax was sent to and
looks up the extension in a database to find the email address and happily sends
it on it's way. Everyone is happy.

Now I know they have line share devices for normal analog (POTS) lines that is
able to detect whether an incoming call is a voice or fax and route it to the
appropriate device. However, the Telco guy that administers our PBX doesn't
think there is such a device for digital systems. Has anyone heard of anyone
doing something similar?

Ideal solution 2 (probably another long shot):

We provision another set of DID numbers for everyone in the office for use as
incoming fax lines. Anything that comes in on those DIDs are forwarded to some
type of digital fax card running on our Linux box. The card tells Hylafax what
DID number the call came in on and thus forwards it to the appropriate person.
The card doesn't need to handle 80+ inbound calls at once, but should be able to
tell what DID it was meant for. Meaning, the card should have about 10-20 ports
it can use at any one time and an incoming fax will use the next available port
on the card.

Ultimately, what I don't want to do is provision 80+ fax lines and then buy
modems for all those lines.

Any ideas anyone?


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