I need to create a program that is essentially a special fax sender using
multi line Dialogic cards. I figure that the best way to do this so that it
can be used from any app is to create someting that can be installed as a
printer on the local computer. When sending the print command so that the
current document, whatever it is is transmitted to the program, I need to
popup a box to get the desination info (name phone number etc..) ,when thats
done, convert the file being sent from whatever format to whatever is
required for the faxer (it only taxes Tiff files) and then send the tiff fil
and the destination info to the fax server.

Maybe this alreadu exists, if so I'd like to know where I can find it. I got
the new Dialogic VFXJCT41LS cards and they have a fax server for four lines
built-in, but I can't find a way to make this fax server directly
operational at the same time as IVR apps using the card ( the IVR is the
main purpose of the card, so the fax server must not interfere with it).

Can anyone help, it would certainly be appreciated.

Bob

Well, when the system is busy serving a fax, then line will be
unavailable for incoming calls.  When people dial into your IVR app,
they will get a busy signal for that line.  You might have to program
into your app that at least one line must be available at all times to
receive inbound calls.

As far as the fax server goes, I am not familiar with that particular
Dialogic board.  We used to use the old FAX/40 boards for our fax on
demand apps.  Ours was set up such that we just dropped the document in
a certain folder and the app would see it and automatically fax it.  We
had a "header" file that contained the fax number, etc. and a "content"
file with the content of the fax.

As for writing a printer driver, I'm not sure it can be done in VB.  I
think you need the DDK (Device Driver Development Kit) from Microsoft.
You might have to use C++ for something like that. 

Good Luck

Yeah. What you did would work here. Its just that I wanted to try to find a
way to make that available to all applications, if I could write a "pseudo
printer driver" that would do exactly what you said, take the doc and the
header and drop it in a folder on the fax server, who would in turn just
send it. The idea of sending the fax document to a printer was just a way to
prevent the users to open a separate program after they made their doc, say
with word or excell. They would have to save it, open another app to fax it,
find where they had saved it and then send it to the folder. A bit much to
ask today. The pseudo driver idea would work with with whatever they used.
It would appear integrated in the system and available from any program that
prints, so easy for the end user.

Maybe someone has an idea? I hope so.

Thanks,
Bob




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Oh By the way, the card is multi line so I can have a large number of phone
calls coming in (in this case 4 but the same software with a different card
can go up to several hundred) so obviously the program checks to see if a
line is busy before using it and tries to find an unused line. For incoming
calls , (these are POTS lines) they are cascaded by the telco so if line 1
is busy the call goes to line 2, if that is busy then to line 3 etc..
Callers only need one number, the telvco sends them to a free line. There's
no need for a PBX, but it can be integrated. We can make one with an
additional card to which the company extensions can be connected. Just plug
the company phones in these cards and the software (we haven't written it
yet but we know we can do it) will act as a PBX, allow conferencing, call
forwarding, call blocking and all that stuff. For now, the portion of the
program that sends outbound info (either voice calls or faxes) starts by
trying to find a free line. If all are busy it waits and then tries again
until a free line is found, then sends the fax or the outbound voice call -
we use the system for delivery advise to customers, we either send a voice,
an e-mail if he has one or a fax if the database has a fax number for him.
The dialogic card translates txt files automatically so we just make up the
contents of the fax as plain old text and it works fine. There's no problem
managing the sending and reception of faxes and IVR calls (ingoing and
outbound) on the same machine with this setup. We log all the calls, their
duration, attempts and success, in a sql database. If we find we reach an
impasse its just a matter of adding another board, its runtime licenses and
the required additional POTS lines. We can easily go 96 POTS lines working
simultaneously on the same box. When you get to that number of lines and the
boards for it it gets pretty expensive but its not a big technological
hurdle for us with the tools we use. Thre box is cheap, the boards are
expensive and the runtime licenses, especially if you use text to speech as
we do are horrendously expensive. As that may be, the hardest is always to
do whatever you do "user friendly" and most of all reliable. Thats why I was
thinking of this pseudo printer driver approach. My idea was, since we
already receive and send faxes on these lines, why not make that
functionality available to all users on the network? I really don't need it
to print, just to print to a file something like PDF995 does and in sending
the stream to the file convret it to a TIFF file. (the Dialogic cards do not
do format conversion of anything else that text. They want either text or
TIFF). I know there are conversion utilities out there that don't cost an
arm and a leg. I think in windows XP there's a file to fax conversion DLL
which it may be possible to call to do that bit of work.

If I have some time I'm going to pursue this further, If anyone has any
ideas on how to do this "pseudo printer driver" or where I coud find some
code snippets I would be most appreciative.

Bob



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