Re: [hylafax-users] Intranet integration

[Aidan Van Dyk <aidan@xxxxxxxx>]

* Richard Morris <richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> [070523 13:09]:

> Hi Aidan,
> 
> I am looking to take outgoing faxes and incoming faxes and import them 
> into our intranet application.  The intranet application runs on a 
> different server so simply adding database entries are not good enough.  
> Right now I use a PHP script to access a SOAP service to add the details 
> from the fax as well as the fax file itself to our intranet.  I am 
> currently using the faxrcvd and faxnotify to accomplish this.  For 
> incoming faxes it isn't a problem as faxrcvd gets called for every 
> incoming fax.  Unfortunately for outgoing faxes, only faxes that are set 
> to receive notification can be imported as that is the only time 
> faxnotify is called.
> 
> I am looking for a consistent method of importing the faxes into our 
> intranet that doesn't rely on settings set by the user.  I tried 
> searching the HylaFAX documentation for triggers and AuditHook but I 
> cannot find anything on them.   Where can I find the documentation for 
> these features?

Audit hook is in current CVS.   I have packages of current CVS available
for various debian based flavours:
	http://people.ifax.com/~aidan/apt/

Triggers (which are what the AuditHook stuff is based on) is as old as
HylaFAX, and part of the client-server protocol.  Check the faxwatch
manpage for the specification of triggers, and using -v you can see how
triggers work.

I know - the client-server protocol is not the best documented thing in
the world - there are all kinds of good things in it, and most people
think the only way of interacting with HylaFAX is with sendfax/faxrm
etc.

> Regarding a wrapper for faxsend, how would this work?  Wouldn't this 
> only capture when a fax was submitted to the fax server and not if the 
> fax failed or when it was completed?

Sure - the faxsend wrapper would do if you wanted to record
communication related stuff (i.e. what the xferfaxlog contains for
outgoing jobs)

> As for your last option, I have experimented with polling hylafax to see 
> if there are any incoming or outgoing faxes that are not already in the 
> intranet and then simply importing them at that time.  I don't mind 
> polling every five minutes but I just thought some kind of event-based 
> method would be easier.

Richard,

I would look at using "archive" to handle the archiving of outgoing
faxes to your intranet.  (see the faxqclean man page on how to force
archiving all jobs).  The default archive script is pretty basic, but
you could easily write one that does more complicated stuff  (like SOAP
calls, or PHP stuff).

If you want more "real-time" response, I would use triggers.  I would
probably use the client-server protocol directly, but if you're in a
perl/php world, it's probably easiest to pipe the output of faxwatch
into something that parses it as it comes, and calls out to SOAP, etc.

With triggers, you can import as much (or as little) of the state/event
transitions of jobs into your intranet as you wish.

And for incoming faxes, I would put some extra shell code into
etc/FaxDispatch that does similar SOAP or PHP stuff.  This seems to be
what you are already doing.

a.

-- 
Aidan Van Dyk                                             aidan@xxxxxxxx
Senior Software Developer                          +1 215 825-8700 x8103
iFAX Solutions, Inc.                                http://www.ifax.com/

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