The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard guides you through the steps necessary to configure your system to process inbound and/or outbound fax messages queued in a Cisco Unity mailbox.

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Service will periodically open the mailbox where inbound fax messages have been queued, examine each message for address information, attempt to find the Cisco Unity subscriber for whom the fax message is intended, and forward the fax message to that subscriber. If the service fails to locate the intended subscriber, the message will be forwarded to a recipient of your choice as an unaddressed message.

Imported voice mail messages may also be processed at this time. See Voice Mail Import for more information.

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Service will periodically open the mailbox where outbound fax messages are queued, and attempt to render each message into a single TIF file and send the fax to a target fax machine.

WARNING! Refer to the IOS configuration documentation for details about configuring IOS to handle inbound and outbound faxes. This document assumes correct IOS configuration. See Gateway Configuration for Inbound and Outbound Fax Functionality for more information on Gateway configuration.

Requirements and Limitations

The Cisco Unity IP Fax tool is intended for environments that send and receive a combined total of fewer than 50 faxes a day in a limited range of formats (see below). It cannot compete with or replace full-featured, dedicated fax servers that send and receive large numbers of faxes in a wide variety of formats. Customers whose environment does not conform with the requirements and limitations listed in this section will not be supported by Cisco TAC.

The Cisco Unity partner message store must be Microsoft Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003.
The gateway must meet the requirements described in Configuring T.37 Store and Forward Fax.
For inbound fax routing, Cisco Unity 3.1(5) or greater.
For outbound fax routing, Unity 4.0(4) or greater.
For outbound fax routing, attachments that can be opened in the following applications for rendering:
- Microsoft Wordpad (for .doc files)
- Microsoft Notepad (for .txt files)
- Microsoft Internet Explorer (for .html, .htm, and .jpg files)
- Microsoft Paint (for .bmp files)
- Imaging Preview (for .tif files)
- Optional: Adobe Acrobat (for .pdf files)
If a supported application cannot open any of the files to be faxed, then the rendering fails, the fax is not sent, and a notification is sent to the sender of the fax. If a supported application can open some files to be faxed but not all, the files that can be opened are faxed, the files that cannot be opened are not faxed, and a notification is sent to the sender of the fax with information on which files were faxed and which were not. For example, in some cases, Microsoft Wordpad cannot open files that were created by Microsoft Word. Such files cannot be faxed. However, you may be able to convert them to .tif format and fax the .tif files instead of the .doc files.

In some cases, an application may be able to open a file but may not be able to display text in non-Roman alphabets, for example, Cyrillic or Hebrew. As with files that cannot be opened at all, you may be able to convert the files to .tif format and fax the .tif files.

Caution! File types that require installing unsupported third-party applications on the Cisco Unity server, for example, Microsoft Word, Excel, or Powerpoint, are not supported. If you install an unsupported third-party application on the Cisco Unity server, Cisco TAC will require you to remove it and may also require you to reinstall all software, including the operating system.

Note that for file types associated with unsupported third-party software, you may be able to convert the files to .tif format and fax the .tif files.
If you want to use the Microsoft Exchange Server Intelligent Message Filter, which is included with Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2, you must set the Spam Confidence Level (SCL) to 8 or higher, or faxing will not work. The gateway or router formats the subject line and sender addresses in a way that causes all inbound faxes to be flagged with an SCL of 7.
For a list of the open caveats, go to the Bug Toolkit website, http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/Support/Bugtool/launch_bugtool.pl, and search for bugs in "Cisco Unity Unified Messaging" with keywords "ipfax" or "ip fax".

Setup Notes

New Installation – To run Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard provided with Cisco Unity:

Run Cisco Unity Tools Depot.
Run Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard located in the Administration Tools folder, following the Configuration instructions below.

Previous Installation – To run a newer version of Cisco IP Fax Configuration Wizard provided with Cisco Unity:

Close the Windows Event Viewer and Services Control Manager if they are running.
Run the Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard and select the Uninstall Cisco Unity IP Fax Service option.
If the Outbound IP Fax routing feature was previously in use, run Start > Programs > ImgMaker Conversion Toolkit > Uninstall to remove the existing instance of ImageMaker.
Run Cisco Unity Tools Depot.
Run Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard located in the Administration Tools folder, following the Configuration instructions below.
Run Start > Programs > Unity > Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard to install the feature, following the Configuration instructions below.

