Automating Fax Transmissions

MyVFM.com offers two ways to interface with our system programmatically.   Programmatic transmission of faxes can allow developers and system administrators to send information from internal applications without the need for building and maintaining your own expensive faxing infrastructure. 

Send A Fax Using Email

With our outbound faxing service, you can easily send faxes using any email application.  Simply set the To address as [faxnumber]@fax.myvfm.com and type up your email message as normal.  The [faxnumber] entry in the To address is any valid fax number including the country code - that is 1 for U.S. numbers (ex.  12816649987@fax.myvfm.com).  Besides the body of the email, you can also attach documents to the email that will be formatted as separate pages in the fax.  The attachments must conform to our supported document types.  Emails must be sent from the address listed on your account.  Look under My Account to verify which email address should be used.

Technical notes:

1.  If the email body is completely blank, no cover page will be generated.  Use this option when you want to attach your own locally generated cover pages.

2.  Any text in the email body will be placed on a generic cover page.  If you want a cover page, you can fill in the body of the email with the details you want included on a very basic cover page. Alternatively, you can make your own cover page and include it with in the attached document. You can attach

3.  You may attach multiple documents of different document types to the email.  These will be converted on our side and stitched together to make a single fax.

4.  If you are having trouble getting documents to look identical to the original on your end, use Adobe Acrobat Standard for an ad hoc or Adobe Acrobat Distiller

Web Service (SOAP)

Using just about any language, you can interface with our system using the SOAP protocol.  Our web service gives you power to securely submit faxes using a standard protocol and monitor the transmission results.

For a list of methods and properties, please refer to https://client.myvfm.com/.

Technical notes:

1.  When sending faxes via the web service, use the Reference property as your tracking mechanism.  By entering unique identities in this property, you can reliably track the transmission results of each fax.

2.  To get a look at working code, you can download the SendFax sample application.  It is written in VB.NET using Visual Studio 2003.  If you don't have this environment, you can still download and review the code files.  Download SendFax application

3.  For more generic details about programming against our web service, search the web for "consuming web services".  You will find many entries that will guide you down the path of automation.