Fax Boxes

A faxbox is a virtual fax machine that enables you to send or receive faxes through email. Having a faxbox means that anyone using a fax machine can send a fax to your faxbox number and you can receive it as an email. Also, you can send paperwork to a fax machine from your faxbox email address.

Alternatively, you can set up a faxbox at Smart PBX > Users > User Features > Faxbox, see Setting up your faxbox.

Adding a faxbox

1. Go to Callflows > Fax Boxes.
2. From the left-hand navigation, click Add.
3. Enter a name and assign an owner for the faxbox.
4. Enter the email address for notifications.
5. Click Advanced, then Options to define settings such as fax header, caller-ID, timezones, and retry limits.
6. Save your changes.

Setting up fax to email for SIP trunk

IP Telecom does not support T38 (fax) on a SIP trunk. A SIP trunk customer cannot fax to a machine or a solution in their onsite PBX. As an alternative, IP Telecom offer a fax-to-email service with two options:

• Send and Receive (monthly fee - you must notify accounts to charge this service to the SIP customer)
• Receive only

This service is set up using a "fax2email" account on our internal hostedPBX. Your SIP customer can request a fax number or use a number that they already own. The number is then assigned to the "fax2email" account which handles the faxes.

If a customer or partner request this service from us, they must provide:

• the number they want to use for faxes (or request a new number)
• an email address that inbound faxes will be forwarded to

For the "Send and Receive" service with outbound fax, we provide the customer with an email address that they can send pdfs to. These pdfs are then sent as fax to a receiving fax machine.

Send and Receive

To add outbound fax to email:

1. Log in to https://portal.hostedpbx.ie.
2. Go to Callflows > User.
3. Click Add to create a new user for faxes, or select the user that you want to assign fax cabability to.
4. Enter the fax email address.

5. Check the box to receive email notifications.

   

6. Save your changes.

7. Go to Callflows > Fax Boxes.
8. Click Add to create a fax box for the user.

9. From the Assign to dropdown, select the fax user.

   This automatically names the faxbox and adds the notification email addresses for inbound faxes and fax sent receipts. If necessary, you can change the email addresses at this point.

10. Go to the Advanced > Caller ID tab and enter the details:

    • Caller ID: the required fax number
    • Caller Name: the organisation or persons name (if it is a personal fax box)
    • Fax header: appears in the header of the fax, leave it as "IP Telecom Fax Printer"
    • Fax identity: repeat caller ID

11. Save your changes.

12. Go to the Advanced > SMTP tab and enter the details:

    • SMTP permission list: This must contain domains that are allowed to send faxes with an @ prefixing

13. Save your changes.

14. Go to the Advanced > Options tab and enter the details:

    • Retries: leave at 1 for setup; can be customised if required
    • Fax timezone: the timezone where the company is located

15. After you click Save, go back to the SMTP tab and you will see a new "SMTP email address" field, for example b58ff5a0.fax.hostedpbx.ie. This is the domain that is used to send faxes.

Sending Faxes

To send a fax:

1. Open a new email, and put the SMTP email address in the "To" field.

   faxnumber@b58ff5a0.fax.hostedpbx.ie

2. The fax will be sent as an attachment in the email in PDF format only.

NOTE: When sending PDF as fax there should be nothing else in the mail. It should be a completely blank mail with a PDF attachment. You must delete any body text such as signatures and so on.

Receive only

1. Go to Callflows > Callflows.
2. Click Add Callflow.
3. Add the number where the faxes should be received.
4. From the Actions on the right hand side, click Advanced.
5. Drag the Receive Fax action over to the new callflow.
6. Click for the menu, and from the Which user? dropdown, select the fax user.

7. Check the box for Enable T.38.

   

Frequently asked questions

Q: Does your service support T38. If so, how can we enable it in our account?

A: You can send and receive fax data using 711 without any issues here. Carrier to carrier 711 will work out fine in 99.9 percent of cases. However, T38 is useful where there are bad links between the uas and uac but it might add some interoperability issues.

Where to find more information

• KB Article - How do I send a fax?