New Installation – To install Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard downloaded from http://www.ciscounitytools.com:

Unzip the new package to a folder on the Cisco Unity server.
Run Install.bat to install the new Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard.
Run Start > Programs > Unity > Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard, following the Configuration instructions below.

Previous Installation – To install a newer version of Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard downloaded from http://www.ciscounitytools.com:

Close the Windows Event Viewer and Services Control Manager if they are running.
Run the existing Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard and select the Uninstall Cisco Unity IP Fax Service option.
If the Outbound IP Fax routing feature was previously in use, run Start > Programs > ImgMaker Conversion Toolkit > Uninstall to remove the existing instance of ImageMaker.
Unzip the new package to a folder on the Cisco Unity server.
Run Install.bat to install the new Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard.
Run Start > Programs > Unity > Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard, following the Configuration instructions below.

Usage

Introduction

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard allows you to configure Cisco Unity IP Fax service parameters, including:

The password of the message store facing service account
The mailbox where inbound fax messages are queued
The destination where inbound fax messages that cannot be delivered will be sent
The method used to parse inbound fax message addressing information
The method used to look up inbound fax message recipients
The mailbox where outbound fax messages are queued
The outbound fax gateway domain
The outbound fax busy and ring-no-answer retry counts
The frequency with which the service will process messages

Upon completion, the Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard will start the service, allowing it to begin processing incoming and/or outgoing faxes.

Configuring inbound and/or outbound IP Fax functionality

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard will configure either inbound fax functionality, outbound fax functionality, or both. The wizard can also be used to uninstall the IP Fax service.

Select the installation options you want and click Next.

IP Fax General Configuration

Entering the Service Account Password

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard first requires that you provide a password for the domain account that will act as the logon account for the IP Fax service. The IP Fax service must run using the same account as the AvCsMgr service. You will be prompted for the AvCsMgr service account’s password so that it can be applied during configuration of the IP Fax service.

NOTE: If the AvCsMgr service is running as LocalSystem, this dialog will NOT be displayed.

Enter the password and click Next.

Selecting the IP Fax Polling Interval

The Cisco Unity IP Fax service examines the mailboxes where inbound and outbound fax messages are queued according to a schedule you specify. The interval between checks can be from 1 to 120 minutes. Specify how many minutes the service should wait between attempts to route queued inbound and outbound fax messages and click Next.

Selecting Diagnostic Parameters

Select the diagnostic logging level. The default setting is Minimum.

If desired, enable the option to have messages sent by the Cisco Unity IP Fax service copied to the SentItems folder. The default setting is disabled. SentItems are included in the calculation of mailbox size in Exchange, so if this option is enabled make sure to monitor the size of the mailbox, setting storage thresholds and other parameters appropriately.

IP Fax Inbound Configuration

If you chose to configure the Cisco Unity IP Fax service to process inbound faxes, the Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard will gather information necessary for inbound fax functionality.

Selecting the IP Fax Inbound Mailbox

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard next allows you to choose the mailbox where inbound fax messages are being queued. The wizard offers you a list of all the subscribers on your Cisco Unity server. If the mailbox where inbound faxes are being queued is not listed, you must configure a Cisco Unity subscriber for the mailbox. Be sure to record an appropriate voice name for the subscriber representing the IP Fax inbound mailbox. The subscriber representing the IP Fax inbound mailbox should also be removed from public distribution lists, like All Subscribers.

Highlight the mailbox where inbound fax messages are being queued and click Next.

Selecting the IP Fax Unaddressed Inbound Message Recipient

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard next allows you to choose the mailbox or distribution list where undeliverable inbound fax messages should be sent. The wizard offers you a list of all the subscribers and public distribution lists on your Cisco Unity server. If no suitable destination for undeliverable inbound fax messages exists, create one using the Cisco Unity Administrator and re-run the Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard.

