Fax messaging allows subscribers to send and print Faxes to telephone numbers of up to 31 digits. It also enables a shortcut key (**5) for sending and printing all Faxes. You control what Fax numbers subscribers can call by allowing or denying dial strings. Fax Messaging works with the messaging software telephone interface and with Message Manager Release 4.6 and later.
Fax messaging is enabled by default, and the default Fax server name is "Fax", and cannotbe changed
Communication Manager Messaging is not intended to provide the functionality of a Fax server. For example, the messaging software does not support attempts to send Fax documents to lists comprised of hundreds of recipients.
The Fax feature testing made use of emulation tools to test the interoperability of the Fax feature with a broad representative sampling of Fax machines. The testing indicates that the Fax feature can be expected to be interoperable with most Fax machines. Due to the large number of models and brands of Fax machines, there might be some models that do not interoperate well with the Communication Manager Messaging Fax feature.
T.38 IP Fax Signaling Protocol
The T.38 Fax provides support of a-law encoded transmissions over an IP trunk. This support is needed in a network environment where the calls are shuffled over a network path not necessarily including the switch hop, which may be encoded in a-law and not converted to u-law.
Outcalling does not have to be turned on for Fax to work, but the outcalling period and ports are used by Fax for printing.
You cannot directly administer the netcycle for a Fax machine. You must administer outcalling which is the global setting for the netcycle of each network device. The netcycle for a Fax machine is 24 hours. The netcycle range is from 0.00 hours to 23:59 hours. So, if the system outcalling period was set from 18:00 hours to 20:00 hours, then a Fax print issued outside the period will not be printed until 18:00 hours. If you re-administer the outcalling period, it will take 24 hours for any existing Faxes to print at the new time.
The number of outcalling ports impacts the number of print jobs that can be finished during the outcall period.
The outcalling period and ports are set in the Outcalling Options page (Under Messaging Administration, select Outcalling Options).
You must refer to your Communication Manager server documentation to determine your maximum Fax capacity. The availability of your Communication Manager resources determines the maximum number of simultaneous Faxes that can be sent. For more information about your Communication Manager resources, see Communication Manager and Call Center System Software Based Capacities, 03-300511.
Your Fax capacity is the maximum number of Faxes that you can send or receive. Factors such as call traffic and the dynamics of resource allocation can lower your Fax capacity. If you experience routine problems with your Fax capacity limits, you might have to upgrade some of your Communication Manager hardware or software.
For example, if you had a G350 media gateway, you would have 32 resources available. With no shuffling, each Fax you send over an IP trunk configured for T.38 requires 8 resources, 4 for the T.38 segment used internally for the messaging software and 4 for the T.38 segment on the IP trunk. The system maximum would be 4 Faxes, assuming no other call traffic on the system.