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Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

twilio.com

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Re: Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

#81

Post by bluesign »

IgorPartola wrote: post #64
rabidonrails wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phaxio founder here. Our pricing might seem higher (and may be in certain situations), but it works a bit differently that Twilio's. Twilio charges you the 1c _plus_ the costs of the call. Phaxio is an "all in" rate _including_ retrying the call. And, at Phaxio, if the calls all fail there's no cost to you. I'm not saying that we won't adjust our pricing (#competition), but there's a difference in the actual unit cos…

How long does it take to send a page of fax? Their pricing is 0.007 per minute. I haven't seen many fax machines take more than a minute per page, but they would have to take 10 minutes to catch up to your pricing. Edit: Fixed time to comparable pricing.

10 minutes not 1000 minutes

Re: Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

#82

Post by theLearningChan »

kelnos wrote: post #78
troyastorino wrote: post #49

Anyone see anything about how they handle simultaneous incoming faxes to the same number? With other faxing APIs we've used, if we get a new inbound fax while another is being received, the second (new) inbound fax will get a busy signal and not get procewsed. Phaxio has said they can handle any number of simultaneous inbound faxes, but we haven't had a chance to try them yet. It would be nice to know if Twilio is an…

Multiple simultaneous incoming is fine. They'll all get received properly.

HOW WOULD YOU KNOW!

/s

Re: Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

#83

Post by Roboprog »

troyastorino wrote: post #56
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the use case for barcode recognition? Sorry I've never had to use faxes much myself so I'm curious.

For us — we send out requests for medical records to doctors' offices. When doctors send records back to us, they usually include the cover sheet we sent over. Since that cover sheet has a barcode on it, we know which record request the incoming records are for.

Same. At work we are in the process of rewriting an application that sends FAXes to doctors for their signatures. The barcode is on the edge of the doc, rather than the coverpage, but otherwise, same. The barcode is used as less error prone OCR for a record number so the FAX can be associated with the right "file". The users requesting the FAX loop view the returned document when it comes back to verify it (or at least, they will, when I finish recreating that feature :-) ). HOWEVER, users DO NOT sift through all incoming documents with data for other people which is none of a given user's business. Having to do so would be not only an inconvenience, but a data privacy issue.

Plus, I would rather somebody else build doc ID OCR in a language other than Java so I don't have to build it myself. This is going to come up time and time again.

Re: Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

#84

Post by Artemis2 »

Roboprog wrote: post #79
Artemis2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why we have DocuSign!

"Wet signature" being a term with some legal standing. DocuSign, not so much, other than for preliminary real estate actions.

Could you elaborate on the "not so much"? A lot of companies (including law firms and Fortune 100 corps) have had me sign documents with DocuSign/HelloSign with no reservation. What would be the potential legal differences compared to an actual signature?

Re: Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

#85

Post by fragmede »

bambax wrote: post #39
patio11 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the Uber-for-food-delivery startups use them for ordering at restaurants because there is no text-based API to restaurants and the UX of receiving an automated phone call is poor. They're pervasive in finance, insurance, employee benefits, etc. They're also a good one-to-many API multiplexer. So many businesses can take a fax and have a human operate on it that many software companies can use them to add act…

> food-delivery So it's easier/cheaper for a restaurant to have a dedicated phone line for faxing (plus fax and supplies) than connect a printer to a PC? Is this because someone needs to actually print incoming emails or orders? And if yes, is there an opportunity for some kind of software solution that would always print what it receives, with no human intervention?

Email-to-printer is a built-in feature on many high-end printers already (HP calls it ePrint), and it's easy enough to glue together some software (fetchmail --python/whatever glue--> cups) and package it up as a distro for the raspberry pi 3 (with its built-in wifi and regular usb ports). Plug Twilio in and now the system can also receive faxes.

If you have lots of friends in the restaurant business and am itching to get into sales, there's a cottage-industry that fits between a $50 on-sale inkjet printer, and $1000 high-end HP, but it includes on-site installation, configuration, and support.

Re: Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

#86

Post by tonyhb »

patio11 wrote: post #12
bizzleDawg wrote: post #3

The shocking thing about this is that there must still be enough Faxes being sent to actually justify this new product. Where are they still used at 'scale'?

A lot of the Uber-for-food-delivery startups use them for ordering at restaurants because there is no text-based API to restaurants and the UX of receiving an automated phone call is poor. They're pervasive in finance, insurance, employee benefits, etc. They're also a good one-to-many API multiplexer. So many businesses can take a fax and have a human operate on it that many software companies can use them to add act…

AFAIK HotelTonight also use faxes for every booking, as do almost every other booking site. Mainly due to the same issue: all hotels use different systems.

Re: Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

#87

Post by cbhl »

bizzleDawg wrote: post #3

The shocking thing about this is that there must still be enough Faxes being sent to actually justify this new product. Where are they still used at 'scale'?

Anything that is legally mandated to not go over the "American Internet" (for example, Canadian health care records).

A lot of routine tasks in Japan also require a fax machine.

Re: Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

#88

Post by viggity »

tdeschamps wrote: post #59
pg_bot wrote: post #26

If Twilio will sign a business associates agreement, this could be huge in the healthcare field. EMRs have terrible interoperability so doctors and health systems typically fax health records to one another. However, this service does not look HIPAA compliant based on the sparse documentation. It doesn't look promising that they will sign a BAA according to this document. https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/…

They might have not considered this to be a big enough business opportunity when they penned this section.

I'm in healthcare. I'm not kidding you, we got an 800 page fax last month from one of our clients. It wasn't a generated e-fax either, we received it electronically (we use sfax), but the lady who sent it literally printed 800 pages and put them on her fax machine.

It isn't the business opportunity that is the problem (that is huge), it is the all of the HIPAA/HITECH regulations which creep into every part of your business that is the limiting factor.

Re: Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

#89

Post by cbhl »

beamatronic wrote: post #47
digi_owl wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that holding a fax copy of a contract with a signature is as good in court as holding the contract itself. But holding a PDF of same is not.

Electronic signing is a thing however. Faxes are successful because they are the technology "lowest common denominator" for business

I was under the impression that HelloFax/HelloSign basically did this -- they would let you digitally sign the document, and then fax it out to someone (possibly yourself).

Re: Programmable Fax – API for sending and receiving faxes

#90

Post by nojvek »

kelnos wrote: post #80
IgorPartola wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long does it take to send a page of fax? Their pricing is 0.007 per minute. I haven't seen many fax machines take more than a minute per page, but they would have to take 10 minutes to catch up to your pricing. Edit: Fixed time to comparable pricing.

I'd be surprised to see more than a couple minutes for even a complicated fax page. I've seen 45-70 seconds average for a not-too-complicated page. It also depends on the baud rate (never thought that term would come back, eh?) negotiated between both ends. A 14400 baud transmission will of course be faster than 9600.

I paid $10 to send a 28 page fax. I absolutely believe utility and govt companies still use fax because they want to make somethings very hard for the average customer. There's no reason why I shouldn't be able to send an email a pdf to show good credit so they don't charge me a deposit fee.

Twilio please build a mobile app so those of us who don't live with typewriters and fax machines can deal with our nasty govt.

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