Use this technology to cut costs in hardware, printing, mailing, and phone calls-and to improve your productivity

(AS/400 Magazine September/October 1994)
By Gary Langton, President of Quadrant Software

There are currently more than 16 million fax machines in the United States, and more than 95% of all US businesses have at least one machine.

For AS/400 shops-where that number is probably closer to 100%-it's now possible to integrate fax and computing technologies. With AS/400 Fax, users can create, send, receive, and manage faxes directly from the AS/400, saving time and money.

WHY AS/400 FAX?

Implementing any new technology requires a careful look at the financial payback. There are four main benefits to implementing AS/400 Fax: reduced hardware costs, productivity improvement, off-hour phone savings, and reduced printing and mailing costs.

Reduced hardware costs: With AS/400 Fax, a company can expect to eliminate most of its existing fax machines and, therefore, the supply and maintenance costs for those machines. By replacing the machines with a centralized electronic device that has no moving parts, the cost associated with downtime can also be cut. The entire cost of faxing is not eliminated, however, because most AS/400 Fax vendors charge for software and hardware maintenance. With a reduced number of fax units on-site, though, there's usually a net savings.

NO AS/400 Fax vendor, however, claims to be able to eliminate all existing fax machines, because no product offers a way to fax items that do not filter through the AS/400. To fax a magazine article or a letter received in the mail, for example, a regular stand-alone fax machine is still required. But since the majority of items that are faxed by businesses are generated on a computer, AS/400 Fax goes a long way toward improving operations, increasing productivity, and reducing costs.

Productivity improvement: Implementing AS/400 Fax turns every terminal or PC attached to the AS/400 into a fax machine, which eliminates the "Fax Shuffle." The Fax Shuffle is what happens when the average user shuffles off to send a fax. For example, a buyer who wants to expedite the processing of a purchase order by faxing it to the vendor rather than mailing it beings by taking the purchase order from the in-basket and heading toward the fax machine. The first stop is the coffee machine where last night's game is the hot topic of conversation. After getting a fill of the scores and coffee, the buyer heads to the room where the fax machine is located. There, the buyer fills out a cover sheet before waiting in line behind others who also have decided that a fax delivered today means more than a document arriving three to five days later. After finally getting to the front of the line, the buyer loads the machine, punches in the number, and waits.

If the buyer is lucky enough to get through on his first try, the purchase order begins to transmit and he waits at the fax machine until it confirms that it has transmitted successfully.. He then heads toward the coffee machine for a refill before heading back to his desk. Total time taken to transmit the fax: 15 minutes.

AS/400 Fax eliminates all of the above steps and replace them with a couple of keystrokes by allowing the purchase order to be transmitted right from the buyer's terminal. Total transmission time: less than 20 seconds.

The result is an efficient user. Productivity has been improved by a factor of 45 and the available number of fax machines has increased to the number of terminals attached to the AS/400.

Off-hour phone savings: Faxing tends to take place during the day, when long-distance carriers charge the most for phone calls. But most AS/400 Fax products act as an intelligent user by waiting to send faxes during off-hours when it's cheaper. These products will retry a fax number if it fails to transmit, perhaps because the other machine was busy. Some products will even batch faxes that are destined for the same fax number by making one phone call instead of many. This is a real cost-saver because the most expensive part of any phone call is the first minute.

While the total savings from sending faxes during off-hours will depend on the number of local versus long distance calls a company makes and the charge associated with the calling plan, it is not uncommon to save more than 20% from mid-day phone rates. The annual savings for an average customer who sends 150 faxes per day can result in tens of thousands of dollars in savings in the first year alone.

Reduced printing/mailing costs: AS/400 Fax products work with electronic images rather than printed forms, thus implementing AS/400 Fax means eliminating the forms altogether. In addition, the envelope the document is mailed in-as well as the first-class stamp-are eliminated. This is particularly significant as the cost of postage continues to rise. There are also labor costs involved in printing and mailing. The savings from eliminating manual handling of documents with AS/400 Fax can be substantial.

There have been several studies that have tried to estimate the cost of processing a single form, with estimates running anywhere between $1.25 and $1.75 per form.

Using a low estimate of $1.25 per form to calculate the savings for a company that prints and mails 100 forms per day, the cost will be $125 per day. Using AS/400 Fax will eliminate most of the paperwork handling costs, but will also incur the cost of phone calls. If we assume the average call cost about $.15, the AS/400 Fax will return a net savings of $10 per day, or $2,200 per month.

