We have a situation where we have customers complaining that our fax is always busy. It is a single machine on a DID. We also have a rightfax number that we are now also giving out to the customers as it is capable of handling more than one inbound at a time.
The situation is that the fax number for the stand alone machine is what is printed on all of our forms. We can not have rightfax set up this number as they will only use theirs. Is there a solution to somehow create a setup similar to a printer pool where the print job goes to the first available printer with a fax that comes in on a Telco DID?
I know that this is a long shot, but if there is a solution that will include the DID fax number, I could really amaze my boss.
Any chance of being able to port the number to a different carrier, such as (name used just for familiarity) Vonage? Yes, I realize it's a DID, so may be tricky... but it's worth looking at.
Once the number is handled by someone else, you've got puhhhlenty of options.
What am I missing here? Is the DID pool part of a group of numebrs in your PBX? Liet's give them numbers like 100-150. In the universe, you set up 181 as a hunt group, and pool your fax machines, say
181-183 are 3 fax machines. Then you point the DID number to 181 and you have a 3 line inward hunt group for the DID number.
I might be missing something here in what you are looking for, but I'll give it a shot.
As I understand it, you have one customer facing fax number and one fax machine that is often busy and customers can't get through.
First thought is to have multiple fax machines.
Since you have DID service, you have several telco facing numbers available to you. Lets say 555-1111, 555-1112, and 555-9999 (in other words they may not be in sequence).
Now, can your phone system point these numbers to a hunt group? If they can, set up a hunt group with three extension member that are associated with your phone system analog ports.
Next comes the question if indeed you can have multiple fax machines. You might have a high end fax machine, i.e network ready, that lets you pull faxes off the machine using your PCs (as opposed to walking over to the machine and picking up a piece of paper), if this is the case, it would might be costly to have several of those machines.
So here is a possible solution. Get one fast computer, i.e. not a spare slow one that you might have laying around. Install several fax/modem cards in it. $35 US Robotics from Walmart comes to mind.
The number is not part of the pbx. I guess that I should have stated that. I goes from the cross connect to the punch down that leads to the port on the rack then patched over to the panes on the rack where the wires run out to the jacks.
Please forgive me is I do not use all the correct terms, I am still learning about phone systems, pbx and such.
Coming out of the T1 dmux, there would be 24 pairs with each pair associated with a POTS like analog phone line. In that case there would be no way to send the 3 or 4 lines to a PBX based rotary hunt group "pool"
You might ask if the telco can place those numbers in a hunt group for you. Then if DID #1 is busy, it will hunt or "roll over" to the next DID #2.
Each of the lines would need its own separate FAX machine, may it be four FAX machines or four fax/modem cards in a networked PC.
Oh, I think I understand. The fax is not a DID, but a 1B(standard
2way phone line). Meaning it's a Plain Old Telephone line from the telco. Now you order it as a hunting line, keeping the number as a pilot, and order any number of lines you want for backup. It's also a good idea to use another route for outbound calls and keep these lines free for inward calls.
If this was truly a DID trunk, it would tend to be a receive only trunk that provided a signal to the phone company and received only a certain number of digits and those digits would be used to route the call to a destination or mailbox.
Call forward busy/no answer to the Rightfax number has the normal bonus of overflow, with the additional bonus of "you still get faxes even if you lose power" because if your fax doesn't answer, it will forward to rightfax.
*IF* you're describing your situation accurately, you have a PBX, with trunk lines coming in from the phone company. Or telco-supplied PBX service -- aka 'Centrex' (or similar).
IF so, what you need done is done _IN_ the PBX. (more below)
If not, and what you have is a fax machine on a 'simple' single-line business line, then you _must_ get the telco involved.
On a single-line set-up, there are three (maybe) ways to go: 1) get 'call forwarding' on that line, and forward it to 'rightfax'. (then throw away the existing fax machine 2) *ADD* some additional phone lines -- you _have_ to have a separate phone line (and fax machine) for each _simultaneous_ fax you wish to receive. 5 faxes at a time equals 5 phone lines, and 5 fax machines. Have these lines added as a "hunt group" to the existing fax number. 3) see if you can get "Call Forward BUSY" on the fax line. configure the busy forward number to be the 'rightfax' line.
