TK-Fax Manual

TK-FAX provides a set of statistics reports that are helpful to the system managers in determining quality and efficiency factors when monitoring the fax transmissions.

The TK-FAX statistics screens provide the system manager with a complete listing of fax transmissions by:

number of faxes
phone time
sender
fax number
fax/modem device

Once you get into the TK-FAX menus, select the STATISTICS option.

Each of the statistics screens are fairly self explanitory. The current calendar year is displayed with the twelve months across the screen. Each entry to the left is listed twice, first for the number of faxes sent, and again with the total number of phone line minutes.

Press the SELECT key to change to any of the other statistics options available to you. A representative of each report is displayed for you below:

Although the installation of TK-FAX is relatively simple, it is important that you follow the instructions in this section very carefully. TK-FAX does not have an automatic installation procedure for the various parameters in the configuration so you will need to setup each of these screens yourself before you will be able to successfully use this product. This section will walk you through the various steps needed in the installation and configuration.

This port should be configured by the MUMPS operating system as 8 bits, no parity, 19,200 baud. Line wrap should be turned off and XON/XOFF protocol is required. Unless you are going to use your fax/modem for incoming modem calls it can also be configured for no logon.

Configure the serial port as if it were a terminal with no modem control. On LAT devices, configure this port as if it were a printer.

An outside phone line

A phone line is needed that can be connected permanently to the fax/modem. Generally you cannot connect a modem device to a PBX system, so if you are using a PBX phone system in the offices you will need to check with your service personnel on the correct method of connecting the modem.

A modem cable

A cable is needed that can connect the fax/modem to the serial port. The only connections required by the fax/modem are lines 2, 3 and 7 and you may optionally connect line 1 (frame ground). Other connections are not necessary. Note that a modem cable does not cross wires 2 & 3 as would be the case with a standard terminal cable.

1. Plug the power supply of the fax/modem into an available outlet and plug the cable coming from the power supply into the fax/modem.

2. Plug the phone line supplied with the fax/modem into the wall receptacle and the other end into the back of fax/modem (use the socket marked "WALL"). If the cord is not long enough, you can purchase longer phone lines at your local electronics store.

3. Connect the modem cable coming from the MUMPS computer to the 25 pin DB25 connector on the back of the fax/modem. (A male DB25 plug is required at the fax/modem end.)

4. Turn the fax/modem power switch ON. You should see two or three of the LED lights on the front panel of the fax/modem lit.

This completes the hardware installation. After you have installed the software you will be able test your work to see if it was connected correctly.

NOTE: The current version of TK-FAX is designed to support only one directory (UCI) for each fax/modem. You can install the software in a second directory but there will be a conflict over ownership of the fax/modem and only one directory or the other will have control at a time. Once all of the faxes for one directory have been sent, then the control will be passed to the other directory. This situation is workable as long as you are aware that DELAYED and ECONOMY faxes will tie up the fax/modem until they are actually transmitted so it is best not to use delayed faxes when sharing the fax/modem. We distribute the PG&A software through either floppy diskettes or via direct computer to computer transfers with the modem. If you are using a mini-computer or mainframe and have no MS-DOS transfer capabilities, we probably have already scheduled a time for the direct transfer and you need not be concerned with loading the software.

If we have distributed TK-FAX to you by floppy, you will need to load up the software using the instructions packed with the diskette for loading on your particular MUMPS operating system.

D ^TKFAX (then press RETURN)

If TK-FAX has not been initialized before you will see a short PLEASE WAIT message as it automatically loads the control files into MUMPS globals. This will just take a few seconds. The system will then display the main TK-FAX menu which should look like this:

(If for some reason your screen doesn't look like this it may be because you have not correctly identified your CRT type to the software during the TK configuration.)

In order to call up the CONFIGURATION OPTIONS menu press the "C" for configuration (followed by RETURN if necessary). There are three different configuration screens that need to be defined.

In general you will want to keep these files around as long as they still have some meaning. You may want to resend a fax two or three months after you originally sent it and you may have a need to verify the date and time of a particular fax six months or a year after it was sent.

But at the same time there is a cost in disk space for saving this information. You will want to adjust these retention values so that they best suit your information requirements and still fit within your available disk space allotment. If you only send an occasional fax, there should not be any concern. But for sites that are sending anywhere from two or three faxes to hundreds of faxes a day, you may want to carefully weight the tradeoffs.

