CTI LABS CTI LABS Test Drive Gateway module, a Web Client module, to SMTP addresses, via Internet or and an Optical Character Recognition Intranet mail, reducing long-distance (OCR) module. line charges. • The RightFAX E-Mail Gateway also Postscript Module allows POP3 clients to send out- The Postscript module allows you to bound faxes. attach Adobe Acrobat (.PDF) docu- • In addition to cover sheet informa- ments, which are then automatically tion, fax mail messages can contain converted on the server. With the popu- attachments over 45 of the most com- larity of the Adobe Acrobat file format, mon Windows and Macintosh for- this is a welcome addition. mats, including Word, Excel, JPEG, GIF, and HTML, to name a few. E-Mail Gateway Module RightFAX The RightFAX E-Mail Gateway OCR Module Enterprise 5.0 module allows RightFAX to integrate The RightFAX OCR module adds with your existing e-mail applications. another routing method to your The gateway allows you to send, RightFAX fax server software, in addi- RightFAX receive, and track the status of faxes tion to converting images into text. The 6303 E. Tanque Verde through your standard e-mail interface. RightFax OCR module resides on the Tuscon, AZ 85715 The E-Mail Gateway supports Lotus server (not on every client machine). Ph: 520-320-7000; Fx: 520-321-7461 cc:Mail, Lotus Notes, Novell This allows every user on the network E-mail: [email protected] GroupWise, Microsoft Mail, Microsoft to continue working, while the server BBS: 520-546-9310 Exchange, and SMTP/POP3. does all the processing work. Web Site: www.rightfax.com Price: RightFAX Enterprise v5.0 is $2,995, E-Mail Gateway features include: OCR features include: for a server license and two channels. • E-mail messages notify users of • Only one license for unlimited users. RightFAX 5.0 starts at $1,495 for one line. received faxes and (optionally) com- • 32-bit application for fast conversion Both products cost $795 per additional line. pleted transmissions. and routing. There are no user license fees. • Incoming faxes can be routed as e- • Converted text can be viewed and mail messages to any network user annotated (searched, cut, pasted, etc.). and/or printed to a network printer. • Automatically convert every fax ased on the success of their • Comes with a Windows fax viewer. received or on an individual basis. BRightFAX NT family of fax • Does not require Microsoft MTA •Routing character-string is not servers, RightFax has released a program or Lotus cc:Mail gateway to restricted to a specific position in LAN-based faxing solution called be running for mail to be delivered. document. RightFAX Enterprise v5.0. The compa- • Microsoft Fax Driver allows output • Administrator controls OCR privileges. ny also offers RightFAX v5.0 (a subset from any Windows application to of the enterprise version, which lacks MS Mail. RATINGS (1-5) the least-cost routing and load-balanc- • Custom print driver allows output ing features of that version). RightFax from any Windows application to Installation: 4.90 also offers several optional modules cc:Mail. Documentation: 4.75 (at an additional cost), each of which • Receive OCR output in mail with GUI: 4.85 adds additional functionality. These optional RightFAX OCR Module Features: 4.95 include a Postscript module, an E-Mail • Inbound faxes may be routed directly 46 CTITM September 1997 Subscribe FREE online at www.ctimag.com CTI LABS Web Client Module The RightFAX Web Client module allows you to manage your fax mailbox using a Web browser. Simply enter the Web address of your fax server and log in to access all of your sent and received faxes from anywhere via the GUI (Figure 1). The module also enables an administrator — through an administration utility — to connect unlimited users or restrict the number of clients connected concurrently. Web Client features include: • Send, receive, forward, route, delete, and print faxes. • Create notes on fax cover sheets. • Attach files to faxes using PCL-5, PostScript, TIFF-G3, DCX, PCX, ASCII/Text formats (requires upload- ing capability currently available only on Netscape browsers). • Run over Secure Socket Layer (SSL v2 and v3) on server for security. • Access Phonebooks, Billing Codes, Figure 1. RightFAX: The Web Library Documents, and Fax Histories. the desired destination as a local call. Client Module GUI allows you to The hardest part of using the LCR manage your fax mailbox from Least-Cost Routing method is maintaining accurate routing anywhere in the world. One of RightFAX’s best features is tables. The least-cost routing system its LCR (least-cost routing) ability, weighs several factors when deciding dialing, dual-tone multi-frequency which sends faxes via the Internet or how to route faxes. These include time (DTMF), voice-assisted DTMF, dialed data network to a phone line that is of day, user