Re: [hylafax-users] calling card use with hylafax

[Bob Gamble <kiksadiweb@xxxxxxxxx>]

Great information Lee.  Hylafsp's client has a section where you can add calling card information.  It has a field for the 800 number and the calling card number.  I haven't been able to get it to work yet because the number I'm testing is itself a toll-free number, but when I do find a remote fax where I need to dial long distance I will be able to test it.

Presently I get errors about the remote number having a busy signal.  The sequence of prompts from the calling card robot is fairly fast, almost immediate after I dial the 800 number maybe a second at most, then I get "Please enter your card number".  Then "You may dial now."

Thank you for your help.  Hylafax is a very powerful fax system and I am enjoying learning about it.  Take care.

On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 8:55 PM, Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Bob Gamble wrote:

Thanks for the response Lee.  I'll explain it like this.  When I use a brother fax machine or similar for long distance, I start by dialing my calling card's 1-800-xxx-xxxx number.  I can listen to the prompts, which ask for my card number, then for the fax number.

Once the remote fax answers, I push the "Start" button on the fax machine and it happily sends my fax.  I thought there might be a way to send this 1-800 number using dial rules.  I am very new to hylafax so I can only tell you I assumed there was a way.

Well, I've looked into the dialrules "strip calling card info" stuff, and I can't see what it's actually supposed to do.  In testing with it it certainly does nothing like what you've suggested, and I know that in the code there's nothing special to do what you've suggested.

The way that you do what you're asking is to determine how much time must be waited for an automated process to accomplish the dialing, and then simply to insert commas as-needed into the dialstring.  This could be done with dialrules to automate the application, but it could also be done at the client-level.

So if after dialing the calling card's toll-free number you have to wait at least 10 seconds for the phone company to connect you, and if you have to wait 2 seconds between entering the card number and the fax number, then you'd do something like this with sendfax...

sendfax -d 1800xxxxxxx,,,,,<card number>,<fax number>

So basically, looking at the documentation, dial rules can do things based on numbers at the start of a given dial string.  So, in my case, if the fax number given starts with a 1, treat it as a long distance number and prefix 1-800-xxx-xxxx with my calling card number, then the fax number.

You can automate that in typerules (which is used for sendfax) with something like this:

^1 = 1800xxxxxxx,,,,<card number>,

If I can't do that with hylafax natively, I have found that hylafsp's client can do it; for a price.  I don't mind paying for useful software, but I heard it may not be too difficult to develop my own.  Or maybe hylafax does this in some way.

I'm not even sure what HylaFSP could possibly be doing to help here different from what I've shown with sendfax.

Thanks,

Lee.