Virtual fax

Virtual fax gives you a fax number that sends and receives by email and from the portal. Nothing plugs in. One line is enough for most businesses; add a second when you often send and receive at the same time.

Receiving

When someone faxes your number, the fax arrives as a PDF attached to an email at the address on the line. The sender dials your fax number like any fax machine and never knows you are on virtual fax. Forward it, archive it, print it, or file it like any other attachment.

Sending by email

Compose an email to the destination's ten digits at fax.vocatech.com. To fax (212) 555-0142, the address is 2125550142@fax.vocatech.com, never with a 1 in front. Attach the document as a PDF; the system converts it and sends it, and emails you a confirmation when it completes or a reason when it fails, usually a busy line or a disconnected number.

One line, one email address, both directions. The address that receives the line's faxes is the only address that can send from it. A fax sent from any other address is dropped silently, without a bounce, and sending it again from that address is dropped the same way. To send from a different address, ask us to change the address on the line.

Sending from the portal

A login with the Faxing permission opens the Faxing page and presses Send Fax to send a document from the browser. The same page lists the faxes the line sent and received.

Files and volume

PDF is the format to send. Word documents and images usually work but occasionally reformat. There is no page limit for normal business use; sustained volume above roughly a thousand pages a month prompts a conversation about the right setup, not a cutoff.

Porting a fax number in

A fax number moves to us like any other number, so tell us it is a fax line and we place it on the fax service rather than on a phone. Fax ports run through a separate process from voice ports and we tell you when the number is live on the line. See porting your numbers.

If the fax emails stop

Fax notices that arrived for months and stopped on one day, while the faxes still show on the Faxing page, are a block on the address after a bounce from your mail server. See notification emails stopped arriving.

Sensitive documents

Faxing through the portal's Faxing page is among the services covered by the HIPAA agreement once you accept it. Email is not a covered channel, so a fax that carries patient information is best sent and read from the portal rather than from an inbox. See HIPAA and the BAA.