There's an active project to update our aging fleet of dedicated, costly fax machines with a digital solution that integrates with email. Using this new system, you can send faxes from email or any MFP on campus, and you receive faxes from a special email box created just for your department or group. Many departments on campus are using the new system and are happy with the results.
Much of this information can also be found in the Steps for Using the New Faxing Method at Carleton document available here.
Receiving a fax through email
This service allows a department to get rid of a fax machine and receive incoming faxes through a special department emailbox. To set up this service, complete the Fax Server Setup Form and turn it in to Sue Traxler in ITS (while visiting, via campus mail, or via email). When filling out the form, the department must choose between two options for setting up the service:
- Designate one person in your department to receive and distribute faxes to others by forwarding to the mailbox of each recipient or print out fax and give to recipient. With this option, only the designated person can get the faxes out of the fax emailbox.
- Setup everyone in your department to receive faxes from the fax emailbox. All department members can go into the fax emailbox to retrieve any faxes. In addition, the contact person in your department will also have full rights to this emailbox. A person receiving a fax should forward the fax to their own emailbox and then delete it from the fax emailbox. Please be careful when managing emails in this account through the shared mailbox – everyone needs to be able to delete their own faxes, and so everyone has admin privileges on this share and will be capable of reading or deleting any email contained within it.
These descriptions are also listed on the form itself. Be sure to carefully read the form and fill out all required information before turning it in. Once the form has been turned in, the process will proceed as follows:
- You will receive an email in the next day or two inviting you to share the new fax mailbox. Open this email in Zimbra and click "Accept." Outlook users should now follow the instructions in Setting up your Fax mailbox in Outlook.
- You will continue to receive faxes at your old fax machine until Telecom completes their step.
- Dave Flynn will send a follow-up email to the department contact after Telecom has completed their step. At this point, faxes are now being received in your fax mailbox in email. Faxes will now longer be received at your dedicated fax machine. Dave will send a test fax to the new number with a document confirming that this is working.
Sending a fax from email
To send a fax from email, simply use the fax number followed by "@f.x" as the address. For example, given the number 503-555-4537, you would send the email to 915035554537@f.x.
You can type plain text (no formatting or embedded images) into the body of the message, and you can add a PDF as an attachment. At this time, only PDFs will work. If you need to send another type of file, consider sending to an email account rather than a fax number.
If you are on campus, you can use any email program to send a fax. While you are off campus, you must use the Zimbra web client to send a fax through email.
For a printout of these instructions, see Using Email to send a Fax.
Sending a fax using an MFP
To send a fax using any MFP on campus, use the "Scan and Send" feature to scan the document and send it via email as described above.