Faxing

Has anyone written a FFA client, print driver or any sort of windows client?

FFA works well for us on inbound but we still have not true outbound solution.

Faxing with ARI is great for “oh I have a pdf to fax” but what about a real office solution such as a fax printer for windows, mac, and yes Linux. “Oh I have a 30 page quote to fax out to all of my contractors”

This is the only reason we keep Hylafax around. I can use WinPrint and I’m done

I’ve never written anything like that before but what would it really take?

I would probably even pay for it if the price was reasonable

We are looking into this for the the soon to be released Fax Pro commercial add on for the FreePBX Distro. We are talking with a few companies now to build a print driver that will work seemless.

Keep in mind Fax Pro in name sounds expensive. Have you started getting a target cost and pricing down yet?

As a small business owner I can justify a reasonable fee for a print driver option. But if it gets to high then what would make it any better than say Rightfax or VSI fax or even Hylafax. The same would apply to a full blown client. Most people don’t need a client as long as they can get notifications with email. It was sent and it was receive or it failed. Unfortunately faxing is not dead yet so we all continue to seek out affordable solutions.

Free is great as long as there is someone to pay the check at the end of the day and let’s face it we all probably give way to much away even you here at FreePBX.

I’m not suggesting a free product but I am looking for an affordable one.

Please keep that in mind as you move forward.

PS Not related to faxing - I do really appreciate everything you and your company and even “road warrior” Philippe does for this community. You guys have done a great job. Keep it up.

From day one FreePBX and Asterisk has been interesting. Sometimes there are more takers then givers but they have still grown into remarkable products. Until now we have quietly watched but now with your new found Distro I hope to participate more here.

Yes we have different amounts in mind. Currently we sell our Fax Pro to our commercial customers at a MSRP of $350.00 so it would be somewhere around these but until we finalize a print driver I am not sure on the exact cost. Right now our Fax PRO just give complete control over inbound and outbound faxing from the ARI and lets you control your coversheet and add custom messages to the coversheet with each outbound fax. It also shows you all inbound and outbound faxes and lets you download the PDF for each of them.

That isn’t bad. Its not dirt cheap but good software is not cheap.

I assume its a per server cost?

Does it only show the individuals faxmail or all faxmail?

We look forward to hearing more about it.

In the 2.9 distro with the fax option. How many fax channels do we have or better yet how many simultaneous faxes in/out can happen?

Whats the max? How many can be qued?