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1 White paper: The limitations of Exchange Server 2007 fax services and eight practical tips to overcome them Introduction: Exchange Server 2007 and Unified Messaging Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 promises to keep your IT department busy this year as you evaluate whether and when to upgrade by testing it extensively in a real-life setting. If you do upgrade, the real work begins with phased rollouts to your users. As you evaluate Exchange Server 2007, you ll notice that it now includes Unified Messaging, meaning it can store and deliver faxes and voic alongside . This is a step forward for usability and efficiency for users, but requires some work on the part of the IT administrators to put into practice. By default, Exchange 2007 can only receive faxes, so you will need to consider how to send faxes, too. Exchange 2007 supports incoming faxes only, and they must arrive over IP. You will need further hardware and/or software in place before you can begin thinking about relying on Exchange to manage all your business fax requirements. This white paper will help you understand the limitations of Exchange 2007 s fax support and how you can select a network fax solution that integrates alongside or instead of Exchange s native support of fax. The limitations of out-of-the-box faxing in Exchange 2007 By default, Exchange 2007 can only receive faxes, so you will need to consider how to send faxes, too. You could sign up with a third party Internet fax service provider, but there are several disadvantages of doing this. Firstly, any outbound message has to pass over the Internet and through the service provider s servers before being converted to fax format and sent through the telephone network. This may not be ideal if you want to transmit sensitive documents. Secondly, you have little control over the reliability of the service. If the provider s technology breaks or your Internet connection goes down,

2 you re stuck. Finally, these services can be expensive when transmitting large numbers of documents. The price per page is more expensive than the cost of a telephone call, as you are also paying for the up-keep of their business. Exchange 2007 uses the T.38 fax protocol to receive faxes (so-called Fax over IP or FoIP), but in order to use this you must typically have specialist hardware in place, such as an IP-enabled PBX system or gateway with FoIP support. Due to this being a relatively new technology, many companies will not have this infrastructure in place, and the time and cost involved in installing it may not be justifiable. The network fax solution choice To ensure your business has a flexible solution, you re better off with dedicated network fax software that can handle inbound and outbound faxing via traditional T.30 over phone lines, as well as the new T.38 protocol over the Internet. In a few years when the interoperability issues have been resolved and more businesses are FoIP enabled, you will benefit from huge cost savings. Once you have concluded that a dedicated fax server is what your organization needs, you should ensure that you choose one that offers powerful faxing capabilities combined with the best possible integration with Exchange. Once you have concluded that a dedicated fax server is what your organization needs, you should ensure that you choose one that offers powerful faxing capabilities combined with the best possible integration with Exchange. The remainder of this report will help you do exactly that, by identifying the things that you should look for in a fax server to avoid problems now and in the future. Part 1: The Fax Server Your Exchange server is one of the most important in your organization. So when choosing network fax software that will integrate with Exchange, bear in mind the following. Tip 1: Make sure you can migrate at your own pace Rare is the company that will simply flip a switch when it comes to migrating from Exchange 2003 to Exchange Instead, such rollouts typically occur in phases. You might even run both systems in parallel for a while. Although you could run two different fax servers, your best bet lies in finding one that can perform double duty. By purchasing a fax solution that works with both versions of Exchange, your users won t lose any faxes during the switch-over, and can continue to work as normal. As an administrator, this also means you will only have to look after one fax product as you migrate, rather than struggling with two. Tip 2: Make the creation of user accounts as simple as possible Configuring fax accounts for your Outlook users can prove time consuming if you have to use the tools provided by the fax application. First, you have to learn the new configuration process and then you must configure each individual user. You can avoid this problem by using a network fax solution that allows all Outlook users to fax through one global user account configured in the network fax software. This feature means you only have to configure a single account with the fax server, instead of registering everyone in your

