NETCFAX INFORMATION 
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WHAT IS PLANNED FOR THE NEXT 
MAJOR RELEASE OF NETCFAX
(Estimated release date - September 2008)

DON'T WAIT TO REGISTER YOUR SYSTEM
 Despite all of the new features, these new releases will be FREE 
upgrades to all registered NetCFax customers, providing they 
have registered copies of NetCFax 2.75, Pro 3.16 or PRO+ 3.6.

All versions of NetCFax have new releases made on fairly regular basis, to not only ensure that we provide the features needed by our customers, but also to rectify any possible bugs/defects that may have been identified, and subsequently fixed.

However, the next release is going to include a major upgrade to the fax engine that improves many areas of fax handling, and as a major bonus, it allows NetCFax to save and display the original (rasterized) fax cover pages of outgoing faxes in the actual format they were sent out in.

This means that when outgoing faxes are viewed or printed from the NetCFax cabinet, the cover page is exactly as it was received by the recipient, plus all attached pages (if any).  You can even save these complete outgoing faxes as PDF files if you wish.

These changes have led to many other improvements in the systems, and as an added benefit, this additional functionality is being added to ALL versions of NetCFax from v2.x upwards.

Although ALL of these new releases represent a major upgrade to all versions of NetCFax, upgrades will still be FREE to those who currently have licensed copies of v2.7x, 3.16x and 3.6x.  For those with earlier releases, the same small upgrade fee is payable as to upgrade from earlier releases to the current releases.

These new releases represent a very major upgrade, and include the identification and removal of several bugs that it was found could cause earlier releases the "hang or crash" for no apparent reason.

To identify these new systems as clearly as possible once they are shipped we have changed the minor version numbering of all of these new releases to the versions shown below.

NetCFax 2.8 is the ENTRY LEVEL SYSTEM.
   
NetCFax Pro 3.2 continues to be the mainstream release for those who want to flexible handling capability for both sending and receiving of faxes. 
   
NetCFax PRO+ 3.7 offers top end fax handling with additional and powerful functionality.

As stated above, the new system uses an upgraded and far more efficient fax engine and fax control database system, that also allows NetCFax to offer many new and even more powerful features.  (Please see the list below for more details on the enhancements). 

IMPORTANT - Due to the major enhancements made to both the fax database system and the internal fax handling system, these new releases are NOT DESIGNED TO BE FULLY COMPATIBLE with any of the earlier releases.  Upgrade systems for all previous versions will of course be made available and they will convert your existing fax data to work with the new system and will also retain all of your current fax server and fax client settings.

Although it is certainly possible (but not recommended) to mix older fax clients with the new fax servers and vice versa (they should not crash or corrupt data), but you will find that none of the new features will not be available if you try to do so.  The new Fax Clients now check for this and provide a popup warning you if you attempt to do so.

This is a very important change, for as noted above it offers us the opportunity to provide several features that we have been asked for many times. 
         

The PRO+ fax client cabinet now has additional options on the popup context menu to let you save both Sent and Failed faxes as PDF files, or other common image formats such as BMP, GIF, PNG.  Outgoing faxes contain the actual rasterized cover page image as well.  Naturally these options are still available for Received faxes too.
    

This is very important, as it provides us with the ability to run totally transparently on all current versions of Windows, including Windows Servers and similar systems.
            

The new fax engine now allows us to retain the true (rasterized) image of the fax cover page once any attempt is made to send it, so that you can see exactly what it looked like when sent, or even if it fails to be sent.

The process of rasterizing the cover pages only occurs when a fax is about to be sent, so you cannot view the actual cover page of a fax BEFORE it is sent, but once it has been sent, or at least has been tried to be sent (even if it fails), the image of the cover page is now available as an integral part of the whole fax image.

This means you can print the entire fax, including the cover page, exactly as it was sent, or even save it all as a PDf file.
    

Because we now have the true image of the fax cover page it means that you can now print the entire fax, including the cover page, exactly as it was sent, or just the actual cover page, or just the pages that were attached with the cover page, or of course, you can still print a transmission report.
    

The new system now installs a new "User Mode" Printer driver that is fully aware of both Remote Desktop Session environments and Fast Task switching environments .  This means that you no longer have to use the "Remote fax printer" that was provided with older releases.

The all new User Mode Printer driver is now able to respond normally to each different fax client even when the client is being run by multiple different networked clients from the same Windows Server machine using RDP sessions (Remote Desktop Sessions) or FTS (Fast Task Switching).
    

The upgraded printer drivers provide us with the original name of the file that has been printed, so the fax clients (not the fax server) now use that name for the TIF file generated by the fax printer driver rather than a "hash" file name used in previous releases.  This simplifies this whole task quite considerably, and to quite large extent makes the use of the popup that asks you to provide a name for the faxable file almost unnecessary, although you still may wish to do so for whatever reason.  You can of course already configure the system to bypass this window if you prefer to do so. 

If there is already another faxable file in the system with the same original source document name, we add a tilde and a number to the file name.  

eg a file named : my sales forecast.xls is printed and named exactly the same, but with a TIF suffix. If printed a second time it will be named : my sales forecast~1.tif, the next time : my sales forecast~2.tif etc. This ensures that a faxable document is never overwritten by a later copy.

If the file name sent to the printer starts with the application name of  "Microsoft Word -", NetCFax will remove it from the file name for you automatically.  eg: "Microsoft Word - my sales forecast.xls"  would be named "my sales forecast.xls" by the system.
    

The PRO+ fax client cabinet now has an option on the popup context menu to let you save Sent, Failed and received faxes locally (or on the network) in their original TIF format.  Outgoing faxes that are not still waiting to be sent in the Pending folder will contain the actual rasterized cover page image as well.  Faxes that have not yet been sent do not have the rasterized cover page available. 
    

Because it is the fax engine that actually handles all of the sending and receiving of faxes, and because it is also possible to have the fax engine continue to do so even if the NetCFax Fax Server interface itself is not running. So to allow you to stay in control of what the fax engine is doing, we have now provided a 'Pause" option that lets you stop all of the available modems from being used by the fax engine if you ever wish to do so.
   
If a modem is in use at the time you enable the Pause system, that connection is completed normally BEFORE the modem is listed as Paused.
         

To improve both the sending and receiving of faxes, the new fax engine supports class 2.1 modems for the first time, and if you are using a modem that offers this, full support for ECM is also provided.  This allows the modem to negotiate with the remote machine on a continuous basis, ensuring that all data is sent/received correctly.
    

    
page last updated March 25, 2008