Today, I would like to talk about the automatic fax aging features in RightFax enterprise editions. Automatic fax aging is one of the most important features within RightFax; automatic fax aging allows your RightFax server to run at its peak performance. As we know RightFax does not make a good archive solution since every fax image is stored in a single file per page format in the RightFax/Image directory, this can cause the image folder to become unmanageable by the windows operating system and RightFax server.
By default RightFax has automatic fax aging disabled and I think this is a very bad policy. Here’s a little information about automatic fax aging from the RightFax administrators guide for version 10.0:
With automatic fax aging, you can specify the number of days after the date the faxes sent or received that it will be deleted from a user’s FaxUtil mailbox. Automatic fax aging is only available if you have a RightFax enterprise server. Automatic fax aging does not remove the fax records from the RightFax database, so you can still run reports about the faxes.
If, you’re running RightFax business server or branch office edition you can still perform Manual fax aging with the Faxage.exe program; which we will cover in another blog post in the near future.
It has been my experience that faxes should be stored on the RightFax server for the shortest amount of time possible this is due to the fax that in most environments inbound fax documents or forwarded on to a third party application and that outbound jobs are also created by a third party applications and systems.
If at all possible start with a maximum fax age date of four days and expand it out from there. As a RightFax administrator, you will need to take the fax age date to the managers of your business units to find out how many days they require faxes to remain on the server.
So now you may be asking yourself “Just how do I setup fax age for my users?”
- Setting up automatic fax aging from within RightFax is handled through enterprise fax manager (EFM). Start by opening EFM and authenticating against the RightFax database.
- Open up the Groups
- Double click on the group that you are editing and select the Automatic Fax Aging tab
- Set the number of days that faxes can be stored on the RightFax server and click OK
Now you’re all set, when RightFax performs its nightly maintenance it will read the information from the group for automatic fax aging and start the deletion process for all faxes older than the number of days specified in the settings.
