November 1997

Omtool
8 Industrial Way
Salem, NH 03079-2837
Ph: 603-898-8900; Fx: 603-898-6756
Web site: www.omtool.com

Pricing: $2,495 for 25 users; $4,995 per server, unlimited users. Add $650 for the OCR module.

Fax Sr., a complex and sophisticated network faxing software, is a good choice for the large enterprise. While it may not be the simplest software to work with, it has an extensive feature set, and it supports a broad range of operating systems and e-mail systems. And, unlike many other LAN fax solutions, Fax Sr. provides real-time monitoring of servers, plus advanced least-cost routing and remote administration capabilities.

INSTALLATION AND DOCUMENTATION

Printed Material
Each of the main sections of the documentation, the System Administrator Guide and the Client Guide, included thorough, well-organized indexes and tables of contents, as well as plenty of descriptive screenshots. Additional sections, laser printed and stapled addenda, covered the most recent enhancements to the Fax Sr.’s feature set. These were a bit cumbersome. We hope these addenda will be incorporated into the main manuals in the next release.

Online Help
Fax Sr. does offer online help. However, the online help within the applications wasn’t contextsensitive.

Technical Support
When we attempted to set up foreground conversion of documents, and following the instructions for setting up an application (Adobe Acrobat) proved fruitless, we decided to call technical support. Here’s what happened: A friendly receptionist greeted us, and responded to our request for technical support by connecting us to a line playing country music. We listened for 5 minutes. Then, the receptionist picked up the line and asked who we were holding for. We said, “Technical support.” “Hold on,” she said. More country music (20 minutes worth). The receptionist returned: “You’re holding for technical support, right?” “Yes, we are.” “OK, hold on.” More country music. Then, all of a sudden, the country music stopped. We heard someone typing. “Hello?” (They didn’t seem to hear us.) “Hello?” No response. Discouraged, we hung up.

Software
The software came on two CDROMs. The first CD-ROM contained the Fax Sr. Software; the second, the Fax Sr. Feature Pack, which upgrades Fax Sr. from version 2.0 to 2.01.

Hardware
We installed the server portion of Fax Sr. onto Windows NT Server 4.0 using a Pentium 200-MMX with 64 MB of RAM. We used a Brooktrout TruFax two-line fax board for testing.

The documentation included instructions for installing Brooktrout and GammaLink boards, as well as the drivers for each. The instructions led us through a flawless installation of the latest Brooktrout drivers for Windows NT.

GUI
We had some difficulty getting accustomed to the System Manager’s GUI, which was a bit complex. Some of the more arcane features and settings had us poring over the manual to figure things out.

FEATURES

• Support for Lotus Notes, Exchange, CC:Mail, Exchange, Outlook, MSMail.
• SMTP compliant.
• User access to fax mailboxes from any browser.
• Least-cost routing.
• Drag-and-drop send, which allows you to send any document by dropping it on the main view window.
• Tracking codes for fax billing/tracking.
• Import from an ODBC table.
• Fax merging.
• Create groups of recipients (including groups within groups to any level).
• OCR routing.
• Fax-ondemand.

OPERATIONAL TESTING
Sending A Fax
We began by printing from an application to the Fax Sr. print driver. A dialog box popped up, and prompted us to fill in the fax number, the recipient’s name, and our preferences for options such as number of retries and inclusion of a cover page. After you send a fax, you can view its history (whether it was transmitted successfully) from the Fax Sr. Client program. From the Fax Sr. Client program, you can also send a fax, view the received fax queue, view the outgoing queue, perform phonebook operations, and view faxes.

Global Routing Parameters for fax delivery include phone number, fax destination, number of pages, fax size, current fax queue wait time, number of modems operating, and others. When you use the leastcost routing rules, you can send the fax locally, delay the fax, reschedule to a specific time, route to a bypass service provider for delivery, and route to another Fax Sr. server for delivery.

Modem Support
One of the unique features of Fax Sr. is its ability to use standard modem/fax cards. Fax Sr. supports three fax modems, which include Multitech, U.S. Robotics, and Zyxel. This could be considered an advantage over RightFax and other LAN fax solutions which do not have this capability. However, generally speaking, modem/fax cards are not suitable for a fax server, since they are not as reliable as high-end fax boards.

System Configuration
You set up Fax Sr.’s various parameters from the centralized System Configuration screen. One of the nice things about setting up clients is the “auto enroll” feature, which you can enable from the System Configuration screen. Some of the other “tabs” within this screen have settings which are very complex. They are, to say the least, not intuitive. We had to read the System Administration guide closely to figure out these settings.

