This page provides information to help you understand 
how the NetCFax system is designed for use in 
Windows networking environments.

The schematic below shows the basic configuration.

Quite naturally the NetCFax server is at the very heart of the system, and handles and controls all sending and receiving of faxes, storage of those faxes and it also provides controlled access to the faxes to all logged in fax clients.

Due to this, the fax server is the only machine that requires fax modems to be installed.

All faxes are stored in a special set of sub folders on the fax server machine. They are stored on the disk in their original fax (TIF) format, and due to this, they can be accessed by external programs as well if required. 

To allow the NetCFax server to mirror the way a standard fax machine works, it can if required be configured to automatically print incoming and/or outgoing faxes, and it can also automatically create PDF copies of all received faxes.

To access any faxes, the NetCFax client must first login to the NetCFax server using a NetCFax login account. The sever will not allow any single login account to be in use more than once concurrently, which is of course how the server licensing system works and is controlled. Each login account (you create these on the fax server itself) can be assigned certain fax access rights.  These range from the standard 'individual' account that only allows access to that particular individuals outgoing faxes, and no access to received faxes unless assigned to them, all the way to the full NetCFax 'administrator' account, which provides access to all faxes of all type without any limits.  You can of course create as many of your own access groups as you wish and assign various different access rights to each of them.

To provide copies of faxes to the networked fax clients, the NetCFax server uses a special fax database that holds all available information on all faxes, plus the location of the original fax file(s) on the hard disk as a fully qualified path and file name.  Whenever a NetCFax client wants to view a fax, a TCP request is sent across the network and the NetCFax server provides that client with the fax file that is required. The client can then view/print this, take a copy locally, modify the original file, resend it as a fax or even forward it as an email, and of course delete it if they wish to do so, providing the fax server allows such deletions (control of deletions by the fax server is available based on the fax type - Pending, Sent, Failed or Received). 

When a NetCFax client logs off from the fax server, all fax data that may have been temporarily stored locally by that fax client during the login session is automatically deleted for additional security.

Once any client is logged in, the fax server will automatically control which of the faxes it will provide to that specific login account when requested, as of course it knows what access rights that login account has had assigned to it, and therefore what faxes they are allowed to access.

To send a fax from a NetCFax client is extremely simple. but as previously the fax client must first be logged into a NetCFax Server. To create a cover page only fax is of course the most simple task, requiring only that you click the green "Create New Fax" button on the main client window. This displays the NetCFax fax creation wizard, letting you select other documents to be added to the fax if required. If not, just click the "Next" button, complete the recipient and sender details, add any cover page text you want to send, and finally click the "Send" button. The fax data is sent across the network to the NetCFax server, which firstly checks it, and then schedules the fax to be sent. This can be set to go immediately or to be sent out at a later time or date.  If so configured, the NetCFax server will even send back a notification to the client that owns the fax whenever it is sent, or even fails to be sent (after all specified retries), providing that client is still logged in at the time.

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