Send via internet to a Fax Machine
12 October 2005 - 12:15pm
I'm looking for a solution that will allow me to use the internet to send information to a fax machine. Everything I'm finding deals with sending and receiving faxes by email. But my client prefers to receive orders on his fax machine and wants me to create a website where his customers can create orders that are then sent to his fax machine.
Any ideas? Leads? Thanks.
you are probably familiar with submitting forms to a form-to-email script (or maybe a shopping cart) - usually the resulting order is output as a simple email
now you simply need to direct that email through an appropriate email-to-fax service to your clients fax machine
different fax services will have a variety of methods to identify you as an authorised user (so they can charge you) they might require you to send the email 'from' a specific address or perhaps include a particular password or they might log the ip address you're sending from - usually it's fairly painless
we do it in two ways:
- allocate a chosen email address @fax.co.uk to a specific fax number - easy to use but really only suitable for small numbers of recipients, works for your scripts *and* anyone else so they can get regular email too
- allow authorised 'senders' (identified by email & ip addresses) to specify the fax number in the email address, works only for you
hope that helps...