Send Fax Updates - Confirmation, From Number

**VOIPoTim** · 07-29-2008 05:03 AM

Some of you may have noticed this on Friday, but if you haven't you know now.

We've upgraded our "Send Fax" feature for all users and replaced it with an entirely re-engineered system.

The two biggest complaints we were seeing about the old one was a lack of confirmation to know whether the fax went through or not and the lack of the ability to set the "From Number" on the fax.

Both of those have been addressed with this update.

1) When sending, you now specify an e-mail to send confirmation e-mails to. You'll get a message confirming that your document was accepted for sending and another confirming the number of pages successfully sent.

2) You can now select any number within your account (voice or fax) to show in the from header on your outgoing faxes.

As I've said in the past, this type of fax service is very sticky patent wise chiefly with J2 (eFax people) and Catch Curve aggressively pursuing anyone who offers this type of service so we are somewhat limited in what we can do. As this situation changes, we have a lot of additional improvements we'd like to make to this.

One thing to note is that we do need to add in support for additional document formats soon (which we will) in this new system. It currently supports PDF and TIFF whereas the outsourced one we had previously supported more formats. We'll be adding a convertor in soon.

Please try this out and let us know if you have issues. Since it is in-house now, we have more control over it.

**Brian** · 07-29-2008 09:29 AM

As I indicated in another thread, an old virtual number I deleted a few weeks back appears in my "send from" field. No big deal, just a bug though.

VOIPoRay · 07-30-2008 12:49 PM

this bug should be fixed now... we spent a little time today going over different assign/unassign functions...

**gbh2o** · 07-30-2008 03:03 PM

I don't believe the fax(es) I sent from the Residential account that I mentioned in http://forums.voipo.com/showthread.php?t=628 ever did show up. Only the ones from the Express account.

**VOIPoJoseph** · 07-30-2008 05:59 PM

I've used the fax feature to send and receive with no problems. Confirmations came through quickly for both send/receive. A fax log would be a nice feature to possibly add in the feature if possible. Otherwise, i'm very happy with the service.

**N9MD** · 08-05-2008 07:23 AM

Upon using "Send Fax" from MyAccount to send an outgoing fax, the message "Your fax has been submitted for processing!" appears in red. However, on returning to the "Send Fax" page during the same log-in session, the message is still there. So, when I send a second fax I cannot tell if it was actually processed (until I get the confirmatory email). Not a major crisis, but annoying nevertheless.

Meanwhile, attempts to fax a short PDF file to my office PSTN fax machine, to my k7.net Fax DID and to my FreeDigits Fax DID (which is working when I send a fax from my office PSTN fax machine) all get the appropriate "Your fax has been submitted for processing!" message followed by "Fax Queued Successfully" email and the "Fax Result" email. However, the Fax Result is still "Sent 0 pages to xxxxxxxxxx".

Anyone else experiencing this?

[I'll submit a copy of this post as a TroubleTicket.]

**gbh2o** · 08-05-2008 07:20 PM

As far as I can tell, Faxes sent Friday must not have been delivered since I received no confirmation emails; maybe I only imagined doing it! I'm sure I had the red "Your fax has been submitted for processing!". But no way to check or confirm in the account Vpanel. Thankfully, I was able to email the documents.

**gbh2o** · 08-06-2008 11:22 AM

Well, at least for faxes from the Express acount I believe I've found the culpret that prevented me from getting notifications/confirmation to my designated email address.

Connection from 74.55.78.82 (52.4e.374a.static.theplanet.com) deferred by mail2.xxxx.xxx

From: callweaver@mars.voipwelcome.com
reason: Sender domain name mars.voipwelcome.com does not have MX records - try again later.

I understand that technically by RFC a domain should be able to receive email without an MX record specified, and mars.voipwelcome.com does have an A record. However, it is quite common these days for receiving email servers to check for MX records before accepting email traffic to try to validate the authenticity of the sender. Unfortunately, I believe the server software is assuming the _domain_ to be voipwelcome.com which defines an MX record of voipwelcome.com (itself) and rightly or wrongly the receiving mail server believes something is fishy.

I have now whitelisted mars.voipwelcome.com and voipwelcome.com for all mail servers, everywhich way I can, but it is a nuisance ;-) I do not know how many different machines are going to be sending email [with no expectation of receiving it], but wouldn't it be simpler for everyone to just have all machines use the voipwelcome.com domain name with MX record as the outbound From: address? For example, have the system send as callweaver@voipwelcome.com instead?

Sorry, but email systems are a real PITA! :-) Thanks