These savings can be even greater if your company is using traditional faxing or overnight delivery-as opposed to mailed documents-to speed up delivery.

LINKING TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD

All AS/400 Fax products are not created equal, but all of them have one thing in common: a hardware device that connects directly to the AS/400. This device is the interface to the outside world. It has a phone jack that connects the device to either a PBX or an outside phone line.

The hardware device for sending and receiving AS/400-generated faxes can be attached to the As/400 by several methods. Third-party vendors support Twinax, Communication Line, Token-Ring, and Ethernet connections. In May, IBM added input/output processor (IOP) to the list with the new Integrated Fax Adapter card. This new card works with all the new AS/400 Advanced Series (except the AS/400 Advanced Portables) as well as other models running OS/400* V2R3 via a Programming Request for Price Quotation (PRPQ).

There are also other methods for sending faxes from your AS/400, including services offered by carriers such as AT&T*'s EasyLink* that handles faxes over their network. These services are advantageous when transmitting a single fax to numerous locations within a short time. They are usually more expensive than using your existing phone line to transmit faxes, though, because you pay for the service of having the carrier handle the delivery of the faxes. In several instances, companies have been charged up to $.60 per fax, which is quite a bit more than the $.14 to $.18 per minute charge for a standard phone call.

HOW FAXING WORKS

Fax transmission is simple, whether it's from a standard fax machine or a computer-connected fax device such as an AS/400 Fax product. A specialized fax modem dials another fax machine through the public switched network. The receiving fax modem answers the call and then the two modems begin to negotiate an acceptable speed. The modems will first attempt to transmit at their maximum rated speed, sometimes 14,400 Kps, but noise on the line and other problems may cause the two modems to "train" down to 4,800 bps or even 2,400 bps.

Once the negotiating is completed, the receiving fax machine begins to accept a specialized file type from the sending fax machine, which is referred to as the Modified Huffman format. This format is actually a file that contains a bunch of dots, in the forms of 1's and 0's. The 1's and 0's are re-created on the receiving fax machine in the form of dots when received. An algorithm is used with run-length encoding that speeds up the transmission, but the time required to receive a fax will not only depend on the amount of black on the sending page, but also on the location of those black dots and the connection speed. The resolution of the fax will also affect the length of the transmission because a fine resolution fax needs to transmit twice as many dots as a standard fax. That's part of the reason why it is virtually impossible to tell someone how long a fax will take to transmit.

At the end of each page of a fax transmission, the fax modems check with each other to ensure that they are still in synch and that the previous page was properly received. The fax standard allows for some errors on the page, but if there are too many, then the two machines agree to end the transmission. At the end of the last page, the receiving machine, having successfully received each page of the transmission, sends a confirmation to the sending fax modem and ends the call by hanging up.

The process for transmitting faxes described above is identical regardless of where the fax originates or whether the fax machines are stand-alone devices or are AS/400 Fax devices. This is made possible by the International Telecommunications Standards Support (ITU-TSS)- the United Nations body that establishes the standard for international communications, including fax-thereby ensuring that the phone networks and devices in Dubuque, Iowa, are compatible with those in Budapest, Hungary without such worldwide standards, sending faxes would require special protocols for individual countries.

TYPES OF AS/400 FAX PRODUCTS

There are three types of AS/400 Fax products: processors, modems, and IOPs. The physical transmission process is identical for all three types. The difference lies in the effect each has on your AS/400.

Processors: An independent fax processor has the least effect on your AS/400 because it acts independently from the AS/400. The AS/400 is only invoked for moving files up and down as required. The processor handles the actual transmission while the AS/400 handles the order of fax transmissions, a log of activity, and the uploading and downloading of files. Forms merging and formatting is all performed without eating up any precious AS/400 CPU cycles.

Modems: A fax modem is the least friendly to your AS/400 because it has limited storage and intelligence, and therefore must rely on the AS/400 to communicate with it during a fax transmission. This communication forces the AS/400 to consume CPU cycles to keep the modem active.

IOPs: The IOP type, although tightly integrated with the AS/400 hardware and operating system, falls somewhere between the processor and modem product. The Integrated Fax Adapter has on-board memory to eliminate most of the activity between the card and the AS/400 during transmission, but it requires more information from the AS/400, such as fonts and graphics. These items are included directly in the datastream that is sent to the card.

