ExtraFax Mail-In Database Faxing Feature


In the past, if someone wanted to send faxes through a non-Domino mail system, he or she would have to compose the fax in a SMTP mail client (e.g. Outlook Express), and then specify the fax recipient(s) with the addressing syntax: recipient_name%fax_number%fax_domain@your_internet_domain_name, e.g. Billy Black%5554424422%extrafax@faxserver.extracomm.com. This syntax can work fine in most cases.

However, on some occasions, this syntax would not work due to policy restrictions enforced in the SMTP server or the SMTP client. Starting in ExtraFax 7.0.2, a new alternative approach called "Mail-In Database Faxing" is provided for addressing outgoing fax/SMS/MMS.


How to Configure the Feature?

First of all, you will need to create a new Main-In Database document in your Domino Directory.

In the Mail-In Database document, you will have to specify the following information:
  • Mail-in name: The name used to e-mail documents into the ExtraFax Post Office database.
  • Internet Address: The Internet address used to e-mail documents into the ExtraFax Post Office database.
  • Domain: The Domino domain name for the server on which the ExtraFax Post Office database resides.
  • Server: The server name on which the ExtraFax Post Office database resides.
  • File name: The file name of the ExtraFax Post Office database.



After creating the Mail-In Database document, you will have to configure the "Mail-In Database Faxing" section under the "Outbound" tab of your ExtraFax Server Configuration document.
  • Enable: Select "Yes" to enable the ExtraFax Mail-In Database Faxing feature
  • Mail-in Name(s): Specify the mail-in name(s) that you have defined in your Domino Directory for use with this feature.
  • Password: This is an optional setting. If you define a password here, ExtraFax will perform password-checking for each outgoing fax job that is routed into the ExtraFax Post Office database by the previously defined mail-in names. In such case, users are required to provide the password when composing the faxes (For more information, please see the "How to Compose a Fax" in the section below).
  • Fax Address List Text Filename: This is an optional setting, which represents the file name of the attached text file that contains the fax address list. (For more information, please see the "How to Compose a Fax" in the section below).




How to Compose a Fax?

You can compose a fax from your SMTP mail client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook Express) or Web mail (e.g. Yahoo Mail).

In the simplest form, you only need to specify the following information:
  • To field (i.e. the Internet Address which corresponds to the predefined Mail-In Database document)
  • Subject field (i.e. the fax recipient address in the form of RecipientName@FaxNumber)
  • Body field (i.e. the main content of your fax)



Apart from entering a fax recipient address, there are several additional reserved keywords that can be specified in the Subject field.

Here is the description of each supported value that can be used in the Subject field:
  • RecipientName@FaxNumber: Your desired fax recipient address, e.g. Billy Black@5554424422
  • SUB=FaxSubject: The subject of your fax, e.g. SUB=Sample Fax
  • DOM=FaxDomainName: The fax/sms/mms domain name used by your ExtraFax server. If not specified, ExtraFax will use the fax foreign domain name specified in the ExtraFax Server Configuration document as the default.
  • PWD=Password: The password for the ExtraFax Mail-In Database Faxing feature, which is required if a Password has been specified in the ExtraFax Server Configuration document, e.g. PWD=87654321

It should be noted that you can specify more than one fax recipient address and you can use a comma as the delimiter to separate the values. The reserved keywords (e.g. SUB=) are case-insensitive.



In addition, if you need to send a fax to a large number of recipients, instead of specifying the fax recipient addresses in the Subject field, you can specify the recipient in a text file.

For example, you can specify the recipients in a text file called "FaxAddressList.txt", where each line represents a single fax recipient address:

Billy Black@5554424422
David Martin@5558868866
Linda Scott@5557737733
... ... ...

After creating this text file, you can attach this file into the e-mail that you are composing as a fax.

Note that the file name of the text file must match with the one specified in the "Fax Address List Text Filename" setting of your ExtraFax Server Configuration document.

There are two benefits of using the Fax Address List Text file:
  1. It can work around the potential character length limitation of the Subject field.
  2. The fax recipient addresses are stored in a file that can be re-used.
  3. The ExtraFax Mail-In Database Faxing feature is not limited to SMTP mail clients or Web mail, you can also use the Notes Client to compose a fax if you would prefer, which works in a similar fashion.