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Integrating with Fax Products

Sending outbound fax messages requires that you integrate your email server products with Siebel Communications Server and integrate your fax server with your email server. In addition, you must prepare your Siebel applications to format fax addressing data correctly.

Siebel applications do not directly send any fax messages. Instead, they send an email message to an email address that is formatted to include the recipient fax number. The email-fax gateway server passes this email to the fax server. The fax server converts the email to a fax and sends it to the recipient fax number. For information about supported third-party products, see Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network.

NOTE:  After a fax is sent to the email server for submission to the fax server, the Communications Outbound Manager server component might indicate in the log file that the fax is successfully sent. However, this log file message does not indicate whether the fax is sent to a valid fax number.

Most fax software sends a notification message when a fax is not transmitted to the destination. You can set up some fax software to send a notification when a fax is transmitted successfully. If you configure the fax server to send notifications to the sender, then the notification appears in the mailbox that corresponds to the profile that is used to send the fax.

You must configure your fax software, such as OpenText RightFax, to communicate with the email server over a configured gateway connection (or communications link). For example, when installing OpenText RightFax, use the gateway for SMTP, IMAP, or POP3. For more information about email-fax gateways, see the documentation for your fax software.

You must also create an email account (mailbox) that only the fax server monitors. For example, email messages addressed to the email account that OpenText RightFax uses are transmitted through the gateway connection, and the fax server automatically retrieves them, converts them into faxes, and sends them. Each OpenText RightFax email gateway for SMTP, IMAP, or POP3 can monitor a single such email account.

NOTE:  If you use Siebel Communications Server with OpenText RightFax, then to support Unicode configurations, download the Unicode patch for OpenText RightFax. For more information, see Siebel System Requirements and Supported Platforms on Oracle Technology Network.