As you might expect, the IOP type has only one connection method-specifically, the bus on the AS/400. Fax modems are generally connected to the AS/400 via standard V.24 communications lines. Fax processors, however, can be connected in a multitude of methods, but not as an IOP.

Regardless of fax type, it is much easier for AS/400 Fax products to send faxes than it is to receive them. When sending faxes, the AS/400 works with and moves data to the fax device in a familiar text data format. When receiving faxes, the AS/400 must work with and manipulate image files, which are foreign to the AS/400 without intelligent workstations such as PCs. This can make it difficult to route a received fax to the proper recipient.

MAKING A CONNECTION

The connection method used when sending faxes makes little difference in terms of throughput. The explanation is simple. At the start of the fax process of a one-page memo, for example, the memo is approximately 1 Kb of stored data to the AS/400, stored as either a database member or spooled file. The stored data (member or spooled file) is then moved to a fax hardware device (modem, processor, or IOP) that coverts the memo into a fax format, which is a specialized image format. The resultant image can easily turn into a 40K file before it begins to transmit to a fax machine.

Because most fax machines in the world support 9,600 Kbs, the image file takes much longer to transmit than it does to download to the hardware device. So the bottleneck when sending faxes is not the moving of data from the AS/40 to the hardware device, but rather the communication link between the hardware device and the fax machine at the other end, over which an AS/400 Fax product has no control. Therefore, it really doesn't matter what method you choose for connecting your AS/400 Fax products. As long as the link between the AS/400 and the hardware device is at least 9600/400 Kbs, all the methods will sufficiently keep your AS/400 Fax product busy.

The connection method for receiving faxes, on the other hand, does matter. Because a received fax is a large image, moving it to the AS/400 requires a fast enough conduit between the AS/400 and the hardware device to keep your AS/400 Fax product busy. The IOP, Twinax, Ethernet, or Token-Ring methods provide acceptable throughout for moving image files to the AS/400, whereas a communications line connection will severely hamper the total throughput of your AS/400 Fax product. That's because the connection method becomes the bottleneck to total fax throughput when you're receiving faxes.

HARDWARE CONSIDERATIONS

Now that you understand how AS/400 Fax products work, there are other factors to consider. The most critical item is the hardware requirements for implementing AS/400 Fax. For sending faxes, there are no additional hardware requirements beyond the fax hardware device itself for receiving faxes, however, you must consider the effect on your AS/400 because it can be significant.

Remember that received faxes are images, so all the hardware requirements for managing images come into play. Because fax images range from 40K-60K per page, receiving hundreds of faxes per day may require an additional direct-access storage device (DASD), or, at a minimum, some kind of management tool to ensure that your AS/400 does not become overwhelmed with archived faxes. In addition, proper terminals to view faxes are important. Fixed-function terminals, such as the IBM 3476 and 3477, are not graphic terminals and hence cannot display the fax image.

Some vendors provide integrated software for allowing a fax image to be displayed on a PC that is usually connected to the AS/400 via PC Support/400 (also known as Client Access/400* on OS/400 Version 3 Release 1) and uses shared folders. Another choice is to implement an image-management system such as ImagePlus*, but that can be a rather costly alternative for the simple task of viewing and archiving inbound faxes. A third alternative is a fixed function display with graphics capabilities built in.

Although there is no such product available from IBM today, one that is under development by the company was displayed at the Spring '94 COMMON meeting.

Printers are another hardware consideration for receiving faxes. Naturally, you must have a printer that can support the printing of images. Naturally, you must have a printer that can support the printing of images. The list of specific printers supported by AS/400 Fax vendors varies, but most support HP LaserJet type printers. IBM Facsimile support/400* supports Advanced Function Printing* (AFP*) - capable Intelligent Printer Data Stream* (IPDS*) printers, but it can also support HP LaserJet type printer with the addition of Print Services Facilities/2 (PSF/2) running on your LAN. In any case, your standard 4234 is not a good candidate for printing inbound faxes.

SOFTWARE/PROGRAMMING CONSIDERATIONS

Inbound Faxing

Although there are many hardware requirements for receiving faxes, there are actually fewer software considerations for inbound faxes than there are for creating and controlling outbound faxes. Since the received fax is an image, there is little that can be done to input it into your line of business applications, other than implementing an image management system. Even if an Office Vision/400* document is faxed from one location to another, it cannot be viewed and/or edited on the receiving AS/400 Fax device or software. So applications for received faxes are limited to viewing, printing, archiving, forwarding, and purging of the fax. Most vendors have some or all of these options.

