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, an email arrives at the address on the line: with the PDF attached when the line’s Attach setting is on, or with a link that opens the fax in the portal when it is off. A new line starts with the link; ask us to switch it. Every fax also stays on the Faxing page in the portal. 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. With the line’s Cover setting on, the body of your email becomes the notes on a cover sheet. Every fax you send prints the line’s label and the Eastern time in its header.

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. A fax takes up to 100 pages and 10 MB by email or from the portal, and a PDF of up to 25 pages through the API. Each line brings a thousand pages a month, shared by all your lines. At the cap the Send Fax page says usage exceeded and sending by email stops too, until the 1st of the month or until we raise the cap; we are told the same day. Most offices never come near it. Faxes go to numbers in the US and Canada; there is no international faxing.

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 on a HIPAA account the line sends a link into the portal rather than the page, and a fax that carries patient information is sent and read from the portal rather than from an inbox. See HIPAA and the BAA.