Post: #1

Not sure if this falls under "tools" or "making money"

I have a slight problem i am trying to solve. Here is how our current fax machine works:

You may be out of the office for a day or two. You put the fax machine in a queueing mode, that is, it doesnt print the faxes as they are coming in. Instead, it saves the fax until you go over to the fax machine and press "print fax" the next day.

By this time--after two days-- faxes would have accumulated from 100 different people.

When you then press "print fax"... the fax machine will start printing out the faxes in the order by which they are received. This creates a mess.
Normally, this is not a problem, unless you have a 100 different faxes of thick documents from a 100 different people. That is when things get messy: Document from person A gets interspersed with document from person B which gets interspersed with document from person C...which gets interspersed with document from person M which gets interspersed with documents from person J...etcetera.

To make it clearer, let us say that the member's list were to send me faxes all day while i am out of town. Starting from Roosh to athlone to gmanifesto to El Mech to Houston .... etcetera, down the members list like that. Assume that they all send me 100 pages document faxes all in one day, and some of them took coffee breaks inbetween faxing. What will happen on my end whenever i go to our current fax machine to print out the queued faxes the next day is this: Pages 1 to 3 from Roosh interspersed with pages 1 to 5 from Ali then back to Roosh then to Tuthmosis then to Althone, etcetera... depending on in what order they came in.

Then on my end i will have the headache of sorting through the documents by sender. Because roosh documents will be mixed with el mech which will be mixed with g manifesto which will in turn be mixed with athlone which will be mixed with tuthmosis...etc...

This is tolerable when dealing with just one or three faxes of less pages; But when dealing with 100 different faxes with multiple pages from a 100 different senders, it quicky becomes a headache.

This is the problem we are currently having at work right now.

This leads me to my next question: Is there a fax machine or an app or a fax server that allows you the option of chosing to print out queued faxes by the sender's fax number?

This means that if i come in the next day, and i have a 100 different faxes all queued up. The fax machine can have the option of looking through that queue and printing them out by two criteria: the order in which they are received and, most importanty, the number from which they are received. It will combine both criterion. In that way, it will print out all of roosh's faxes first, then go to athlone to print out all of athlone's then all of gmanifesto then all of el mech then all of houston...etc. Instead of mixing it all up.

The fax machine needs to be able to scan its memory and print out the faxes based on the fax number of the senders; after its has sort out the faxes based on the time the sender send it in. Let me try and make it clearer:

Roosh may have send in his faxes at 1:00... then 1:10...then 1:20.... then 1:45.
Athlone may have send in his faxes at 1:02...then 1:08...then 1:25...then 1:28
Gmanifesto may have send in his faxes at 1:04... then 1:09...then 1:12... then 1:35

All on friday.

So, when i come in to press "print fax" on monday, our current fax machine will do this based on the time faxes are sent in: ROOSH---->athlone ---> gmanifesto ----> athlone ----> gmanifesto ----> roosh ---> gmanifesto.... etcetera: that is, the fax machine is printing out the faxes in the exact order by which they are received. Which will become problematic and messy when you have a 100 faxes instead of 3. Because these documents will be all mixed together.

Instead of doing this, it will be helpful if the fax machine/fax server have a program option, that will help priortize the printing of queued faxes based on incoming fax number/time which will leads to first printing all of ROOSH's faxes ----> then all of ATHLONE's faxes ---->then all of GMANIFESTO's faxes. Instead of going back and forth between roosh and athlone and gmanifesto like it does now(simply because our current fax machine based its selection criteria only on TIME OF FAX RECEIVED.)

Is there a fax machine/fax server/fax app that can prioritize the printing of faxes based on FAX NUMBER of sender in addition to time of fax received?

Is there a fax server/ fax machine or fax app that can perform this function? It will be a godsend for my company.

P.S. Come to think of it...this is not even a bad idea for a regular printer. Sometimes, you waste paper by re-printing because parts of your document disappeared into Maria or Ragnov or Kirill's printout documents.

Post: #2

People still use fax?

Post: #3

there are some service that have an e-fax, which makes its a lot easier to segregate these things, and less jams.

Post: #4

Well, great sir; in the biotechnological industry where i work... it is critical/required to fax documentations to other biotechnological companies and medical doctors. Email is not enough. In fact, most of the medical doctors do not have office emails.

regards,

Nemencine

(12-19-2013 11:05 AM)The Great Basilisk Wrote:  People still use fax?