Outbound Faxing

Software required for the outbound side of AS/400 Fax is more complex, however, because there are more ways to create faxes. It's important to understand that faxing is really an extension of printing because the receiving fax machine acts as a sort of remote printer to the AS/400 Fax hardware device. When discussing printing on the AS/400, we must talk about datastreams in spooled files, which is the starting point for all AS/400 Fax products on the market today.

THE DATASTREAM TRAP

Not all fax products in the marketplace support all the data streams available on the AS/400. There are three indigenous datastreams that the AS/400 supports: SNA Character Set (SCS, AFP, and IPDS. Each of these datastreams has unique characteristics, but SCS is the most predominant datastream used today, as well as the least flexible for handling the variety of printing options. It does not handle print options such as bar codes, images, graphics, and fonts. AFP and IPDS support each of these towers as part of the definition of the datastream itself. AFP, in particular, is a host-independent datastream for printing jobs created on one Systems Application Architecture* (SAA*)-compliant host with the same results on any other SAA-compliant host, such as OS/2* with Presentation Manager*.

For simplicity's sake, AFP is the datastream that allows AS/400 shops to eliminate preprinted forms because the form is electronically stored as part of the datastream instead of loaded into the printer. The advantage of AFP is the ability to print electronic images with data, eliminating the need to manually change those forms on a printer. Instead, a printer is loaded with plain paper, and the form prints right along with the text from the spooled file.

Most AS/400 Fax solutions only handle SCS datastreams, because they handle the merging of forms and graphics differently than having them embedded as part of the datastream itself.

OUTBOUND FAXING VIA API

Some AS/400 Fax products, including IBM's Facsimile Support/400 and Quadrant Software's Fast Fax/Blue* product support AFP and IPDS, therefore the form is part of the datastream. In both cases, the form is actually stored on the AS/400 and defined as part of the spooled file itself, rather than as a specialized fax-only command.

Most third-party vendors have implemented their own fax language or application program interface (API) for transmitting faxes. These are specialized languages that tell the fax hardware device how and when to convert the spooled file into a fax. All third-party vendors provide a way to interpret their own proprietary commands from a spooled file.

The spooled file, when moved to the fax device, is parsed for the special fax commands. There are many commands to control all aspects of a fax transmission, including a command to merge prestored electronic forms and graphics with the spooled file text.

Each fax vendor provides a multiple of special commands for defining recipient information time the fax will be sent, what form to merge with the text, cover sheet to use, etc.-for each spooled file. For example, the following command found in a spooled file tells the fax hardware device to send the fax at 11 p.m. to Bob Jones at the ABC Company and to use the purchase order form as an overlay when sending the fax:

*F1Bob Jones *FCABC Company

*T123:00*FMPOFORM

Each AS/400 Fax vendor has its own format and rules for these embedded commands, and the commands are stripped from the spooled file before the actual fax transmission. The point is that the form that will be merged with the spooled file is not defined in the datastream, but rather as a special fax command that will be interpreted by the fax hardware device prior to transmission.

The disadvantage to using embedded commands for transmitting faxes is that the embedded commands that tell the fax device what to do are actually part of the data in your spooled file. If the data is printed without a special print program, those specialized commands are printed along with the rest of the spooled file information. To get around that, create two spooled files-one for printing and one for faxing. The benefit of the embedded-command API is that the fax device handles the manipulation of forms, thereby off-loading from the AS/400 that CPU intensive task.

Outbound Faxing Via CL

There are other methods for crating faxes. One of those is via the command language (CL) command/program method. This method has an advantage over the API method because it allows you to keep a spooled file intact without embedding specialized fax commands. Instead, the spooled file is created and either a proprietary CL command or program is called to process the spooled file for faxing. Parameters for recipient information, cover sheet, time to send the fax, etc., are passed along with the call itself.

Outbound Faxing Via PCs

If you have PCs connected to your AS/400, AS/400 Fax can act as a central fax server for your documents and spreadsheets. Several vendors have provided integrated solutions that allow users to create and send faxes from their popular PC applications and have the fax transmitted and controlled by the AS/400 Fax software. The advantage of this approach is that each PC doesn't need its own fax card for sending and receiving faxes. The PC uses the existing connection to the AS/400 (usually PC Support/400) to route the AS/400.

