How to send outbound email-to-fax messages – CORVUM Knowledge Base

Sending faxes from your email address is easy, and really convenient!

No more printing documents just to fax them;
No waiting for the fax machine to clear before you can use it;
Send faxes from your mobile phone email client;
No need for a fax machine at all!

Our system's 'successful' confirmation message gives you the same, secure confirmation that the fax has been delivered as what you get when using a 'standard' fax machine.

How does this work?

You send an email, containing an attachment as the fax content, to our service, by sending an email to the below (this should be entered in the 'To' field):

"To Name"<DEST_FAX_NUMBER@fax.cloudpbx.ca>

Our system takes that email, identifies who you are by checking your email address, identifies your destination by checking the 'to' address, and then sends your attachment as a 'good old fax' call. The machine on the other end has no idea you just emailed the fax.

We can authorize entire email domains, as well as individual addresses, so please let us know if you would like this option configured for you. This permits everyone in your organization to send email-to-fax messages in one step.

When sending faxes, you'll want to be sure that the cover page appears as you want it to - following the directions below will make this easy.

Attachments as the fax body:

Using PDF attachments is the best way to send email-to-fax messages, and we do recommend only sending one attachment as that is the best way to ensure all pages are presented in the right order. While our system does support 150+ different document standards, we recommend a single PDF be used as that way you have absolute control over how it will be presented, and with a PDF 'what you see is what you get'.

A note on send / delivery times:

Also, remember that while you're removing one bottleneck, it still takes some time to send the fax. Your email must still be converted and sent as a 'regular' fax. This means that it will still take between 20s - 50s per page for it to be completely sent, and received at the other end. The time it takes per page varies depending on how complicated the page content is. A little text doesn't take long, but an image takes a lot longer. A 100-page fax can still take more than an hour.

Note for HTML email:

If you send a message in PLAIN TEXT then the body of the email will be placed into the body of the cover page.
If you send a message in HTML, the body of the email will be reproduced on a separate page and will be treated as an attachment.
Lastly, if you send a message in PLAIN TEXT and in HTML then the HTML portion will be ignored - and the email will be considered as PLAIN TEXT.

Now, in detail: here are the two methods that can be used to send faxes.

The 'basic' method will insert some default information into the cover page, and is what most people use 99% of the time.
The 'custom' method lets you customize what appears in the cover page by adding arguments to the email's SUBJECT heading.

Most users find it best to use the 'BASIC' method, so we'll outline that first.

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The 'BASIC' method:

Sending outbound faxes with the accounts' default cover page settings

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1) Only authorized email addresses can successfully send an email fax.

2) Your email subject heading becomes the fax 'subject', and is used in the cover page.

3) Your email body becomes the body text on the cover page. Any attachments will follow as additional pages, behind the cover letter.

4) We recommend using a single attachment. Multiple attachments may not be presented in the order you expect.

The attachment can be a pdf or other attachment - many file formats are supported. We recommend using PDF, however, as you always know exactly what your recipient will receive when you use PDF.

5) IMPORTANT -- The email 'TO: field' should be written in the below format for it to appear on the cover page properly:

"To Name" <DEST_FAX_NUMBER@fax.cloudpbx.ca>

The example used in this test fax:
"CORVUM Test Fax" <16043436650@fax.cloudpbx.ca>

6) The 'From' field on the cover page is populated with the 'from' information provided by the sender's email account.

Using this 'basic' method resulted in the below fax:

Screen_Shot_2020-11-06_at_12.11.07_PM.png

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The 'CUSTOM' method:

Sending outbound faxes with the custom cover page settings

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1) All notes above remain the same. This method lets you adjust what shows up in the cover letter. Perhaps the most useful of these custom settings is changing the language of the cover letter (in this example, to French).

2) Sending is the same as in the 'basic' method above, except that you use a custom 'SUBJECT' email field when writing the email.

For our 'advanced' test, we changed these parameters (note that the cover letter was sent in French as well):

- Att: / To: (overwrote "CloudPBX Test Fax", which we placed in the 'To:' email field, with "Support Staff", which we included in the custom settings

- De: / From: (overrode the email address with "QA Staff", which we included in the custom settings

- Enterprise: / Organization: (added this in the custom settings)

- Sujet: / Subject: (has to be specified in the custom settings)

- Changed language of the cover letter from English (default) to French

3) Here is how this was done.

To override the default settings you can use the following parameters to send a fax with custom cover page information. These parameters must be sent in the SUBJECT heading of the email, and separated exactly as indicated in the test below. This is essentially 'code' and an error in syntax will bring unexpected results.

Custom parameters:

To=Name Of Recipient
From=Name of Sender
Co=Company Name
CP=B,S,C,P,Blank or N (Basic, Standard, Company, Personal, Blank Page or Force No Cover Page)
AC=Account or Billing Code
Retries=Number of times we are to retry sending the fax - 0 - 6 times (default is 6)
Pass=Your Password
Sub=Subject Of Your Fax
cpl=fr (To change the cover page language to French)

The example, used in the attached test:
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In the 'To' email field:

"CloudPBX Test Fax" <16043436650@fax.cloudpbx.ca>
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In the 'Subject' email field:

To=Support Staff / From=QA Staff / Co=CloudPBX2 / Sub=Test Fax 'Advanced' / cpl=fr

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Not all arguments need to be included - only the arguments you wish to include in order to override the sending defaults.

However, we recommend always including the "Co" argument, since that populates the 'Organization' field.

Further detail on how best to handle multiple recipients:

The auto-generated cover page only works with one destination, since the system does not generate a cover page that includes all destinations in the 'to' field. A unique cover page needs to be included as the first page in that PDF attachment.

Depending on how you intend to present the fax to your recipients, here is how we suggest the fax be prepared:

1. When you wish to send it to multiple recipients, and to include all recipients on the cover page:
- Create a cover page PDF that includes all recipients and other relevant information;
- Assemble the rest of the fax body as per usual;
- Merge the entire fax, including the cover page, into one PDF - ensuring the cover page is on page 1 and the rest is in the desired order;
- Email this single attachment to multiple recipients. Anything you include in the body of this email is discarded.

2. When you wish to send it to multiple recipients, but provide a unique cover page to each of them:
- You do not need to create a cover page PDF - you can use the body of the email to generate the cover page;
- Simply send one fax email to each unique recipient;
- It is best to send a single PDF attachment in each fax, as per usual.

Additional details:

Resolution -

If you are scanning documents, your scanner software should allow you to set the resolution (measured in DPI or “Dots Per Inch”) of the scanned image. Fine mode fax is 204 x 196 dpi and Standard mode is 204 x 98 dpi, so 200 DPI is adequate for both Fine and Standard resolution faxes.

If you're working with PDFs already, you can often resample them to a more appropriate resolution if they are too large.

Scan Quality -

There is no point in scanning your documents in color as the receiving fax machine can only produce a black & white image. We recommend you scan your documents in “black & white” to produce a crisp, high contrast image. The key to getting clean looking faxes from a scanner is to make sure the brightness and contrast settings of your scanning software produce “crisp” images so there is as little grayscale in your image as possible. The text and any line art should be as dark as possible and the whitespace should be completely white and free of any “haze” or grayscale. However, sometimes you will intentionally want detailed grayscale images if you are faxing a detailed photo or image.

File Size -

If you use the above settings and file sizes, any single page scan should not exceed 500Kb in size. This is a guideline only, but if you find your scan to a TIFF file comes in at 20Mb in size you have the wrong TIFF type - and the file will be too large to send. We hope these guidelines help you but if you continue to have difficulties, please do not hesitate to contact our support desk and we will help you.