3 organization individually. If you do choose to create personal accounts for each individual, allowing them to send and receive faxes via their own DDI number, look for a fax solution that makes this process straightforward. A feature known as automatic user creation, which allows new users to create an account for themselves as soon as they need fax services, based on their network login details, will make this process easy. This can also help if you wish to roll out the software in stages. Staggered adoption by your user base is not a problem if users can simply register themselves the first time they need fax services. It prevents constant calls to your help desk and preserves your IT resources to the greatest extent possible. If you have to run a piece of software that interacts with your Exchange server, you don t want it written by someone with a poor knowledge of Microsoft s products. Tip 3: Keep your Active Directory options open Software can be integrated into Active Directory with or without extending schemas. Not having to make schema changes is beneficial for many reasons. If you work for an organization that has several branch offices, you might not have access rights to Active Directory at the root level. This is done to prevent your branch specific changes being forced upon other branches, who may not have the same requirements you do. If software needs to make schema updates but you don t have rights, the installation will fail. By not having to extend schema, your branch can install the fax solution without high level rights and without affecting any of the other branches. This minimises and encapsulates risk. If anything does go wrong it will be contained locally. Whilst the simple option is to choose a fax server that requires no schema extensions, don t neglect the additional benefits you could gain by considering one that does. If you work in a business where you have complete control of Active Directory, then making the small changes often gives you a step-up in terms of integration. For example, rather than using a separate configuration utility to setup and manage your fax server, it can be done from the fax tab within the Active Directory Users and Computers program, which Exchange administrators will already be familiar with. This allows you to manage faxing permissions alongside Exchange user profiles, all within the same application. Some fax software will provide both methods, giving you the choice of how you want to integrate. This way you keep control of your systems and it allows flexibility should your situation change in the future. Tip 4: Check the software vendor s credibility If you have to run a piece of software that interacts with your Exchange server, you don t want it written by someone with a poor knowledge of Microsoft s products. Microsoft runs a partner program for software vendors. Any company that is a member of this program has to be certified by Microsoft, so you know they are technically skilled and develop

4 reliable products. The highest rating is Microsoft Gold Certified Partner status. These partners are required to meet rigorous requirements for certification and have in-depth access to a variety of exclusive Microsoft resources and early product information. One example of this would be access to Windows Vista and Exchange 2007 during their development phase. Certified partners had a head start in terms of designing software that worked seamlessly with these new products because they were given easy access to them. Make sure your chosen fax solution provider has a Microsoft certification, preferably Gold status. Make sure your chosen fax solution provider has a Microsoft certification, preferably Gold status. It will ensure you are getting a quality product and it can reduce potential problems in the future. Part 2: The Fax Client Users don t want to know the ins and outs of how network faxing operates. They just want it to work. That s why it s important to consider the processes they have to go through on their PCs to fax. You need to ensure you get a good balance between the software being easy enough for them to use and powerful enough for it to handle more complex tasks if needed, such as automatically adding coversheets or the ability to annotate faxes. It should also be easy to install and manage for you. Tip 5: Deliver on the promise of Unified Messaging It goes without saying that your fax solution should deliver on Microsoft s promise of unified messaging users should have the ability to send and receive faxes directly from Outlook. But there s integration and then there s true integration. Look for a fax server that makes faxes behave like messages. For example, incoming and outgoing faxes should display in Outlook s preview pane and allow for forwarding to colleagues. You should be able to pick up fax numbers from Outlook s list of contacts or the Global Address List so that you needn t waste time looking up and manually entering fax numbers. Perhaps most importantly, sending a fax should entail the same procedure as sending an message create a message, attach documents, address the message, and send. Users are already familiar with this set of steps, so will have little trouble adopting the new method of faxing. Tip 6: Check which versions of Outlook are supported In offices, there may be a host of Outlook versions being run at any one time. This is especially true during the few months following a new version launch. Currently, you may have rolled out Outlook 2007 to a few clients as a test-bed, whilst the rest of the office sticks with Outlook In the same way that Exchange 2003 and Exchange 2007 should be supported, make sure the fax solution works with as many versions of Outlook as possible, most importantly the two most recent versions. Even if you have not yet upgraded to Outlook 2007, chances are you will in the future. Don t waste money purchasing a system that isn t future proof, as you may regret your decision in the future. You might also wish to check operating system compatibility. Does the solution support Windows