*NOW*, if you _really_ have a DID trunk into a PBX, almost everything is done internally in the PBX. you simply grab some more extensions from the PBX, and put additional fax machines on them. then configure that group of extensions as either a 'hunt group', or a 'call-forward busy chain', depending on the particular PBX features. (this is essentially #2, above, *except* you don't have to have the Phone company do it, and you don't pay any extra each month for the 'extensions'.
I put this the way I did, because anybody who has real DID incoming trunks, and knows that's what they are would already know everything I've mentioned. :)
OK. I described it wrong. I am still learning. The fax is on a single line from the Telco. In dealing with corporate office, it appears that we will be setting up the forward on busy and no answer on this line to forward to a rightfax number. Someone wanted to run the number into the pbx and set up multiple fax machines or a multiline fax machine. I think that I have them convinced that the forward on busy or no answer is the best solution as we already have the rightfax number and aside from helping with the busy signal, the forwarding would also help us when the power goes out, as happened in the building two weeks ago, but also when we have to shut down the office due to a hurricane coming (Our office is in Miami).
Of course, being a big corporation, there will have to be several teleconferences between three people in my office and five in the corporate office to solve this, just wasting a lot of time.
Ted
Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and help.
1) if you set just forwarding on 'no answer' and 'busy', to point to the rightfax number, you'll have faxes coming in in two different places/ways. recommend you do "simple" call=forward (_all_calls_) to the rightfax number, then all the faxes will be handled one place/one way. And you don't need the stand-alone fax machine any more.
Directly related to that -- it is a 'sure thing' that you can get 'call forwarding' (all calls) on that single-line business line. It It not as certain that 'forward on busy' or 'forward on no answer' is available on that kind of service. And be sure to check the costs involved of getting whichever features added to that line.
2) Make sure the rightfax system, wherever it is located, has enough phone lines associated with _it_, to handle the volume of incoming faxes you get. You'll need to make sure that the righfax admin reserves lines for incoming faxes only -- so that you can still receive -while- they are doing a mass transmission. Regardless of _how_ things are done, you still tie up one phone line with each simultaneous fax session -- incoming or outgoing.
If, heaven forbid, you've got a _single-line_ rightfax system, you are _not_ gaining much of anything by tacking it into the "solution".
3) IF the rightfax is not local to you, you'll be paying phone charges for *every*call* that is forwarded, just as if you dialed it as an outgoing call.
4) a computer-based (multi-line) fax-server behind the PBX _is_ a reasonable approach, assuming you have adequate UPS back-up for the PBX -and- the fax-server for 'routine' power outages.`
For hurricanes, presumably there is planning in place (and coordination with the phone company) to re-route the PBX incoming numbers to another location outside the hurricane area. If so, this obviously applies to fax numbers going through the PBX as well as voice ones.
Just doing a simple call forward will not help solve the situation of people getting a busy. It will still only forward one call at a time. The inbound faxes are sent to us via email where they can be viewed and printed.
We currently have one person assigned to removing faxes from the different machines and distributing them. This person is also responsible for distributing the faxes that come in via rightfax after they are printed.
The rightfax has 16 inbound and we can increase it up to 30 if we need to.
We are considering the cost of the LD call to setting up a 800 rightrax number.
In that situation, we have a complete disaster plan which includes forwarding fax and voice lines to an out of town office. The voice go to a voice mail box with an announcement that the office is closed due to the hurricane. Luckily, we are next door to a hospital and on the same power grid, so we usually have power back the next day.
That's a big "maybe". In lots of systems the call forward will keep kicking the call to the secondary numbers until they're full.
In other words, if you've got five fax machines/lines at the final destination, in many cases you will, indeed, be able to make five simultanous transfers over.
With most phone carriers, 'standard' call forward _will_ forward as many simultaneous calls as the destination number will accept. I've forwarded a single line into a hunt group, where the _last_ number in that group was a forwarded to another hunt group, involving 3 different LECs.
I've heard of ILECs where basic call-forward was only one call, _BUT_ there was an option buried deep in the switch programming that allowed multiple simultaneous forwards. Mostly a matter of whether the telco would -admit- the configuration option existed. :)
That's _probably_ more than you'll need.
And -- given that number of lines configured -- if it's being used for outbound as well, they've probably got some of the lines 'reserved' as 'incoming only', which is the important thing.
Assuming you shop prices, the 'direct dial' LD rate for forwarded calls should be 1-2 cents a minute lower than an 800 number.0.
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