Post: #5

(12-19-2013 11:20 AM)Nemencine Wrote:  Well, great sir; in the biotechnological industry where i work... it is critical/required to fax documentations to other biotechnological companies and medical doctors. Email is not enough. In fact, most of the medical doctors do not have office emails.

regards,

Nemencine

That would be a better online service instead of faxing. Allowing people to log in to see documentations that were uploaded by other companies.

You could allow users to set permissions on whom can see the documentation.

An audit trail to see who has looked at the documents which would be good for that industry.

Post: #6

(12-19-2013 11:20 AM)Nemencine Wrote:  Well, great sir; in the biotechnological industry where i work... it is critical/required to fax documentations to other biotechnological companies and medical doctors. Email is not enough. In fact, most of the medical doctors do not have office emails.

regards,

Nemencine

Damn, that's some backwater stuff right there...

Post: #7

(12-19-2013 11:20 AM)DVY Wrote:  there are some service that have an e-fax, which makes its a lot easier to segregate these things, and less jams.

I agree with DVY use efax http://www.efax.com/

It comes in a file form. I imagine you can see when it arrived etc. It sends it to you in a digital format, so you will have a soft copy. Should save a lot of trees.

Post: #8

(12-19-2013 11:20 AM)DVY Wrote:  there are some service that have an e-fax, which makes its a lot easier to segregate these things, and less jams.

I will look into how to integrate this with our existing infrastructure.

(12-19-2013 11:24 AM)worldwidetraveler Wrote:  That would be a better online service instead of faxing. Allowing people to log in to see documentations that were uploaded by other companies.

You could allow users to set permissions on whom can see the documentation.

An audit trail to see who has looked at the documents which would be good for that industry.

I see what you are saying... and my company is trying to give medical doctors a special access where they can scan and upload document directly into our company servers. The problem is that most of them, the way they want to interact with you is through (a) telephone (b) fax machine. It is retarded. They need something or they want to get you something, they will simply have their assistance fax it to you.

(12-19-2013 11:29 AM)The Great Basilisk Wrote:  Damn, that's some backwater stuff right there...

Tell me about it. A lot of our doctors,especially, +50 yr old doctors just want to interact with through (a) telephone (b) fax machine.

"fax it to me." "i will have my assistance fax it to you." Is what usually comes out of their mouth.

Post: #9

Have you looked at software like WinFax?

Post: #10

(12-19-2013 11:53 AM)Nemencine Wrote:  Tell me about it. A lot of our doctors,especially, +50 yr old doctors just want to interact with through (a) telephone (b) fax machine.

"fax it to me." "i will have my assistance fax it to you." Is what usually comes out of their mouth.

So really you just have to worry about their assistants learning to use a new online tool then, not the 50 year old doctors, since they're not actually doing the faxing either.

There's much more of a business opportunity in moving this process away from fax, than to improve how the fax part works.

Post: #11

I think you can port a fax number into e-Fax. Cheers!

Post: #12

Thanks for all the suggestions by everybody; from samsamsam to seaver to paninaro to DVY. i will look into it and see how it goes. i appreciate it.

One thing though, paninaro, have you had any professional interaction with established medical doctors(with their own private practice)? Let me put this delicately: they have an ego. They are part of our clients base, as such, they call the shot. It is far easier to adapt to their anachronism than trying to convince around 73 different doctors one by one by one to change to your ways of thinking.

If they are using morse codes, we just have to adapt to that. Their mentality is "this is how i do things... the rest is your problem". And no, paninaro, you dont want to go around convincing their assistance to do things in a different ways(some of them will take it as intrusive and arrogant). There mentality is "i am the client, you cater to my needs, not the other way around".

managing the psychology of our clients is part of our business. they can drop us at the drop of a hat.

In fact, we even went so far as to create an email/login page on our server for each doctor -- this will allow their office assistance to upload and efficiently exchange infor with us. You will think every one of them will jump in, right? Guess again!

We've been making some progress...slowly and painfully shifting their technological literacy ...but, it has really been hard teaching old dogs new tricks.

*** not all the doctors clients are like this... just mostly the older doctors. the +50yr old crowd. ***

that is why i am interested if there is a fax machine or fax method that can easily solve this problem. thanks for the suggestion.[/i]