Fax thru Email?

[Graphi]

Hi,

We need to receive/send faxes through our laptop - fax thru email.

The solution will help us receive them in a timely manner while out on the road for signed orders/contracts of an urgent nature.

Our business is not office based; so would prefer to access our faxes the same as we access our emails - ie anywhere!

 

We can access our ISP on a wireless LAN so theoretically it should be possible to connect to our remote server (Linux hosting with Godaddy) and send/dl faxes?

 

Our main requirements:

 

1. Receive faxes thru email as binary, pdf, rtf, html etc.

2. Send/reply to faxes in the same format they were received (for compatibility)

3. Automatically send acknowledgements using a standard cover sheet.

4. Send/receive without a fixed phone line i.e. wi-fi using our laptops

 

Don't wish to pay setup or monthly charges for dedicated commercial fax server solutions.

 

Could this be done with PHP?

We have SMTP, Sendmail, PHP 4 + 5, MySQL on Linux, Windows XP

 

I did a search here and found this: http://www.phpfreaks.com/forums/index.php/topic,151206.0.html

 

Any advice or suggestions please?

Thanks in advance.

[Psycho]

You are better off getting an account with eFax.com or one of the alternative services.

 

Can you do it with PHP? I'd say the short answer is No. The long answer is Maybe.

[Graphi]

Can you do it with PHP? I'd say the short answer is No. The long answer is Maybe.

 

Er...yeah, it's the "Maybe" that interests me 

I would at least like to explore the possibilities before dismissing the idea.

Thanks for any thoughts and thanks too for anyone who thinks they perhaps would like to take advantage of something like this?

[Psycho]

I said the LONG answer was maybe, because it will most likely be a very intricate and sporadic solution. The chief difficulty will be that at some point you need to communicate with a POTS system. In other words you would need a dedicated computer set up to act as your Fax Server.

 

You stated that you are not an office based organization. So, if someone was to send you a Fax they would need to dial a phone number. Where are you expecting that transmission to go? Even if you were to get inventive and set up a VOIP line on your laptop, you would not be able to receive the fax when the PC is off. So, you need a machine that is connected to a phone line 24/7 with the software needed to receive a fax, convert it, and then forward on via email. I highly doubt GoDaddy servers have dedicated modems for each account!

 

This really isn't a PHP issue. PHP might be able to do some of the functionality (converting and forwarding on the email), but PHP can't answer an incomming call. To do this on your own will be much more costly in hardware, software and maintenance than the few bucks a month for a dedicated service.

[$php_mysql$]

i think its posible, sumtime bk i seen sumwhr send email as fax option