Highlight the mailbox where undeliverable inbound fax messages should be sent and click Next.

Selecting the IP Fax Subject Parsing Method

You may select the method the Cisco Unity IP Fax Service will use to parse information included in fax message subject lines while attempting to identify a recipient for the message.

Inbound fax messages will have addressing information embedded in their subjects. This information will include what number the fax was intended for, and possibly information about what number the fax was sent from. For example, the subject line might look like this:

[DNIS=2065554100][ANI=3175555555]

In this example, the fax was delivered from (317) 555-5555, and was intended for the phone number represented by (206) 555-4100.

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Service will attempt to find a valid Cisco Unity subscriber matching a subset of the information in the DNIS number string, based on parameters you specify. You may specify one of four different parsing methods and specify special prefix and or suffix digits to be used when performing subscriber lookups.

Specify whether you want the Cisco Unity IP Fax service to use the entire DNIS string or a subset of the DNIS string to identify Cisco Unity susbcribers.

If you chose a substring, specify how many digits should be used, and possibly what digit to start with.

Specify any special prefix digits or suffix digits to be used when looking up subscribers.

After specifying all parameters, click Next.

Examples

For the subject line: [DNIS=2064411234]

If you specify the right 4 digits, with a prefix of “8”, the Cisco Unity IP Fax service will look for a subscriber matching the ID 81234.
If you specify the right 3 digits, with no prefix and a suffix of “01”, the Cisco Unity IP Fax service will look for a subscriber matching the ID 23401.
If you specify the all digits, with no prefix and no suffix of “01”, the Cisco Unity IP Fax service will look for a subscriber matching the ID 2064411234.

Selecting the IP Fax Subscriber Lookup Method

Cisco Unity subscribers can be looked up by different methods, or a combination of two or more methods. The methods currently supported are lookup by Extension ID, and lookup by Primary Fax Number.

If you choose to look subscribers up by Extension ID, the Cisco Unity IP Fax service will attempt to locate a subscriber with an Extension ID or an Alternate Extension ID that matches the extension parsed out of the a fax message’s subject line.

If you choose to look subscribers up by Primary Fax Number, the Cisco Unity IP Fax service will attempt to locate a subscriber with Primary Fax Number that matches the extension parsed out of the a fax message’s subject line.

Note: Primary Fax Numbers are not unique. Multiple subscribers may match a single fax number. If multiple subscribers are matched to the parsed fax number, the fax is considered undeliverable and is forwarded to the unaddressed message recipient you selected in a previous step.

If you choose to use both methods, the Cisco Unity IP Fax service will attempt to locate a subscriber using the first method. If the message has not yet been delivered, the second method is attempted.

If the message has not been delivered after searching for subscribers by all of the methods selected, it will be forwarded to the unaddressed message recipient you selected in a previous step.

Select the subscriber lookup methods and order and click Next.

IP Fax Outbound Configuration

If you chose to configure the Cisco Unity IP Fax service to process outbound faxes, the Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard will gather information necessary for outbound fax functionality.

Selecting the IP Fax Outbound Mailbox

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard next allows you to choose the mailbox where outbound fax messages are to be queued. The wizard offers you a list of all the subscribers on your Cisco Unity server. If the mailbox where outbound faxes are to be queued is not listed, you must configure a Cisco Unity subscriber for the mailbox. Be sure to record an appropriate voice name for the subscriber representing the IP Fax outbound mailbox. The subscriber representing the IP Fax outbound mailbox should also be removed from public distribution lists, like All Subscribers.

Highlight the mailbox where outbound fax messages are to be queued and click Next.

You may choose the same mailbox you selected for inbound fax processing.

Identifying the Gateway Domain

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard next asks you to specify the complete domain name of the gateway that has been configured to route IP faxes. Identify the gateway by its full domain name, like:

Mygateway.mydomain.com

Enter the domain name for the outbound IP fax gateway and click Next.

