I’ve got Asterisk 1.8 and FreePBX 2.9, and the office it’s being used at is wanting to setup a fax line for one of the people there. I’ve got two questions:
1 - can fax be done (incoming and outgoing) purely over the VOIP provider?
2 - if yes, how? I’ve got the fax modules installed but the documentation is non-existent and it’s not too intuitive for a beginner FreePBX admin such as myself.
If the answer to 1 is ‘no’, that’s fine - I can tell them to get a physical line for it - but if it’s possible to do it without a POTS line that’d be great.
I’ve not had any problems with doing this with either a physical fax or in software (I actually used XactFax which is a paid for addon to FreePBX). As long as you use ulaw/alaw as the codec and definitely don’t use any compression codecs like G.729 it should be OK. Some older fax machines don’t like it but I’ve had good success with most.
You can get the Fax Pro Module here: http://schmoozecom.com/fax-pro.php. You need to register your system before you can purchase any of the Pro modules but they are well worth it.
I can second Lee’s kudos to XactFax. I’ve been using it for a couple of years and have around 100 clients set up. There are only a caveats: 1) Some users have had the tendency to scan stuff with two high a resolution, and 2) I have seen some cases where the Adobe reader barfed when trying to read a faxed document. Installed the Foxit reader and it seems to work OK.
BF
250 USD is way to much for a FAX module
With 250 USD you can buy a pretty decent multifunctional with which you can FAX, scan, copy, print.
Keep a traditional land line for faxing