The New Age of Fax

In a past blog post I discussed why I thought we needed to update our fax technology.  We are now implementing this update.

As part of our move to Vonage, we have contracted with our new phone vendor to take care of our fax needs as well.  We will be retiring all of the fax machines in all of our offices.  We simply can no longer justify the cost of maintaining the machines and the analog phone lines to support them when there are better ways to accomplish the same things.

Sending Faxes

Sending faxes can be accomplished by going to the fax2mail.com fax web site.  If your document is already in electronic format, you can probably just upload that file.  If you have paper, you will need to scan it into a PDF or one of the other acceptable formats.  Once you have your file, go to:

https://fax2mail.easylink.com/welcome.do

A copy of this link has been added to the Research Home Page.

Next, log in using the name of your office's fax account:

Philadelphia-Fax@margolisedelstein.com
Mt_Laurel-Fax@margolisedelstein.com
Pittsburgh-Fax@margolisedelstein.com
Scranton-Fax@margolisedelstein.com
Harrisburg-Fax@margolisedelstein.com
Berkeley_Heights-Fax@margolisedelstein.com
Wilmington-Fax@margolisedelstein.com
Hollidaysburg-Fax@margolisedelstein.com
Beaver-Fax@margolisedelstein.com

Contact the help desk for the password for your office.

Once logged in, click on the "Send Fax" option on the left side of the screen.  You will then be asked to fill out fields that ask for:

1. Name of the recipient
2. Company
3. Fax Address (this will almost always be the fax phone number of the recipient)
4. Subject

All of this will appear on a cover sheet if you include one.  Click on ADD to save the information in the box to the right. If you have multiple recipients, you may repeat this process as many times as necessary

Next, upload your document.  The site will accept a variety of formats, with the notable exception of WordPerfect.  I recommend using PDF.  You may also type in your name and comments below this, which will appear on the cover sheet.

When ready, click on "review and send" in the top right, then hit "ok" when prompted.  Your fax will be sent to the designated fax machines.  If there is an error or problem with delivery, you will receive a notice to that effect.

Receiving Faxes

Under the new system, any incoming faxes will be sent to you as an email attachment.  The fax numbers in all nine of our offices are being moved to Vonage's fax enterprise service, hosted by fax2mail.com.  When a fax is sent to one of the firm's fax numbers, fax2mail will convert it to a PDF file and send it as an email to a designated person or group of people for that office.  The designated office contact will receive the message in Gmail and can forward it to the correct party in that office.

Also, if you want to check on an email and the designated receipient is not available, or if you want to look up an old email, you may go to the fax2mail.com web site and look in the inbox.  Once you have found and selected your fax, you can click on "view" which will generate a PDF on your computer and allow you to download it directly to your computer.

Conclusion

This new system will allow you to more easily save faxes in your email account, or download easily to the MDIR.  It will also allow us to keep a record of faxes sent and received, as well as allow sending and receiving faxes without leaving your desk.