Fax Integrator dialing rules

 

 

For those of you moving to the Fax Integrator 9.0.0.1, moving away from WinFax to the Windows Fax Services sounds like a relief. I am sure it will be. Uncle Bill seems to have taken care of us with the Fax Console and Fax Monitor. There is an issue that some of you may run into, though, especially if you are relying on the Dialing Rules that you set up for your modem.

 

In our situation, our fax server needs to dial a '9' to open an outside line. I don't think this is an uncommon situation, but there are probably some other variants as well (using dialing cards or transmission time constraints). During our testing I had the hardest time getting the faxes to abide by our dialing rules.

 

I did find the answer and it is not a Lawson issue, but it is a Windows XP issue. If the fax number is not in something similar to the full canonical format, Windows Fax Services (WFS) simply tries to dial the numbers as given--ignoring any dialing rules.

 

Currently, all of our telephone numbers are formatted as 1-555-999-1234. In its ideal, WFS would like to see every phone number as +1 (555) 999-1234 (this is the canonical format). The '+1' is the US country code, other countries would have their code in this position.

 

Here is the problem...the fax field for the PO10.2 doesn't allow enough characters to fully format the number in canonical--especially for countries other than the US. I have gotten two formats to work so far (there may be others).

 

1 - Compress everything. The number would look like +1(555)999-1234 (no spaces). This does trigger the dialing rules, but the formatted number looks a little odd (+1 +1(555)999-1234). It works though.

 

2 - Ignore the country code. The number would look like (555) 999-1234. This triggers the dialing rules as well, and formats prettier, but it also assumes that the phone number is internal to the US. Not being familiar with the international versions of Windows XP, perhaps the local country code is assumed based on the individual setup.

 

So, while this will be a big issue for us, as we have to reformat all of our PO10.2 entries, perhaps you can dodge this bullet. If you have any questions, or if my explanation was not clear enough, you can look at Windows Knowledge Base article 318575 at

 

 

Enjoy,

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have just been through the Fax Integrator upgrade and would like to offer some thoughts for those who will be running it under Windows XP with its picky dialing rules. Whether you choose to use XP's dialing rules, or to enter the number complete with any leading character(s) to get an outside line, you have to stick to the same format for all vendors. In our case I decided to just put the exact dialup string into Lawson rather than deal with the parenthesis etc. needed for XP's dialing rules to work. I had heard that the fax numbers were pulled from PO10.1 from some people and from PO10.2 from other people so I decided to upload the new format to both forms. I used MS Addins to download the fax numbers, Excel and its string functions to reformat them, then used Add-ins again to upload the reformatted phone numbers.

 

As soon as Fax Integrator downloads the faxes from your Lawson system they go immediately over to the fax console for dialing out and you can't halt the process (stopping the Windows Fax service is not an option, trust me) so at least a few faxes may be attempted to be sent before you can fix the phone numbers, "re-send" the faxes from Fax Integrator, and delete out the ones from Fax Console which are incorrectly formatted. You can't edit the fax numbers in the Fax Console window - you have to edit them in Fax Integrator and re-send them to the Fax Console. Those faxes which are mis-dialed before you delete them may end up being sent (repeatedly) to an incorrect phone number, perhaps one that is in-house and not a fax number. (People do not like repeated calls from a fax modem, however innocently they come about. Oops!)

 

The key point is to prepare to get all of your fax phone numbers in proper format prior or concurrent to going live with this version of Fax Integrator (at least if running it on XP) because once it goes live and the phone numbers don't work you have an annoying problem to baby-sit and you will still need to fix the fax numbers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We just moved this to production this week and we did something similar as well in terms of changing the fax number. If you don't want to go through the hassle of using addins or doing it by hand here's the SQL I used with Oracle to change the data(make sure you make a backup of the table first):

 

This will show you what it would look like BEFORE you change it --

 

select substr(fax_number,1,1) || '(' || substr(fax_number,3,3) || ')' || substr(fax_number,7,8) from schemaowner.povendloc

where purch_fr_loc='FAX' and length(rtrim(fax_number))=14

 

Update SQL

 

update schemaowner.povendloc

set fax_number substr(fax_number,1,1) || '(' || substr(fax_number,3,3) || ')' || substr(fax_number,7,8)

where purch_fr_loc='FAX' and length(rtrim(fax_number))=14

/

commit

/

 

 

Remember this is for Oracle, you may have to adjust it for MS Sql server, etc. Plus I based it on the length of the values in the FAX_NUMBER field. You may have to adjust this also for your table. I would suggest playing with the SELECT sql to make sure you will get the right results before updating