Virtual Fax extension does not appear in the printable_dialplan.php

[Scapal]

Virtual Fax extension does not appear in the printable_dialplan.php and does not appear in the provider incoming extension routing.
As I dial the extension from an inside phone, I do however get the virtual fax answering the call.

[Michael]

Thanks for pointing that out with the dialplan, we'll get those extensions added.

Faxes are handled differently than normal extensions. For example, an Analog Provider can normally only have a single destination. But, since we can detect faxes, it can route them accordingly thus enabling 2 destinations for a single incoming number.

Faxes are routed by selecting them from the new gui element "incoming faxes." That will route all incoming faxes from that provider to a specific virtual or analog fax machine.

[Scapal]

I concede I'm a bit tired but I can't find where this "incoming faxes" is :-(

Update:
I took a peek on the php code and understood that this option is only available for analog and isdn lines.
I use a fax (+ATA) with my SIP provider without any problem so I think it would be a good idea to add this for SIP lines too (µLaw).
I also use a SIP/ISDN gateway (Patton Inalp), and even there I'm not able to add an incoming fax rule since it is considered to be a SIP provider by Askozia.

[Michael]

Yes, it has only been enabled on Analog and ISDN providers. It will be enabled on SIP providers once T.38 gateway functionality has been added.

I know you would like to also have "normal" faxing capabilities enabled on the SIP providers. We feel this will lead to a lot of failed faxes and people blaming the software. Also, once T.38 gatewaying has been added, differentiating between the two in the GUI will become a problem.

Your Patton gateway should be able to send you T.38 faxes. Once we switch to Asterisk 1.8 and T.38 gatewaying is present, everything will click together.

[Scapal]

Couldn't you add a switch in the 'Advanced'/'GUI Features' panel or even in the hidden 'beta' features ?

G.711 µLaw with LAN SIP devices or even with good SIP Provider (3starsnet.com , nomado.eu) over a fast line with proper traffic shaping never caused me any problem.

[Michael]

I could hide it in the provider's advanced settings I guess. No harm in that, I'll get it in.

[gmarchionni]

Hi,

I'd love to ask a question....i hope i'll get an answer.....

Will the virtual FAX in the future be able to also SEND faxes to remote machines?  (not inside the PBX network)

Thanks
Giulio

[Michael]

In the future, yes. That is why I chose to name it Virtual Fax and not Fax2Mail. This will be not be in the upcoming 2.1 release but is planned for the future.

[gmarchionni]

Thanks....that is a wonderful news!

[Scapal]

I ended up adding a 'Fax Proxy' Application to be able to call the virtual fax as incoming destination on a SIP trunk:

1,Goto(VIRTUAL-FAX-7445284944c8f2e27de695,s,1)​​​​​​

It is working perfectly.

I agree you need to have a good connection latency (<30ms), G711 with no echo cancellation and a good provider for it to work but virtual faxes should be removed from the inbound targets on SIP lines.

Also with ISDN and PSTN lines, I don't try to fit everything inside my Askozia box but tend to use SIP gateways like Grandstream GXW4xxx for PSTN or Patton Inalp 4554 for BRI. There again no reason to disable virtual fax for SIP with a device sitting a few inches away.