or group restrictions, prior- number identification service (DNIS), closer to the fax’s destination, thus ity, and server availability. With DNIS/DID interface, caller subscriber reducing phone bills. For instance, RightFax’s load balancing (capacity identification, ISDN, OCR, and manual suppose you need to fax something sharing) capability, the RightFax server line/channel. These routing methods from New York to Tokyo. If you can share its queue of outbound faxes can also be combined. have a network (Internet or private with another RightFax server in the WAN) connecting the two locations, enterprise, which will speed up the INSTALLATION you can route the fax from the transmission process. Load balancing Installation of the RightFAX RightFax server in New York to one in also works for incoming traffic to even Enterprise 5.0 software entailed Tokyo. The Tokyo server can then fax out the volume of incoming faxes installing the software from a CD-ROM the last leg of the fax transmission to across two or more servers. and then adding the optional modules. Besides least-cost routing, other The optional modules come on 3.5-inch Figure 2. RightFAX: The E-Mail routing methods include direct inward diskettes. The installation of the Gateway configuration screen. RightFAX server software, OCR module, postscript module, and Web client mod- ule all went smoothly, but we did have a bit of trouble with the e-mail module. A Slight Hitch At first, we chose MSMail rather than Exchange for our default gate- way. That same week, we upgraded our mail system from MSMail to Exchange, so we decided to reinstall the RightFAX E-Mail Gateway (Figure 2). When we tried rein- stalling, RightFAX kept putting Lotus Notes as our e-mail gateway, which seemed strange. As it turned out, we had a license for but one e-mail gate- 48 CTITM September 1997 Subscribe FREE online at www.ctimag.com C T I L ABS way. And appar- ently, reinstalling doesn’t remove the original gate- way, which caus- es strange side effects. Even manually remov- ing the gateway from the admin- istration program and then rein- stalling again didn’t work — the program kept putting Lotus Notes back as the e-mail gateway. We called tech- nical support, and Figure 3. RightFAX: Users can they had us dive into the Windows NT be. For instance, when we tried to add a switch to administration mode registry to manually remove the origi- printer to the RightFax queue, we refer- from the main screen. nal gateway. We removed all the e-mail enced the administrator manual, but the gateway entries in the registry, rein- instructions weren’t there. Checking stalled the e-mail gateway, and chose the index of the user’s guide, we found Mail Gateway guide; and Web Client Exchange. Once we did this, everything the correct page. Basically, we had to guide — were excellent. Some minor worked fine. Other than this one glitch, figure out what the network name and details were missing (nothing to get all the other installation procedures the queue name values were. We excited about), and we felt the online went very smoothly. Considering the weren’t certain of the syntax RightFax help could have been more complete. complexity of all the features and mod- was looking for, which is the reason we Nonetheless, we gave the documenta- ules which we installed, we were sur- checked the manuals. The example in tion a 4.75 rating. prised we didn’t have more problems. the manual could have explained the Client installations were also a breeze. parameters more clearly. We took an OPERATIONAL TESTING Overall, we were very happy with the educated guess as to the correct para- We found RightFAX’s main screen ease of installation and gave RightFAX meters, and this worked. for viewing, editing, and sending faxes a 4.90 installation rating. The documentation did contain plen- to be user-friendly. Different icons indi- ty of screenshots, and it provided sev- cated whether a fax had been viewed, DOCUMENTATION eral examples. Both the administrator printed, or OCR’ed, and the column The documentation was pretty good; guide and the user’s guide had good headings included date/time, fax num- however, it seemed that parts of the indexes, as did the optional E-Mail ber/ID, status, number of pages, and documentation were a bit sketchy or Gateway guide. All of the guides — other vital information. RightFAX not located where we expected them to user’s guide; administration guide; E- allows you to select multiple faxes for deletion, forwarding, or other operation (Figure 3). From the main GUI, you can also switch to administrator mode for viewing all faxes for all users, provided you have been assigned the appropriate security permissions. A nice feature of this product is that you can log on to your personal RightFAX mailbox from any computer workstation on the net- work, since RightFAX is client/server.