Patent ID: 6914693

Claim:
A method for processing a message in a network computing system including a facsimile transmission comprised of a recipient contact address and message content, wherein the message content includes at least one of message text and attached files, comprising: managing multiple facsimile transmission as fax jobs in multiple fax management systems; transferring the message content from the multiple fax management systems to a rendering computer; launching, with the rendering computer, at least one application program to convert the message content from the multiple fax jobs to images in a file format; transferring, with the rendering computer, the converted message content in the file format to the fax management system that sent the message content to the rendering computer; transferring, with the fax management systems, the message content in the file format to one of multiple communication ports for transmittal to the recipient contact address; transferring, with the fax management servers, job numbers assigned to the fax jobs to the rendering computer; requesting, with the rendering computer, the message content for the job numbers, wherein the fax management servers transfer the message content in response to receiving the request from the rendering computer; maintaining, with the fax management servers, job tables including fax job records identified by job number; and changing, with the fax management servers, state fields in the fax job records to manage the workflow of the fax jobs between the fax management system, the rendering computer, and communication port.