sundance-communications.com/forum Forums TDM Business Telephone Systems Inter-Tel Telephones & Systems Fax Machine Incompatibility?

Every so often I get a complaint from someone external who cannot send a fax into our phone system. They will then report that they dial the number manually and hear the pause then the greeting to which I tell them is normal. I usually then direct them to the physical fax machine in our office which will work fine.
What I am thinking is that their external machine is waiting to hear our phone system either pick up or start the handshake process, and when it receives only silence it reports an error.
We have an Inter-Tel 5000 version 1.2.5.111. Each person here has a DID that is pointed directly to a 2600 application in the Voice Processor containing their email address under Fax Delivery E-mail Address. The only other thing set is under Day Greetings "Recording L Long pause 10sec" and "Recording 1 3sec".
Is there anything I can do to resolve this from a systems standpoint, or are certain fax machines just not compatible?

The fax isn't sending the tones because they lifted the reciever or it didn't send the tones in time, you might add a few seconds to the application before timing out to the extension

G:

I assume that your system is receiving service via a PRI. If so, you have one of two issues:

1. There are excessive slips on your circuit, which is a system problem, or;

2. Your service is being provided by a soft switch from the local service provider. VOIP switches don't carry analog data (FAX) very well, if at all.

Sorry for the lack of a more positive answer, but I think that #2 is your problem.

I don't think that it is an issue with the service because we receive most of the faxes sent to the email processing system especially to this particular number, and we never had an issue with the physical fax machine we have configured as a single line endpoint in the system.
I just tried increasing the wait time to 30 seconds but the person with the known issue is unavailable for testing at the moment.
Is there any way to make the fax number tied to the application ring instead of immediately answering? I was looking at the possibility of creating a phantom extension to test this with.

If they are waiting until the answer before hitting start, it will not work. The CRA or mailbox relies on CNG tones which typically are not transmitted using the 'manual send' method. Have them not do it that way and I bet it will work.

I have had the same issue also. It seems to be the older fax machines that I have an issue with. I wish I had a fix for you, but we just have lived with it.

Inter-Tel UM fax (receive) simply answers. It does not send any tones except in respose to initiate tones sent by the sendign machine. Many older fax machines do not send an initiate tone as they are waiting for the answering machine to send it, so they just never start 'talking' to each other.