Newsgroups: vmsnet.mail.pmdf
Subject: RE: I need a simple E-Mail to FAX solution
From: "Daniel C. Newman" <dan@innosoft.com>
Date: 13 Sep 1992 22:21:24 -0700 (PDT)
Organization: The Internet
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> We have PMDF and rely on it heavily to route all our mail from unix to VMS,
> distribution lists, mail to the Internet via DECUS UUCP etc.  We are looking
> for a FAX via E-Mail solution so we would love to consider the PMDF FAX
> software.
>
> Here is my problem.  We only run PMDF on a single node MAILER and only route
> those mail messages through MAILER that *have* to.  Since installing PMDF on
> every node is prohibitive, I'm not sure that the PMDF FAX solution is the right
> way to go.

Ahhh, but we encourage sites to only run PMDF-FAX on a single machine.  For
most sites there is no reason to run PMDF-FAX on more than one machine.
(The sites that do run it on more than one machine usually do so for one of
two purposes: politics or redundancy.)

> We would prefer to keep things *very* simple and each solution we see out there
> is either way too complicated or requires that the software be installed on
> each and every system.

With PMDF-FAX, you merely point your e-mail to the PMDF-FAX gateway address
and leave it to your e-mail system to route the message to PMDF-FAX.  Status
reports and whatnot are sent back to the originator via e-mail.  And, better
yet, this works for _all_ of your platforms which have e-mail access to the
system running PMDF-FAX: VMS systems, UNIX boxes, PCs, Macs, etc.

> Today we "borrow" a FAX solution (built into MR I think) that you can use by
> sending your mail message to a single address (we define an address called
> FAX), include the phone number(s) in the top of the mail message (the subject
> can be anything), and off it goes.  What could be easier?

Guess what?  PMDF-FAX supports this.  There is a mechanism which will extract
embedded addressing information from body of a message and use that as
addressing information for the FAX.  Your users then just send to a single,
fixed address.

The base PMDF has a pop-up FAX addressing from which you can use from withing
VMS MAIL.  All of your PMDF systems have this already.  There is a logical
(or option file option) which you can set so that the pop-up form will
automatically route the message to the node running PMDF-FAX.  So, your VMS
MAIL uses don't even have to know any address, fixed or otherwise.  They
merely need to know the FAX number (and any optional information they may
wish to specify for the cover page).

> Help me figure out a way to make PMDF FAX as easy to use :-).

You might give tech support a phone call this week [(714) 624-7907] and we
can answer any further questions you might have.  We can also arrange for
an evaluation should you wish to try PMDF-FAX out.

There's nothing complicated about setting this up either.  Probably the hardest
part is setting up the FAX modem and you'll have to do that with any package
you install.  An auto-configuration tool sets up the PMDF-FAX configuration.

Dan