Specifying CSID information to appear on each outbound fax

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard next allows you to specify whether or not you would like to have CSID header information appear on each page of faxes sent by the Cisco Unity IP Fax outbound fax service. This information will appear at the top of each page the fax service sends, along with the time and date the fax is sent. Check the check box to activate this feature and enter the name of the organization you would like to appear, as well as the phone number someone might use to return a fax to your organization, then click Next.

Specifying Busy and Ring-No-Answer Retries

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard next asks you to specify the complete number of times you want to the Cisco Unity IP Fax service to retry sending faxes when the destination fax machine is busy or rings, but does not answer.

Specify the number of busy and ring-no-answer retires and click Next.

IP Fax Configuration and Summary

Service Configuration Step

The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard will configure your Cisco Unity server to perform IP Fax routing tasks. This configuration includes:

Updating registry settings
Installing and configuring the IP Fax service

Image Rendering Configuration Step (outbound only)

If you chose to configure the Cisco Unity IP Fax service to process outbound faxes, the Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard will configure your Cisco Unity server with fax rendering software required to process outbound faxes.

Use the Browse option to select the desired install location for the rendering software. It is not necessary to install the rendering software in the same location as the Cisco Unity IP Fax service. Install the rendering software to a location on a partition with plenty of available space.

NOTE: Your Cisco Unity server must be restarted before outbound fax functionality will be available. The Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard will not restart your Unity server for you. You must manually restart the server.

Examining IP Fax Configuration Summary

After the Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard sets all parameters, then configures and starts the Cisco Unity IP Fax service, you will be presented a results page. Make sure the results are as you expect. You may run the Cisco Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard as often as you like.

Testing Outbound Connectivity

Configuring the Cisco Unity IP Fax Service to process outbound faxes is heavily dependent on proper configuration of the gateway. To ensure that a fax sent from the Cisco Unity IP Fax Service to the gateway will be properly processed, you can use the Cisco Unity Outbound IP Fax Test utility.

The Cisco Unity Outbound IP Fax Test utility allows you to specify the gateway configured to process outbound faxes and the phone number of a fax machine. The utility will attempt to send a test fax to the destination fax machine via the specified gateway. The Cisco Unity IP Fax Service is not involved in this test at all, so the test utility can be used to isolate problems with gateway configuration.

Specify the gateway domain and destination fax machine phone number and click Test.

If the fax arrives at the destination fax machine, the gateway is probably configured properly. If not, there is a problem with gateway configuration that must be resolved before the Cisco Unity IP Fax Service can be expected to work properly.

Reports

The Cisco Unity IP Fax service will log information about outbound faxes to a comma separated value (CSV) file. The file will be located in the standard Cisco Unity logs folder, typically C:\Commserver\Logs, and will be called CsIpFaxReport.csv.

The file has a single line for each message processed by the IP Fax service, both incoming and outgoing. The fields in the file are described below:

Time

The time message processing was completed.

Date

The date message processing was completed.

Type

0 = Inbound fax message

1 = Inbound voice message

2 = Outbound fax message

Sender

Inbound Fax

If sender information is available, the phone number of the calling fax machine

Inbound Voice Message

If sender information is available, the extension ID of the sending subscriber

Inbound Fax

The alias of the subscriber sending the outbound fax message.

Recipient

Inbound Fax

The extension ID of the target subscriber.

Inbound Voice Message

The extension ID of the target subscriber.

Inbound Fax

The phone number of the target fax machine

BusyAttempts

Outbound fax only – the number of times the fax transmission attempt was met with a busy condition from the target fax machine.

RnaAttempts

Outbound fax only – the number of times the fax transmission attempt was met with a Ring-No-Answer (RNA) condition from the target fax machine.

TimeInQueue

Outbound fax only – the time the outbound fax was queued for delivery before processing was completed, successfully or not.

Failed

0 = Success

1 = Failure

Gateway Configuration for Inbound and Outbound Fax Functionality

Beginning in Unity 4.04 and Cisco IOS version 12.3(7)T, outbound faxing is supported using the Unity IP Fax Configuration Wizard. This service allows users to send outbound faxes via a simple email. The destination fax phone number is included in the Subject line of the email and is sent to a mailbox that the Unity IP fax service checks.<