Fax/Email Solutions

[dchristie]

Has anyone had any experiance using a Fax/Email solution for the AS/400 ? We are currently investigating such an option and would appreciate any feedback on the subject. Our initial goal is the ability to fax/e-mail spooled files from the 400, either directly from the 400 or over our network. Thanks

[maxb@bfcsoftware.com]

David; I have a couple of options you might want to look at. One is relatively inexpensive and the other leans the other way depending on AS/400 you have. 1. Gumbo Software (http://www.gumbo.com) has a couple of options: A. Report Manager - Can email a report as a .txt attachment. This has many report mangement features besides emailing. You can pull out just parts of a report and send them anywhere, send multiple copies, etc. B. SpoolMail - Allows you to email a report in just about any format necessary. These two products are built to work together as well. This product is the inexpensive one. The company where I used to work used both of these products and were very pleased with them. Support was excellent. 2. Quadrant Software (http://www.quadrantsoftware.com) has a product called Fastfax/LAN that you can fax from both the AS/400 and Windows. I believe this product now supports email of reports from the AS/400. I'm not sure of the formats it supports since the company where I used to work had not upgraded to this product before I left for a position with another company.

[Guest.Visitor]

If you need to email reports from the AS/400 in various formats such as PDF, RTF, HTML, etc... take a look at our web site. Our Email Report Server product will work nicely for you. We will also be releasing a Fax Report Server product within the next few weeks which allows you to fax directly from the AS/400 as well. Regards, Richard Schoen RJS Software Systems "The AS/400 Report Distribution Experts" Email: richard@rjssoft.com Web Site: http://www.rjssoft.com

[David Abramowitz]

I have one client using FAXSTAR for this purpose. It was a little difficult to set up, but fairly easy to program, and no problems to use. Dave

[Guest.Visitor]

David, We evaluated fax packages last summer. I went with Computer Keyes Keyes Fax. I looked at some of the other packages mentioned in responses to this question, and some not mentioned. I found Keyes Fax to be the least expensive of the bunch, and was still full of functionality. It even had some advantages over the higher priced packages. Since getting the package, I have also had to call their tech support line a few times. I can say that 90% of the time I got a human, and each time that human completely answered my question and some times had some good suggestions to straighten me out when I was about to go awry. If you can get hold of John Keyes, he is part programmer and part tech support guru ... he's good! They also have an e-mail package, but I did not evaluate that. They have a web site at http://www.ckeyes.com I think it would be well worth your effort to give them a fair evaluation

[Guest.Visitor]

For sending fax from the AS/400 to a PC, you could use the SNDDST command to send the filed fax. On the PC, you can use the AFP Workbench Viewer (limited version available with Client Access) to display the fax. For SPLF, you could just copy the SPLF to a DB file and then to QDLS (CPYTOPCD) so that you could use SNDDST to send it to any e-mail address...

[Guest.Visitor]

... for fax, there also a sample in C somewhere to convert a FAX/400 output to a TIFF file that could be embedded in an e-mail ... but I have a blank and I can't remember where I saw that ! (it was name something like HPTTOFLR ..)