Help with call forwarding to a fax machine
Stewart:
Quote from: dlsmith on March 07, 2012, 10:53:47 pm
I did try Anveo ... unfortunately fax forwarding was not successful, even when sent from a landline and forwarded through Anveo.
This is very surprising to me. Did you try forwarding on the Phone Numbers page (rather than using a Call Flow)? I suspect that detection of fax tone may otherwise cause trouble. What was the symptom? Did it always fail or was it just unreliable? Just guessing here, Line2 may be avoiding trouble, because they happen to use the same CLEC as HelloFax. Please look up all three numbers at http://tnid.us/ and report what is shown for Current Telephone Company. If you pass that info to Anveo's support, they may be able to give you a number with the "right" CLEC, or otherwise fix the problem. (If not, they may be willing to give you a refund.)
Quote from: dlsmith on March 07, 2012, 10:53:47 pm
...but the Value plan is limited to 40 minutes a day which is probably too low to use instead of GV. Two Obis would fix that problem, but then there's the expense of the 2nd Obi and I'd need to buy an additional handset.
If 40 min./day is insufficient for the lesser-used line, I would assume that you frequently have conflicts for use of the phone. IMO, a good home system should be designed so that when one phone is in use, you can make or receive a call on any other (using the same or a different number). Sure, that costs money, but the convenience is well worth it. It may be possible to use some or all of your existing hardware -- what kinds of phones do you have now?
Also, I'm curious about your fax workflow. If I had to do the same mundane task 2000 times per year, I'd find a way to automate it as much as possible (which may also get HelloFax out of the picture). Given that there are hundreds of thousands of docs in the same boat, is there an app on the market that does this? Or, it may not be difficult to use image or document processing software that has a scripting capability. For example, on a routine refill approval, could the text box be pre-populated and a signature stamp pre-inserted, just waiting for you to click the OK button?
dlsmith:
@Stewart -- thanks again for taking such a detailed look at my situation!
With Anveo I set up call forwarding from the phone number page (the Call Flow system was too intimidating). I sent 3 test faxes from my fax>ATT landline>Avneo>HelloFax. The fax would call out, I would hear the call connect with fax tones, but then I'd get an error message from the fax machine. "Fax failed" or something like that. Same test with Line2 instead of Anveo does work reliably.
I looked at the CLEC information on the website you suggested -- my HF and Anveo numbers actually use the same one (Pac-West telecomm Inc -- Syniverse), while Line2 uses a different one (Level 3 - Sybase 365).
As far as home set-up we don't really run into conflicts for use of the phone. There are so many ways to make calls (for instance with cell, with GV in Gmail, with VOiP apps like Groove iP). Before getting the Obi110 I used a decommissioned Android phone as a VOiP phone for the home GV number (with Groove iP). It just required a little too much maintenance because sometimes the app froze or the phone disconnected from the wifi and I was the only one paying attention to get it back online.
My goals were that we had reliable calling to and from our home number, that we had reliable 911 service, and that I can receive and send faxes. Secondary goals were that my wife can take GV calls through the home phone and that everything costs less than ATT if possible.
So using Obi110 with two GV #s (one home and one my wife's) and the NetTalk on LINE port I think is the most straightforward for my situation. It's more expensive for e911 than Anveo or Callcentric, but not a lot more and it allows us to keep one wireless phone system in the house rather than two handsets in the same location.
As far as faxing -- what it really comes down to is that it is an archaic technology and if only pharmacies and insurance companies would just use email it wouldn't be an issue. When it comes to medicine there are lots of inefficiencies and poor uses of technology, or proprietary uses of technology (hospital #1 has it's own electronic system that is different from that used by hospital #2 and #3 etc.). In my case I am in private practice and there are electronic record management services I've checked out. The problems are that ePrescribing is not universally used yet (not all pharmacies use it) and the programs aren't really a time saver compared to what I've gotten used to with HelloFax (still a lot of menus and clicking to get the refill done). Another problem for me is that although prescription refills are 80-90% of my faxes, I do get others like occasional forms from insurance. And faxes from pharmacies are not at all standardized -- some have checkboxes, some have numbers to circle, some are sent in landscape rather than portrait -- basically they each need an individual check on what needs to be done. What most doctors do is hire office staff to handle all this, but I have always preferred to be as efficient as I can and do these things myself (hiring and managing staff requires its own time and cost obviously). Thanks again for all the suggestions -- I've learned a lot just from this thread and I really appreciate it!
Denis:
I work for Anveo. FAX is very sensitive to timing and each call forwarding adds an extra point of failure and makes faxing more difficult. Here is a path that each FAX will take if you forward from Anveo to HELLO FAX PSTN # .
Code:
SENDING FAX MACHINE ----> POTS ----> VOIP CARRIER ---> ANVEO ---> VOIP CARRIER---> [POTS may or may not happen depending of the carrier and the switch center] ---> VOIP ---> HELLO FAX
If you receive FAX @ Anveo point than you will get a decent success rate. But the path to HELLO FAX is pretty much doubled. I would try to avoid forwarding calls to Hello FAX PSTN number and instead I suggest you contact Hello Fax and ask them to give SIP Access for your account so you can forward calls from Anveo to their system using SIP. This way the extra path will be cut in more than in half because Anveo will send calls directly to their servers and you will still get a decent fax success rate.
GWCS:
Has anyone considered buying a second Obi device and running a phone cord from the Obi phone port to a FAX-enabled modem on a computer that is physically nearby? A one-time investment of a dedicated Obi for faxing purposes whose SIP is GV and a basic fax modem might do the trick, no?
Redwood:
Quote from: jimates on March 06, 2012, 12:33:38 am
Quote from: Rick on March 05, 2012, 09:37:51 am
And there is no guarantee that every baud rate modem is going to work the same. I have ReplayTV with modems that dial in for programming and I tried for days trying to get it to work.
I did get it to work with NetTalk but even then I had to find the right combination of baud rate and destination number. It won't connect to just every number in the list, I had to find the right one.
I have a Panasonic Showstopper (replay tv) just got the OBi100, and altho working fine for phones.. my Showstopper hasn't completed a guide download... very dissapointed so far... guess I will try different phone #'s?
any suggestion? thanks
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page