We need a couple of basic things from a 3rd part fax server for Unity to work with it. Almost all the fax servers I've evaluated worked with few or no modifications to our registry.
1. They must have an exchange gateway. Kind of a "duh" thing but believe it or not, the Microsoft fax product in the SBS package doesn't have a gateway for Exchange and it is one of only two fax servers I've failed. Go figure.
2. We need to be able to send a fax to an email addressed as "[FAX:Name@DeliveryNumber]". Most fax servers support this format in addition to their own proprietary format. You can test this by opening up an email client and sending a text email to "[FAX:Jeff@1188]" where "1188" would be a fax machine extension. If it gets there, you're golden.
3. It needs to stamp incoming faxes that go to the users mailbox with a unique message class. If the fax server simply leaves the message class as the default "IMP.NOTE" we have no way to telling that this message is a fax as opposed to an email. Unity has a registry key where you can define additional message classes we consider faxes if necessary. We already have ones in there for LightningFax, FaxSr, Faxination, RightFax and others.
Generally when a customer wants to get another fax server approved, I get a copy of it from them or the vendor and run it through it's paces here at AV and we just add it to the list if everything checks out. If you have a system that we don't already support you're wanting added to the list, pop me an email and we'll get the ball rolling.
Jeff Lindborg
Unity Product Architect
Active Voice Corp
jlindborg@activevoice.com
