Fax mailboxes

A fax mailbox is simply a standard subscriber mailbox that has been configured to accept incoming fax messages. What configuration is required depends on the type of fax mailbox you wish to create.

A fax-only mailbox (that will never be used to take voice messages) requires a few more configuration steps than a fax-enabled mailbox (that will receive both fax and voice messages). Differences will be noted where appropriate.

Class of service

There are three fax-related settings to consider in the class of service (COS) template:

COS Setting

COS Property Page

Description

Allow fax tone detection

General

If enabled, the voice card is allowed to detect CNG fax tone during playback of the greeting and while waiting for DTMF during the SDA menu.

Normally, fax detection is disabled because it can sometimes cause talk-off, where a caller's voice is incorrectly interpreted as fax tone.

For a fax-only mailbox, it is not necessary to enable this option because all incoming calls are assumed to be faxes. You may, however, want to enable this option for a fax-enabled mailbox.

Allow fax messages

Recording

If enabled, any mailbox using this COS is permitted to accept fax messages.

Both fax-only and fax-enabled mailboxes require this setting to be enabled.

Fax options

VeMail

This setting determines what type of file format is used when the fax is converted before being attached to a VeMail message. There are three options:

▪	Single TIF attachment per page—select this option to have the system convert any multiple-page fax document into multiple single-page TIF files before attaching to the VeMail message.

▪	Multiple page TIF attachment—select this option to have the system convert any multiple-page fax document into one multiple-page TIF file before attaching to the VeMail message.

▪	PDF attachment—select this option to have every fax document (single- or multiple-page) converted into a PDF document before attaching to the VeMail message.

If you are not using VeMail, this setting can be ignored.

Single digit action menu

Configuring the single digit action (SDA) menu is another key step in setting up a fax mailbox. For a fax-only mailbox, you would set all the SDA actions to Fax (except possibly the A-D tones). The Fax Action Menu, shown below, is designed for just this purpose.

For a fax-enabled mailbox, however, you will probably want to assign the Fax action to just one of the DTMF digits and to the Fax Freq case. You do not want to assign it to the No Input (NI) case because that would interfere with the mailbox's ability to take voice messages.

If the DTMF digit you assign the Fax action to is not used as a leading digit for extension numbers in your dialing plan, you can check the SD box next to it so that the action will be taken immediately after the caller presses that digit.

Call routing plan

The call routing plan only needs to be changed if you are configuring a fax-only mailbox; fax-enabled mailboxes use the standard call routing plan that is assigned to all standard mailboxes by default.

In order to ensure that the fax-only mailbox behaves as desired when the call arrives via a ring-no-answer (RNA) condition, you must create a custom call routing plan for the mailbox and configure the Ring No Answer setting (under the Optional Completion Properties section) to be Execute mailbox. Then set the mailbox to execute to be this mailbox. In other words, you want the mailbox to execute itself. The figure below shows a custom template created for mailbox 200 with the change just described. If the mailbox does not appear in the drop-down list, you can type it in manually.

Note: This change must be made manually for every fax-only mailbox because you have to configure it to execute itself.

Message delivery

This step is optional. Adding the Auto Forward to Email message delivery template to the mailbox's message delivery property page enables the VeMail feature for the given mailbox. When enabled, it causes the system to forward every new message received (including fax messages) to the specified email address. By default, the Auto Forward to Email template forwards the messages to the Email 0 address.

Note: If the Email 0 address has not been configured yet, the template will be automatically disabled when you assign it to the mailbox. This prevents serious system errors. When you have defined the address with a valid email address, you can uncheck the Template disabled checkbox to re-enable the template.

When you define the Email 0 address, you can assign multiple email addresses to it by including a semi-colon between each address. The address definition name1@domain.com;name2@domain.com, for example, includes two email addresses: name1@domain.com and name2@domain.com.

VeMail can be used with both fax-only and fax-enabled mailboxes. You will have to configure the email addresses and assign the message delivery template manually for each mailbox (unless it has already been done).