In an earlier post, I explained how you can send a fax by logging into the fax2mail.com web site and uploading a file to be faxed.
For those who are interested, there are also several other ways to send a fax.
Virtual Fax Machine:
On the Fax2mail.com web site, there is a tab called "VFM". This is a virtual fax machine that may be a little more user friendly. You may browse for a file, and send through this device.
Alternatively, you may download the Virtual Fax Machine software to your computer. Once you have entered the login information, you can use this at any time to send a document. You can even drag and drop a file right onto the application. If you send many faxes, this may be a bit of a time saver.
Below is the link for the virtual fax machine application.
https://fax2mail.easylink.com/desktopfax/downloads/EasyLinkVFM.3.3.B6.exe
Print to Fax:
Also available on the fax to mail website are "print-to-fax" drivers that you can download and install on your computer. Using this option will allow you to "print" to a fax from virtually any application (including WordPerfect). Once installed, simply create a document and start to print as you normally would. However, select the print to print-to-fax option from among the printers listed on your computer. You will be prompted for the fax number and then hit send. The one downside of this option is that there is no option for a cover page. So you will want to make a cover page as the first page of the document you are sending if a cover page is needed.
Below is the link for the print to fax installer.
https://fax2mail.easylink.com/desktopfax/downloads/EasyLink_FL_GUI_Print2Fax.exe
If you send faxes regularly, or find the fax2mail.com web site confusing, you may want to give one of these options a try.
Margolis Edelstein Tech Blog
Showing posts with label fax. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fax. Show all posts
Monday, February 8, 2016
Monday, November 9, 2015
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:
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.
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:
- Name of the recipient
- Company
- Fax Address (this will almost always be the fax phone number of the recipient)
- 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.
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.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Fax
I have been fighting fax machine problems the last few weeks. It's really gotten me thinking about how we need to end faxing as we know it.
The fax is a rather old technology. The basic technology was invented in 1843, even before the telephone. It was able to send images across telegraph wires. In 1964, Xerox began selling the first commercial fax machine that could work over the telephone. It took time to catch on due to the high costs, but by 1980 faxes were becoming commonplace.
Consider that in 1980, few of us even had VCRs or CD players, let alone computers. By technology standards, even the modern fax is ancient. It transmits painfully slowly when compared to modern means of communication and mostly wastes paper. There really is no good reason why we still use faxes today.
Today, most documents are already in electronic format. Emailing them to someone is much faster, cheaper and more convenient. Some insist that faxes are important because paper documents still need to be transmitted. But there is no reason that on those few occasions, one cannot simply scan the document and email it that way.
Transmitting a fax takes minutes rather than seconds via email. It often incurs long distance charges and often requires one or more dedicated phone lines. There are additional equipment costs, compared with email which uses the same computer you use for everything else. There are also confidentiality and more time lag issues since faxes are sent to a common location and then need to be distributed by hand. Once received, an email attachment can by copied or redistributed easily by use of the forward function. By contrast, a fax must be taken to a copier and redistributed by hand, or scanned into an image for further processing.
Faxes were great in their day, but that day is long passed.
That said, some of our clients still use faxes and we need to accommodate them. Many years ago, I looked into some fax server options for the firm. These involved giving everyone a separate fax line. Incoming faxes could then be distributed automatically to the recipient via email or file transfer. We rejected this option then because the machine itself would have cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, but we would also have to spend thousands more each month for the hundreds of fax lines needed for such a system. Such an investment in a dying technology seemed foolish.
But because fax has lingered as a needed service. I have begun looking at some other options. One would be to get a single device located in our main office that could serve as the receiving point for faxes to any of our offices. Rather than being printed, the faxes would be saved as PDF documents. Someone at Reliable, or other designated staff, could sort through the faxes and email them as an attachment to the final recipient.
We would also have a desktop application that would allow you to send faxes as easily as printing a document. Paper documents could be scanned as images and then sent through the fax application.
With such a system in place, we could do away with traditional fax machines entirely.
The fax is a rather old technology. The basic technology was invented in 1843, even before the telephone. It was able to send images across telegraph wires. In 1964, Xerox began selling the first commercial fax machine that could work over the telephone. It took time to catch on due to the high costs, but by 1980 faxes were becoming commonplace.
Consider that in 1980, few of us even had VCRs or CD players, let alone computers. By technology standards, even the modern fax is ancient. It transmits painfully slowly when compared to modern means of communication and mostly wastes paper. There really is no good reason why we still use faxes today.
Today, most documents are already in electronic format. Emailing them to someone is much faster, cheaper and more convenient. Some insist that faxes are important because paper documents still need to be transmitted. But there is no reason that on those few occasions, one cannot simply scan the document and email it that way.
Transmitting a fax takes minutes rather than seconds via email. It often incurs long distance charges and often requires one or more dedicated phone lines. There are additional equipment costs, compared with email which uses the same computer you use for everything else. There are also confidentiality and more time lag issues since faxes are sent to a common location and then need to be distributed by hand. Once received, an email attachment can by copied or redistributed easily by use of the forward function. By contrast, a fax must be taken to a copier and redistributed by hand, or scanned into an image for further processing.
Faxes were great in their day, but that day is long passed.
That said, some of our clients still use faxes and we need to accommodate them. Many years ago, I looked into some fax server options for the firm. These involved giving everyone a separate fax line. Incoming faxes could then be distributed automatically to the recipient via email or file transfer. We rejected this option then because the machine itself would have cost in the tens of thousands of dollars, but we would also have to spend thousands more each month for the hundreds of fax lines needed for such a system. Such an investment in a dying technology seemed foolish.
But because fax has lingered as a needed service. I have begun looking at some other options. One would be to get a single device located in our main office that could serve as the receiving point for faxes to any of our offices. Rather than being printed, the faxes would be saved as PDF documents. Someone at Reliable, or other designated staff, could sort through the faxes and email them as an attachment to the final recipient.
We would also have a desktop application that would allow you to send faxes as easily as printing a document. Paper documents could be scanned as images and then sent through the fax application.
With such a system in place, we could do away with traditional fax machines entirely.
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