Ask the Expert

Sending and logging faxes from Lotus Notes and Domino

We want to enable our Notes/Domino application to send a custom-written fax to a list of fax numbers, based on a query we will build in our application. We want to keep a log of the fax content, and the numbers it was sent to. Can you recommend a technique or off-the-shelf product that makes this easy and inexpensive?
Sure -- any fax software designed to work with Lotus Notes and Domino will do the trick. Normally, these work by having a special email domain that you can send to. For instance, from within IBM, I can send a fax by mailing it to 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx@emailfax.

You can just write an agent to send email, and use the NotesRichTextItem class in LotusScript or RichTextItem in Java to create the message body. Depending what address you send it to, it can either be a regular email or a fax.

To keep a record of what you sent, create a mail-in database (you'll need a Notes/Domino administrator) and add the address of this mail-in database as the BCC list of the email. This is the third argument of @MailSend, or the BlindCopyTo field if creating the memo in LotusScript or Java. The mail router will deliver an exact copy of each fax into this mail-in database.

Or, you could just save the memo document you just emailed into the current database with the NotesDocument.Save method. Either way, you can store extra fields with whatever information you like.

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Related information from SearchDomino.com:

  • Learning Guide LotusScript
  • FAQ: Java for Lotus Notes and Domino
  • FAQ: LotusScript
  • Reference Center: LotusScript tips and resources
  • Reference Center: Java tips and resources

    • This was first published in December 2006

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