What is PlanetPress Fax?
PlanetPress Fax is a service that can be used to output data and documents via a faxing software, such as Windows Fax (available with Windows 2000, XP, and Microsoft Windows Serverâ„¢ 2003) or Symantec WinFax PRO, as well as via a faxing server, such as Captaris RightFax. Note that it is these applications that do the actual faxing.
Windows 2000: PlanetPress Fax output tasks set to use Windows Fax under Windows 2000 may fail when no one is logged on the system running PlanetPress Fax.
Windows XP: Windows Fax may not work properly after the Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) has been installed (refer to Microsoft Customer service for more information on this issue). Also note that Windows Fax may take as much as three times more time to send faxes under Windows XP.
PlanetPress Fax can be installed on any computer on your network and process all requests coming from tasks performed by PlanetPress Workflow on other workstations. You may choose to run it on every computer where PlanetPress Workflow is running, but you may also choose to run it on computers more or less dedicated to PlanetPress Fax.
Since the faxing program must always be running and ready to receive requests from PlanetPress Workflow, it should be included in the Windows Startup Group.
PlanetPress Fax can associate a different fax number with each page it sends via the faxing software. For this to happen, two things are required: each record must have a fax number specified in the job file and that fax number must be tagged as such in PlanetPress Design (in the PlanetPress Design User Guide, refer to the section documenting Data Selections, which includes explanations on the available PlanetPress Fax options). When the data and the document are merged, the fax number associated with each record becomes available to PlanetPress Fax that can then pass it on to the faxing software.
Because of technical limitations, the minimum time required to generate a PlanetPress Fax document is approximately 10 times longer on Windows 2000 than on Windows XP/2003.