Just for pointers - here are the relative space requirements for each of these files:

SOURCE FILE	same size as the original text, about 3000 bytes/page
FAX FILE	approximately fifteen times larger than the source file, about 45,000 bytes/page
DIRECTORY	averages around 160 bytes per fax
ERROR FILE	usually about 100 bytes per error

From this table you can see that there is significantly more space used in the Fax file. Because this file is only used to resend a fax, and because any given fax can be reconstructed from the Source file, this file can be kept small. The Source file is the next biggest file, but if this information is deleted, then there is no way of resending a fax without going back to the original document (assuming that it is still available ).

Configure each fax/modem as follows:

$IO	Enter the MUMPS $IO value of the serial line on which you have connected the fax/modem. If you are working with a local area network, you must define the particular port to the network service as a modem so that it may always be addressed by the same value of $IO.
Deactivate	Leave this blank. If you are using a pair of devices, you can temporarily shut down one device by entering a "Y" for Yes.
Fax Number	Currently, this value is used only to report your own fax machine's fax number. In later versions of the TK-FAX software, we may provide reception services from this same fax/modem in which case this then would be the fax number of the phone line that the fax/modem is connected to.
Dialing Prefix	The fax/modem uses the standard Hayes compatible syntax for dialing remote fax modems. The default dialing prefix if you leave this item blank is "ATDT" which implies direct dial using tone. Other possibilities are: ATDP - Pulse dialing (use for European phones) ATDT9W - Dial 9 for outside line, then wait for second dialtone before dialing remainder of number
Speaker	The default setting for TK-FAX is to have the fax/modem speaker totally turned off. If you change this setting to a 1, then the speaker will be on during the dialing phase of the fax transmission. This can be useful if you are having problem dialing a particular number and need to monitor the audio signal during the call process.

In order to decide how to set each of these default values, see the explanation of these in the SENDING A FAX section.

If the communication is not good, it may be caused by any of the following:

An improper cable used between the MUMPS system and the fax/modem. It needs to be a modem cable.

Invalid setup of the baud rate, number of data bits, parity in the operating system. Needs to be 19,200 baud, 8 bits, no parity and 1 stop bit.

A mistake was made in the device number of the fax/modem. Check again to see if you correctly inserted the device number in the DEVICE CONFIGURATION.

D RESTART^TKFAXC

If for some reason the fax server job is "killed", it can always be restarted by RESENDING any one of the queued fax jobs.

The ASCII text sent by the fax server first has to be converted to a graphic image before it can be transmitted to a remote fax. The actual rules of how it is converted and what it will look like at the remote fax is dependent upon the fonts that are built in to the sending fax software.

TK-FAX provides a number of different fonts to be used while converting the ASCII text to a fax image. The font determines the shape or style of each letter, the size, boldness and visual attributes of underlining and reverse printing. Each font is assumed to contain the full 224 ASCII printable character set as defined by the PC-850 code set used by MS-DOS machines. This code set includes line drawing characters as well as many of the Western European multi-national characters and special symbols. Additional code sets will be made available as they are needed.

NOTE: Documents typed using the DEC multi-national and line drawing character sets will be automatically converted to the PC code set if they re typed from either TK-WRITER or TK-MAIL. Other ASCII text sent with TK-FAX will not convert ASCII values over 126 and it will assume that they are already in PC-850 code set already.

You can override the FONT A default by specifying another font from the SEND FAX DIALOG box. You can also change the font at different places within the document by inserting a FAX command. The format for the CHANGE FONT command is:

~FAX FONT=x (where x is the font letter A, B, C, D or E)

Editing a font requires that you enter a font number, select the character to edit and then change individual pixels of the characters by typing either a space or an "X". An "X" is printed in black, the spaces are left white.

In order to edit a font you need to understand the relationship between the font letters and their corresponding internal numbers. Each font has a set of four files representing the four video representations that can be faxed; standard, underlined, bold and the combination of bold and underline. You must use the internal number in the FONT EDITOR as follows:

FONT A	10 standard face 11 underline 12 reverse 13 reverse and underline
FONT B	20 standard 21 underline 22 bold 23 bold and underline
FONT C	10 standard 11 underline 12 bold 13 bold and underline
FONT D	40 standard 41 reverse 42 bold 43 bold and underline
FONT K	110 standard 111 reverse 112 bold 113 bold and underline

Editing a particular character only changes one of the video representations of the font. You may need to edit all four.

Once a font has been edited, you should be careful not to reinitialize TK-FAX with the INITIALIZE option in the Configuration Options. This will change the fonts back to their "factory" representation. If necessary you can save the font file by copying it into another global to prevent accidental changes. The font file is ^TKFAXF.