FAX integration ECC 6.0

[Former Member]

Dear Experts,

We are about to integrate GFI Faxmaker for Exchange/SMTP v14 to SAP ECC 6.0 system. Fax Maker software has been installed on Windows Server, and running without problem. Fax maker uses SMTP functionality, for instance when I open my MSOutlook, in the address bar TO: I entered '5920085@faxmaker.com' then it goes to Faxmaker Server and Faxed.

For the SAP part, I am short of the knowledge. I couldn't find clear installaiton&configuration guide for the SAPConnect integration. It would be very appreciated if any of you could help me on the subject.

The subject is how to send and receive FAX within SAP Application ECC 6.0???

Kind Regards,

Taner

[Former Member]

Hi - we also attempted an integration with GFI FaxMaker and ECC 6.0.

Unfortunately, our dialing rules cause the integration to fail. We are in the 905 Area code of the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in Canada. This area codes has some complicated dialling rules :

1. 905 is an overlay with 289. This requires 10 digit dialing.

2. within the 905/289 area code overlay, depending on the exchage (905 yyy, where yyy is the exchange) calls within the overlay may or may not be long distance and thus require a 1 prefix. For example, calling from 905-812 to 905-878 is a local call and the dialling string is 905878zzzz. Calling from 905-812 to 905-702, however, is long distance and the dialling string is 1905702zzzz.

3. the entire 416 and 647 area codes are local calls.

4. we require both National (Canadian) and International dialling

Because of the local dialling rules, and GFI's implementation of National Dialling rules and exception lists, we were unable to get the dialling to work correctly. The main reason is that GFI requires the area code in the dialling string to be encapsulated in round brackets in order to enable to National Dialling rules. For Example, (905)812zzzz. It uses these brackets as delimiters to determine the actual area code.

Our SAP Integration uses SAPConnect and out of the box is strips special characters from the value stored in the Customer MAster Record fax field in order to perform it's own internal string manipulation. The result is that ALL fax numbers come out of SAP as +1XXXYYYZZZZ, where XXX = Area Code, YYY = Exchange, ZZZZ = number. Now GFI has functinality to compensate for this by detecting the + and the 1. Unfortunately, it is unable to perform any additional work becuase the SAP dialing string does not include round brackets around the area code.

The result is that we can configure GFI to treat everything as a local 10 digit call or as a Long distance 11 digit call (including the 1), just not both at the same time.

This is very dissapointing as we bought the GFI software based on it's ability to integrate with SAP and documented support for it. the only option is to customize the SAPConnect and we are not prepared to do this. We investigated the string manipulation capabilities of SAPConnect, but they are focused around adding and removing digits, not including special characters. Even if we were able to output only a 10 digit number, GFI would still not know how to dial the number in the 905/289 overlay (add a 1 or not depending on the exchagne) because the area code is not in brackets.

[Former Member]

Hello,

We are in the process of evaluating FAXMaker 14.3 for sending faxes from SAP via SMTP with an Exchange 2007 server.

Sending faxes with Outlook works correctly.

The problem is that the recipient address generated by SAP is formatted in a way that can't be interpreted by FaxMaker.

The emails are addressed in the format "FAX=+<fax number>@faxmaker.com", thus FAXMaker always returns the following error

to the sender :

ERROR FAX REPORT

Status: Failed

Date/Time: 1/29/2009 11:42:22 AM

Description: No recipients were found in this message. Fax could not be sent.

This problem exists since 2006:

http://forums.gfi.com/m_900735542/mpage_1/key_recipients/tm.htm#900735542

The response of my case by GFI is : http://kbase.gfi.com/showarticle.asp?id=KBID001608

Unfortunately this behaviour can't be easily customized in SAP. No possibility in transaction scot !

Does anyone know of a way to deal with addresses not conforming to FAXMaker?

Thanks in advance and kind regards

Pascal

[danny_roussel4]

Hi,

I have the same problem.

Did you find a solution please?

regards,

Danny

[Former Member]

Please check the next reply

Edited by: Jan Vanhoof on May 4, 2010 4:12 PM

[TomCenens]

Dears

We have done the same setup today: integration of Faxmaker for SAP ECC 6.0 using a FAX SMTP node.

A dedicated server was setup (Windows 2008 SR2) on which the faxmaker software is installed.

The authentication of windows accounts is done using LDAP.

