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Sending and Receiving Faxes

The Imagicle StoneFax server lets you send and receive faxes through email instead of a physical fax machine. Outgoing faxes are sent from your district email account; incoming faxes arrive in a department email account as an attachment.

When to use the fax server — and when not to

The fax server is recommended for non-confidential information only. A traditional physical fax machine is still recommended for sending confidential and sensitive information such as credit card numbers and Social Security numbers.

Use the fax server for:

  • Routine correspondence, forms and documents that don't contain sensitive personal or financial data
  • Departments with an unreliable or aging fax machine

Use a physical fax machine for:

  • Credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, and other confidential or sensitive information
  • Departments that regularly receive confidential information by fax

If your department has an unreliable fax machine and doesn't handle confidential faxes, ETS suggests migrating to the fax server.

Sending a fax

  1. Create a new email addressed to [email protected].
  2. Put the recipient's fax number in the Subject line. Include the area code.
    • Do not include 9 or 1 — the outside line and long distance codes are added by the server.
    • No spaces, dashes or parentheses.
    • Example subject line: 6509496124
  3. Use the body of the email for anything you want on the cover page. The first page of the sent fax is a generic StoneFax cover page.
  4. Attach the documents you want to fax. You can attach as many as you like. You can also simply type your message in the body with no attachments.
  5. Send the email.

You'll receive confirmation emails back from the fax server reporting the progress and outcome of the transmission.

Receiving faxes

To receive faxes you need a department email account set up for fax use. The entire fax arrives as an attachment to an email in that account.

It cannot be an alias or an email list address — something like [email protected] that is really a distribution list of individual addresses will not work. It must be an actual mailbox.

Request a department email account for fax

  1. Submit an ETS Request for Help at helpdesk.fhda.edu. Log in with your MyPortal ID and password, and Create a Help Desk Ticket.
  2. State whether you want a new department email account created, or an existing one configured for fax use.
  3. If you have an existing fax number you want to keep — for example from a fax machine you're retiring — include that number in the request so it can be transferred. Otherwise a new fax number will be assigned to the account.

Make sure more than one employee knows the login ID and password for the department account. If only one person can get into it, incoming faxes become inaccessible the moment that person is out.

Telling others how to fax you

Nothing special is required on their end. People send a fax to the phone number associated with your department email account exactly as they would to any fax machine, including the area code — for example 650-949-7707.

Existing fax machines

Existing fax machines were migrated onto the Cisco VoIP phone system with no change to how they are used. The system supports analog lines and fax machines alongside the fax server.

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