[asterisk-users] AstFax Sending a Fax

[mail-lists]

Barry Fawthrop wrote:
> Thanks Andrew
> I have no plans to VoIP my Faxes to a VoIP provider
>
> I just would like to send them from my  desktop (which is windows) to 
> my PBX (which is AstLinux inside  a net 4801)
> The PBX connects to PSTN lines via a FXO Gateway (CG-410 in my case)
>
> So really it's trying to get Windows to detect the "modem" or phone 
> line one the 410.
>
> Can this still be done ?
> Thanks again
> Barry
>
>
> Andrew Joakimsen wrote:
>> You can use the fax server Hylafax ( 
>> http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+IAXmodem ) with 
>> IAXmodem ( http://iaxmodem.sourceforge.net/howto.php )
>>
>> You really don't want to be sending faxes over the internet via VoIP 
>> providers, not yet because there is no t.38 support for that. As long 
>> as the connection to the PSTN is on a card on the same machine or 
>> possibly over a network connection perhaps over a private line maybe 
>> using TDMoE then it should work fine
>>
>>
>> On 10/24/06, *Barry Fawthrop* <barry at ttienterprises.org 
>> <mailto:barry at ttienterprises.org>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi All
>>
>>     I'm trying to understand how I would send my fax ?
>>
>>     If I use  Word  or what ever word processor  or even an email
>>     client to
>>     create what I want faxed.
>>
>>     I have *asterisk setup with and FXO Gateway that will make the
>>     call to
>>     the fax number I dial
>>     SIP extension 320  is the FXO gateway.
>>
>>     How do I now get my email or word document to TIFF to then fax to 
>> the
>>     FXO gateway or SIP/320 ?
>>
>>     I don't understand that part.  They all talk about an email with a
>>     TIF
>>     attachment
>>     and the TIF attachment is sent to the number in the subject line.
>>
>>     Thanks all
>>     Barry
As far as I know you can't send anything BUT a TIFF. This is how we do it:

We have winprint hylafax on client machines. This allows you to 'print' 
to the fax client from any program (word, adobe, webbrowser,etc). This 
communicates with hylafax on the asterisk server which in turn talks to 
asterisk via IAXModem (we ARE using VOIP to fax - with about 95% 
success). If you're not using voip to fax, I suppose hylafax would talk 
to whatever modem you're using which in turn would call out through 
asterisk.

There are other options I think, such as email to fax gateways in which 
you could attach a document to an email.  From what I understand this 
would require you to have conversion software somewhere in the loop to 
convert from pdf to tiff or from word to tiff, etc. This is just too 
painful for me at the moment.

One other option that I'm considering is having clients install some 
sort of conversion software on the client machine. I don't know if such 
is available or not


The point of this is that I think you need somesort of fax server 
software on your asterisk box. Hylafax works great for us.