5 Vista, Windows Terminal Services or Citrix? If your business decides to upgrade operating system or switch to a thin client architecture in the future, make sure you re covered. Tip 7: Do you get a separate fax client? Seamless integration with Outlook that lets users fax as easily as is important, but what if you want to send a document directly from Microsoft Word? To do so, you need a fax printer driver, a piece of software that acts as a printer, but in reality converts the document to fax format and sends it to the server. Zetafax has native integration with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, enabling conversion of inbound faxes to and outbound s to faxes. If you simply have a fax solution that integrates with , chances are you won t get this printer driver that makes faxing from any printer-enabled application possible. As a result you severely limit your users options. However, some fax solutions come with a fax client application that will automatically setup a fax printer driver for you. You can then print to fax from any printer enabled application, as well as sending them from your application. Tip 8: Keep your users up and running Exchange 2007 provides even greater stability to a platform that is already quite robust. Nonetheless, there may be times when users are working in Outlook and not connected to the Exchange server (such as when disconnected from the network). You need to ensure these people still have the ability to create faxes that will be queued and processed as soon as a connection is re-established. Ideally users shouldn t even notice if the mail server goes offline for a while. This can be achieved by making certain the fax solution you choose supports Outlook running in offline mode. When Outlook disconnects from Exchange, if the coversheet and letterhead templates have not been cached locally, they won t be available, making the creation of faxes impossible. Makes sure that your chosen fax server supports caching of these important items, enabling users to continue creating and sending their faxes that will processed as soon as Exchange 2007 becomes available. Conclusion: One Last Suggestion... While several fax servers in the marketplace address some of the points discussed in this report, only one addresses all of them - Zetafax Zetafax has native integration with Microsoft Exchange and Outlook, enabling conversion of inbound faxes to and outbound s to faxes. It supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Exchange Server 2003, Exchange 2000 Server and Exchange Server 5.5. Matthew Smith is a Product Manager at Equisys, which develops Zetafax, a fax server used by more than 60,000 businesses worldwide. To find out more about the Zetafax integration with Exchange please contact Paul Crawley, Sales Manager at Equisys on or sales@ or visit

6 About Zetafax Our market leading fax server, Zetafax, speeds the flow of critical business documents by enabling users to send and receive faxes on their PCs. It integrates with ERP, CRM, accounting and other applications for automated faxing from those systems, providing auditable records of fax communications. About Equisys Equisys produces software packages for document production and delivery, including the award winning Zetafax network fax server and newly acclaimed Zetadocs PDF software that creates and s personalized PDF documents. Equisys software products are designed for small and midmarket businesses, and for departmental use at multinational companies. They stand out from the competition by being simple to install and manage, reliable and great value backed by outstanding service and support. Equisys has over 60,000 customers, in more than 100 countries, who are served through an international partner network of distributors, VARs, resellers and ISVs. The company s market leading fax server, Zetafax, speeds the flow of critical business documents by enabling users to send and receive faxes on their PCs. It integrates with ERP, CRM, accounting and other applications for automated faxing from those systems, providing auditable records of fax communications. Zetadocs helps users work smarter by creating and ing PDF documents, streamlining business processes to remove tedious manual procedures and help companies improve the service levels they offer. Equisys was founded in 1987 and has offices in London, UK and Atlanta GA, USA. Equisys plc Equisys House, 32 Southwark Bridge Road, London SE1 9EU, UK T +44 (0) F +44 (0) E sales@ Equisys Inc Mill Creek Avenue, Suite 335, Alpharetta, GA 30022, USA T +1 (770) F +1 (770) E sales@usa.