For the past year and a half, there's been an active project to update our aging fleet of dedicated, costly fax machines with a digital solution that integrates with email.  Using this new system, you can SEND faxes from email or any MFP on campus, and you RECEIVE faxes from a special email box created just for your department or group.  Many departments on campus are using the new system and are happy with the results.

If you are interested in having your Fax machine replaced with this new service, please call Sue Traxler at x5608.  She’ll set up an appointment to visit with you and start the process.

This is an optional service.  Departments can choose to continue using their existing fax machine (and not transition to the new fax server).  They will continue to incur monthly phone line and long distance charges, and maintain responsibility for the upkeep and replacement of their fax device.

Here's how the new service works:

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 Using an MFP on campus:

Sending a Fax from one of the MFPs on campus is nearly identical to Scanning on that MFP.  (The procedures are slightly different for each of the two different models of MFP we use on campus.)  In general, you:
a) Choose the "Email" function on the MFP
b) Input the phone number of the destination Fax machine
c) Append a few special characters to alert the Fax server
d) Hit Start

Here are detailed procedures for sending Faxes with our MFPs.

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 Using email:

Sending email to a fax machine is now working.  The address in the “To:” field  consists of two parts (with NO spaces between them).  (It is the same as the format for sending  a Fax from an MFP.)

The first part is the phone number of the destination Fax machine, exactly as you would dial it from any campus phone (with the "9", "1", Country code and Area Code, as needed).

The second part contains the following 4 characters (without the quotation marks):  "@f.x"

(Those characters alert the Fax server that this message is really destined for a Fax machine and not an email box.)

Here's an example of what you might put in the "To:" field of your email message:  915035554537@f.x

If you are on campus, then you can use any email program to send a Fax.  If you are off campus, then you must use the Zimbra web client to send a Fax with this service.

You can type as much plain text into the Body of the Fax message as you'd like.  Make sure it's just plain text, though - no fancy formatting and no embedded images.

If you want to Fax something other than plain text, then you can add an attachment to this email. 

At this time, ONLY PDF documents can be added and Faxed when using Carleton email to send a Fax.  You cannot attach a Word, Excel, or other format document in a message destined for a Fax machine.

Hint - If you can send your message or document to somebody’s email account, that’s usually preferred over Faxing.

For more information, see Sending faxes with email.

Faxes will now come into a fax mailbox for your department (available via your e-mailbox (or a designated person in your department) instead of a fax machine or the MFP.  The MFP is only used to send out faxes.  Once setup, you will be able to receive all faxes via email.  They are all in digital format.  You can choose to forward, print, save, or delete the fax. 

There are 2 options for how to receive incoming faxes via the new fax server. You choose which of these options is best suited for your department.  With both of these alternatives, all costs for fax sending and receiving will be covered centrally, and not via your departmental budget.

1.  Designate one person in your department to receive and distribute faxes to others by forwarding to the mailbox of each recipient or print out fax and give to recipient.  With this option, only the designated person can get the faxes out of the fax emailbox. 

2.  Setup everyone in your department to receive faxes from the fax emailbox. All department members can go into the fax emailbox to retrieve any faxes.  In addition, the contact person in your department will also have full rights to this emailbox.  A person receiving a fax should forward the fax to their own emailbox and then delete it from the fax emailbox.  *PLEASE* be careful when managing emails in this account through the shared mailbox  - everyone needs to be able to delete their own faxes, and so everyone has admin privileges on this share and will be capable of reading or deleting any email contained within it.

All faxes previously sent to your departmental fax number will now go to this fax emailbox.  Faxes received in this way are attached to the email as a PDF document, and remain in the Inbox of the fax account until they are deleted.

 You can find our documents about Faxing in the upper right-hand side of this webpage