Administration
With Fax Sr., you can remotely monitor and administer remote servers from any workstation, as well as generate graphical charts for statistical analysis. Fax Sr. also comes with a monitoring program which will send alerts if any of the system’s services fail. Another administration utility allows you to view all of the users’ faxes from one centralized screen. From a program called Fax Sr. System Manager, you can view pending faxes in the queue, sent faxes, and received faxes.

We noticed that you can’t actually “view” the faxes from the System Manager, that is, view the fax from your default fax viewer. Instead, you have to view faxes from the client machine using the Fax Sr. Client program.

Another useful administration feature is the automatic cleaning of fax files. Too often, computer-based faxing quickly fills hard disks to capacity, particularly if users are not diligent about cleaning up and deleting old faxes. Omtool has addressed this problem by incorporating some customizable cleanup settings.

Converting Files
Fax Sr. provides several methods of document conversion. These methods include printer language; graphics; and text, background, foreground, and automated service-based conversion. To convert graphic formats such as TIFF, DCX, PCX, GIF, and BMP into fax format, the product uses a graphic conversion engine. We tested the ability of Fax Sr. to convert Word files on the server. There is an executable file which resides on the server which automatically converts Word documents without having to launch Word on the server. We attached some Word documents and had them faxed. The system performed flawlessly. We noticed, however, that after the attachment had been converted and successfully (or unsuccessfully) faxed, we couldn’t view the converted attachment from Fax Manager. We received an error message: “Cannot view files of this type.” Apparently, the attachment doesn’t convert to a TIFF for viewer display. By way of contrast, another fax product we reviewed, RightFax, included the viewing of converted attachments as part of the feature set.

As we noted earlier, we tried to get the foreground conversion to work with Adobe Acrobat. However, we were unsuccessful. (Although we did enjoy some of the country music.)

Attachments
When you browse for a file, Fax Sr. gives you only two options under “Files of type.” You can choose from among TIFF files or “All files.” We’d like too see more options. Specifically, we’d like to select from among listings of DOC files. (Usually, the user would need to attach a DOC file, not a TIFF file.) We were a little surprised at this limitation. After all, we had set up Fax Sr. to automatically convert DOC files on the server. Why shouldn’t the drop-down box list DOC as one of the registered extensions which can be attached?

GUI
In this version of Fax Sr., Omtool has improved the GUI and, hence, usability. One change we really liked was the introduction of a configuration screen for turning on/off confirmation boxes for deleting faxes, deleting a phone book, etc. Voice Mail Integration Omtool’s Fax Sr. works with several voice mail packages. Thus, Fax Sr., in combination with the right voice mail system, can provide a “unified messaging” solution. This is one advantage Omtool has over RightFax, which works with nothing else but Applied Voice Technology’s voice mail system.

ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
We’d like to see Fax Sr. support more popular applications with automatic conversion on the server, so the client can just attach the file without opening the application and printing it to the Fax Sr. printer driver. Also, we feel that Fax Sr. should automatically set up the more popular applications with the best option for document conversion on the server. Currently, you have to set up each application manually, which is a bit tedious. In fact, one application, Excel, required that you actually manually edit the Registry. They could have provided a REG file which could merge these changes automatically.

Another area which we would like to see improved is the online help. There was online help within the System Manager, however the System Manager didn’t have context help using the F1 key within each screen or field to get specific help.

One minor usability flaw was you couldn’t use the delete key in System Manager to delete faxes. Instead, you have to use one of the menu options or the toolbar to delete a fax(es). Finally, as previously mentioned, you can’t doubleclick on faxes within System Manager to launch the fax viewer and view the faxes. In fact, you couldn’t view the faxes from System Manager at all, which is a feature we’d like to see in the next release.

CONCLUSION
Not only is Fax Sr. feature-rich, it is one of the strongest (if not the strongest) fax solutions with respect to reporting and monitoring. Yet, for all its sophistication, Fax Sr. is quite user-friendly. The product’s new 32bit client offers a Windows 95 look and feel.

Although it may not be as easy to install, set up, or administer as some other solutions (RightFax, for example), Fax Sr. more than compensates by offering an extensive feature set, which includes advanced least-cost routing and remote administration capabilities. Fax Sr. also supports a wide array of operating systems (RightFax, for example, is less advanced in this respect). Fax Sr.’s real-time monitoring of its server(s) is also a real plus and something few other LAN fax solutions provide. Fax Sr.’s support of all the major e-mail systems, as well as its broad support of operating systems make it a good choice for large enterprises.