Patent ID: 7653185

Claim:
A method for handling documents of various types, the method comprising: receiving a document at a fax server; associating metadata with the document; forwarding the document and related metadata to one of multiple document transport modules; assessing dialing or routing rules based on the metadata for the document; routing the document by the document transport module via one of multiple communication methods, including without limitation the Public Service Telephone Network (“PSTN” ), another document transport module, Internet, mobile device network, wireless device network, document server, another fax server, or a board server containing one or more communications hardware devices, wherein the routing is based on at least one dialing or routing rule; and repeating the associating, forwarding, assessing and routing for any subsequent document transport module that receives the document, wherein the dialing or routing rules are applied independently at each document transport module encountered by the document during processing of the document.