ISS SMTP service was setup so the server can handle faxes on it's own (no connection to exchange / lotus).

The installation guide was followed and a modem was connected to the server to be able to sent the faxes.

The configuration wizard was also followed according to the installation instructions.

After the setup was done in SAP as described in the setup guide of GFI I was able to sent out faxes and in SAP they have a status "send" without issues.

On the Faxmaker server, nothing was visible in the fax queue. (it comes in but after a few seconds it's gone). When checking the GFI fax directory on the hard drive there is a directory logs containing valuable info.

When checking the logs I found out the user that the Faxmaker software receives as being the "sender" is actually the fax number field from the SAP user that executes the send process of the fax (if a background job is configured to sent out faxes from transaction scot then the user will be the fax number of the background user of that job @<domain>) If you launch a job yourself in transaction scot to process the fax, the user will be the fax number of your own user @<domain>. This will give an error in faxmaker stating the user "<fax number of user who launched job in sap>@<domain> is not a valid user (as it is not known in the faxmaker configuration).

A workaround for this is to enter a fax number in the SAP user fax number field in SU01, send the fax and check which user Faxmaker software expects. For example you enter 3454523 as fax number in SU01 fax number field of your background job user then the conversion of SAP will change it to FAXNR=+323454523@domain (in this example +32 is Belgian country code).

When you add the administrator user in Faxmaker you will need to set the email address of the administration user to FAXNR=+323454523@domain in order for the Faxmaker software to recognize the user and accept the fax.

The next problem was that the country codes were not correct after conversion from SAP and interpretation of the Faxmaker software, to fix this (without adjusting customizing in SAP), the prefix addition was set in the Faxmaker configuration under advanced - Dialing (click on properties)

International dialing with a + enabled

If dial string starts with my country code --> enabled

add prefix --> 0

if dial string does not start with my country code --> enabled

add prefix --> 00

Kind regards

Tom

Edited by: Tom Cenens on May 4, 2010 3:26 PM

[Former Member]

Hi,

we are planning to use Faxmaker in our ERP-System. For testing, I configured our Solutionmanager (because our ERP-Systems are not installed yet) to send Faxes with Faxmaker through SMTP.

The Problem is, that i always get status 718 in SOST.

What i did and what works:

1.) Configured FAX over SMTP in SCOT -> Works -> Faxes were successfully send

2.) Configured SICF to receive status-Mails -> Works -> i get mail from Faxmaker, if FAX were successfully delivered

3.) Configured Senderaddress in SXPARAMS, so that my Emailaddress is the sender - not the Faxnumber in SU01

So what i need, is the delivered Status (701) in SOST.

Anyone an Idea?

Regards

Christian

Edited by: Christian Hoppe on Jan 26, 2012 12:39 PM

[TomCenens]

Dear Taner

Check SAP Notes for this configuration

Note 92950 - SAPoffice/SAPconnect: Fax, Internet mail, X.400

Basically you need to define the settings for the Fax node in transaction SCOT.

You also need to set the communication method there (I believe you can maintain it through choosing settings --> communication method) in the upper toolbar.

There you fill in SAPCONNECT for the FAX node.

Through transaction SOST you can check the trace file of a fax to see where the problem resides. Don't forget to enable tracing first (done in transaction SCOT I belive).

Kind regards

Tom

[Former Member]

Hi Tom,

Thank a lot for the help. It has been very helpful through the solution.

Regards,

Taner

[Former Member]

Hello,

We are in the process of evaluating FAXMaker 14.3 for sending faxes from SAP via SMTP with an Exchange 2007 server. Sending faxes with Outlook works correctly.

The problem is that the recipient address generated by SAP is formatted in a way that can't be interpreted by FaxMaker. The emails are addressed in the format "FAX=+<fax number>@faxmaker.com", thus FAXMaker always returns the following error to the sender :

ERROR FAX REPORT

Status: Failed

Date/Time: 1/29/2009 11:42:22 AM

Description: No recipients were found in this message. Fax could not be sent.

This problem exists since 2006:

http://forums.gfi.com/m_900735542/mpage_1/key_recipients/tm.htm#900735542

The response of my case by GFI is : http://kbase.gfi.com/showarticle.asp?id=KBID001608

Unfortunately this behaviour can't be easily customized in SAP. No possibility in transaction scot !

Does anyone know of a way to deal with addresses not conforming to FAXMaker?

Thanks in advance and kind regards

Pascal