Re: [hylafax-users] What's the best solution

["Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@baylink.com>]

On Fri, Oct 04, 2002 at 06:51:38PM -0500, Jeremy Fowler wrote:
> 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.

Well, I'm the house telecom geek, so I'll stick my head in here.
Apologies for the delay.

> 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.

This would depend on the Oprtion 11 being able to do two things:
autodetect CNG tones on an incoming call and reroute it and also the
ability to spoof CNID or DID on a station line after rerouting.

I don't believe that the Meridian can do either, but I'm not an expert
on it.

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

Yup, the latter is pretty do-able.  Current versions of HylaFAx
understand how to do DID/DNIS with ISDN PRI lines feeding an
appropriate card -- I believe the recommended cards these days are the
Digi Datafire and the Eicon DIVA.  Search the list archives for "Yan
Seiner" and "DID", and you should find quite a bit more information on
who this sort of thing is set up.  You won't just pull it out of the
box, but it does take *much* less work than it used to.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra@baylink.com
Member of the Technical Staff     Baylink                             RFC 2100
The Suncoast Freenet         The Things I Think
Tampa Bay, Florida        http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

   "If you don't have a dream; how're you gonna have a dream come true?"
     -- Captain Sensible, The Damned (from South Pacific's "Happy Talk")

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