Controlling Your Faxing

Besides receiving and sending faxes, many AS/400 Fax vendors provide control and administration software to manage the fax system. The idea of AS/400 Fax is to centralize your faxing activity, and the control and administration software keeps the whole system humming.

Control Features offered by AS/400 Fax vendors include: batching faxes to the same fax number; refaxing a portion of a fax that did not transmit in its entirety; retrying frequencies for faxes that got a busy signal; real-time access to all the faxes in the system; completion and failure messages that are sent to end users; and functions such as print, hold, release, and/or cancel faxes waiting to transmit.

Administration issues for AS/400 Fax products include setting up new users, purging faxes from the AS/400 Fax system, starting and stopping the AS/400 Fax System, and running activity reports. Each vendor provides some or all of these features, but some vendors choose to implement them from the fax hardware device rather than on the AS/400, limiting the access to the information.

APPLICATION AREAS FOR FAXING

Now that we've covered the basics of AS/400 Fax, what applications are good candidates for automation? The answer is: anything that you can print from your AS/400 or an attached PC. In fact, AS/400 Fax is not just meant to enable existing applications with fax, it is also meant to provide desktop access to ad hoc faxing. AS/400 Fax should not be limited to just the applications that the MIS department has time to program in advance. The power of the technology is to let users redefine and improve operations. AS/400 Fax saves money by streamlining operations. The No. 1 application for AS/400 Fax is purchase orders. This stems from AS/400 strength in the distribution and manufacturing industries and from the just-in-time philosophy that pervades today's businesses. Since buying supplies eats up precious capital, waiting to purchase items until the last minute helps any business' cash flow. The reality, however, is that many items wind up on an expedite list, meaning that buyers are probably circumventing the normal process anyway by faxing what is already on its way in the mail.

If your company is using an electronic data interchange (EDI) method, then you are already well ahead of the game.

AS/400 Fax in no way replaces EDI, but rather compliments it. The 80/20 rule says in general that companies do 80% of their business with 20% of their vendors. Those vendors are great candidates for EDI. The other 20% of the business that is done with 80% of a company's vendors is an excellent candidate for AS/400 Fax automation.

There are many other general business documents that are good candidates for AS/400 Fax automation. Faxing invoices to customers can actually shorten the collection cycle. If a customer receives their net 30 invoice the same day as the shipment, instead of five days later because the post office delayed the mail, there is a good chance that you'll get paid five days earlier as well. Multiply this by your average accounts receivable and an AS/400 Fax solution will pay for itself in less than six months.

There are also industry-specific applications for AS/400 Fax. In the transportation industry, waybills, manifests, and shipping notices are excellent candidates for automation. The health-care industry is booming with possibilities. The two most common automation areas are transcriptions and lab results, which can be faxed directly to a physician's office, eliminating phone calls between the hospital and the physician's office.

Quotations, order acknowledgments, and account summaries are prime candidates for distributors. In addition, some distributors fax their pick tickets to remote warehouses that are not on-line to the AS/400, providing a lifeline between the two sites.

All the above are examples of automatic faxing-meaning operations that can be programmed in advance and faxed without operator intervention. They can be programmed using the API or CL method.

There are also many ad hoc or interactive faxing functions in which programming in advance is impractical and/or impossible. Many AS/400 Fax vendors provide interface into Office Vision/400 so that users can fax letters without leaving the application. Other popular ad hoc examples are quick memos (particularly useful if you are not an OfficeVision/400 user), screen capture facilities, and the ability to fax spooled files and queries from Query/400. The key element for each of these items is that the AS/400 Fax vendor provides software that lets end users fax items that the MIS staff has not had to program in advance.

Many products include on-line directories that are specifically designed for end users. These store frequently used fax numbers and broadcast lists for on-line access. This feature prevents end users from creating faxes with an incorrect fax number.

When thinking about areas that might benefit from AS/400 Fax, focus on what is stored and generated on the AS/400. Generally speaking, anything that is printed on the AS/400 is a good candidate. This includes items that aren't generated by your applications. A simple example: How about faxing job logs to your software vendor when your application unexpectedly crashes? AS/400 Fax just might be the answer.

You can contact the author at Quadrant Software at (508) 828-6222.