How To

You can select to receive inbound fax notifications directly to your system by using the Incoming Web Feedback function. When this feature is set, InterFAX sends inbound fax notifications to a web application that you set up. Your web application should be capable of accepting either an HTTP POST call or a XML Web Service (SOAP) call.

You can also set the system to send you feedback notifications on outbound faxes. For more information, please read the outbound callback documentation.

To use the Incoming Web Feedback function, perform these setup steps:

You can select to receive fax status notifications directly to your system by using the Outgoing Web Feedback function. When this feature is set, InterFAX sends fax confirmations to a web application that you set up. Your web application should be capable of accepting either an HTTP POST call or a XML Web Service (SOAP) call.

You can also set the system to send you notifications on new inbound faxes. For more information, please read the inbound callback documentation.

To use the Outgoing Web Feedback function, perform these setup steps:

SAP's Fax and Paging/SMS interface [documentation, local cache] allows very simple access to faxing over the InterFAX email-to-fax service.

When you send faxes through the InterFAX email-to-fax service, you may choose to receive confirmations.  You can select to receive confirmations on success of a transaction, on failure, always, or never. This setting can be viewed and changed by logging into your InterFAX account and clicking Preferences -> Outgoing, and scrolling down to the Authentication & Feedback section.

These confirmations are standard email messages which are returned to the original sender address of the email-to-fax. Different formats of these confirmations are available and will be discussed here.

Note: Adding a service is available only to primary users in an account. To add a service to a user in your account, login to your account and go to "Account Management -> Users".  A list of all users in your account is displayed:

If you get the following popup notification when attempting to send a fax from Office 2003, scroll down to see the solution.

The problem is that even though you may have Outlook 2003 installed and even though you have activated it to work with InterFAX, Outlook is not configured as your default email program.

Here's how to turn Outlook into your default email program:

Nov 2004: It has been brought to our attention that some Interfax clients are experiencing problems importing the Interfax security certificate into Microsoft Outlook (Outlook Express does not reportedly exhibit this behavior). Importing the certificate is only necessary if encrypting emails sent to the Interfax email-to-fax service.

Please follow these steps to work around this problem:

I. Request an Interfax Certificate

This page explains how to do it.

II. Export the Interfax Certificate:

One of the most popular applications for Interfax is in time-sensitive order processing applications, such as restaurant and take-away ordering. Time-sensitive applications are usually business-critical processes, as each fax represents an actual order by a web visitor.

The visitor is unaware that his order, which has been placed and charged through a web site, travels to the order-fulfillment destination by fax, and that a number of variables may delay or prevent its arrival.  Therefore, special precautions must be taken to ensure the faxes arrival.

Requirements

Some users - such as US healthcare entities who are required to abide by HIPAA guidelines, and financial institutions worldwide - have enhanced privacy requirements from messaging providers, such as InterFAX.

While Interfax does not fall into any of the HIPAA "covered entity" categories, as potential Business Associate we have implemented several privacy-enhancing features and procedures, and suggest that you apply the following measures:

The security of messages sent through the Interfax system may be enhanced by encrypting your emails. While this will NOT encrypt the fax transmission from our servers to the fax machine itself, it WILL secure the contents of your message while it is in transit from your computer to our servers.

(Developers please note: When faxing through the Interfax XML Web Service, you may use SSL to access our servers securely at https://ws.interfax.net)
There are two steps to securing messages sent to Interfax:

This feature will add another layer of security to your communications with InterFAX. When you send faxes through the InterFAX email-to-fax service, you may choose to receive confirmations. You can select to receive confirmations on success of a transaction, on failure, always, or never.

The security of messages received through InterFAX may be enhanced by having emails sent to you encrypted by the system. While this will NOT encrypt the fax transmission from your correspondent's fax machine to our fax servers, it WILL secure the contents of the message while it is in transit from our servers to your computer.

(Developers please note: When receiving faxes through the Interfax XML Web Service, you may use SSL to access our servers securely at https://ws.interfax.net)

To encrypt messages sent to you, we need to have your digital signature.

When an Interfax prepaid card is used up, no further faxes can be sent until a new card is purchased.  Attempting to send a fax after depletion of one card and before purchase of another card results in an error condition '205000 - Quota Exceeded', and faxes are not sent.

In any fax broadcast, two ingredients are required: (a.) a document to be broadcast, and (b.) a list of recipients.

The sent document can be either (a.)static, which means that every recipient in the list receives exactly the same fax as the others, or (b.) dynamic, which means that every recipient receives a personalized fax which may be different from others, for example, including his name, company, and possibly other details.

Interfax is designed to be as similar to dialling your fax machine as possible. The principle is to specify a fax number as if you were dialling it from your standard phone. However, you may add access codes (long-distance, international), as well as country codes and area codes. In case no explicit access codes or prefixes are specified, Interfax will automatically add them according to your user settings.