Hi Everyone,
I hate to be seen as the ever persistent evangelist, but here I go again. One of the advantages of web enabling DP is that you use middleware-like scripting as the interface for users to get information into and out of DP and in doing so you open up a world of possibilities for interoperability with other processes and services. I have been using DP for a sporting club management application for about 4 years now, and one of its main uses is as a communication tool for sending email and SMSs (TEXT messages). In its most simple form my applications get information from DP and uses it to populate a webpage and delivers it back to the browser. Instead of using the browser as the destination by changing a few lines of code (less than about 10 lines in total) I can send it as an email, or send an SMS message. Sending faxes could be performed with the same ease. In this connected day and age, you do not need to own main and run the equipments and applications for collaborative processes yourself. For example although I am in Australia I send my SMS messages via the US Text messaging company Clickatell. Emails get sent via my webhosts SMTP server, and if I wanted t send faxes I could use an online faxing service for example MyFax.com. Generally it is less expensive to use the services from external service providers than doing it all yourself. For instance to use the MyFax service I would subscribe to the service and instead of sending my email via my ISP or hosting company I would change my output to use the MyFax service. Instead of the recipients email I would address the email to the recipients fax number like this [email protected] . . I have not used this or any similar service as I have not had a need for automated faxing for many many years but it looks to be very easy and I would have no hesitation of using it or something like it. If I didn't want to use an external service provider I could get my own Fax Server such as Hylafax.com server with my own modems and phone lines, but that would cost moe, be slower and far more complicated. As an example of something I am more familiar with, instead of using Clickatell for sending SMS's I could have set up an SMS Gateway (which is a small piece of modem like hardware that is connected to your computer or network), and a mobile phone account to send SMS. It would cost a few hundred dollars for the SMS Gateway modem, and it would cost me about 20c to send an SMS using my standard mobile phone carrier. By using Clickatell, I pre-purchase message credits, which is my only cost for using the service and it is way less than half the cost of sending it via my own hardware and mobile phone services. Not only is it less expensive it is far quicker, as Clickatell has a significantly larger bandwidth than my alternative of my own single modem and mobile phone account. Additinoally by using a web service I do not have to worry about the maintenance or setup of equipment and software, and I only need to add about 5 lines of code to my PERL scripting program, and a few lines to the report from DP. Here endeth my preaching. Brian _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robert Kendall Sent: Wednesday, 29 April 2009 10:26 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Dataperf] Email / Fax servers Thanks Gary. I'll check it out. ----- Original Message ----- From: Gary_Gabriel <mailto:[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2009 2:06 AM Subject: Re: [Dataperf] Email / Fax servers Robert I Kendall wrote: > I would like to automate reporting to my clients by email and fax. Is > there something easy and reliable, like printing with DPSPOOL? > > _______________________________________________ > Dataperf mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf > > Take a look at ActFax. I have used for years, it's free, works on a network and is easy and integrates into just about any interface you need. See: ActFax - Fax Server and Email Software - API - Client - Network - XP, 2003, 2008, Vista http://www.actfax.com/en/installation.html .ActFax <http://www.actfax.com/en/installation.html> . _______________________________________________ Dataperf mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf
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