Email to fax processing system

摘要

An email-to-facsimile (fax) processing system efficiently services requests issued by customers of the system in a fair and impartial manner. The system illustratively includes a plurality of components configured to provide email-to-fax processing services over a network. The components of the email-to-fax system include computer nodes executing software processes and/or services embodied as one or more FaxEmail routers, FaxEmail pollers, Rendering servers and Fax assemblers. The email-to-fax processing services provided by the components illustratively include email storage and retrieval services, email-to-fax conversion services and fax organizational transmission services. One or more of these services may be performed by the components in a randomized fashion to ensure that the customer requests, such as email-to-fax requests, may be fairly and impartially processed by the system.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
configuring a plurality of components of an email-to-fax processing system to provide email-to-fax processing services over a network, wherein the components include a FaxEmail router, a FaxEmail poller, a Rendering server and a Fax assembler; randomly accessing email headers from a maildrop on a public email server at the FaxEmail router; forwarding the email headers to the FaxEmail poller; retrieving emails, including attachments, associated with the email headers from the maildrop at the FaxEmail poller; storing the attachments in a file server of the system and the email headers as a first data set in a database of the system; converting the attachments to faxes at the Rendering server; storing the faxes in the file server and fax headers for the faxes in a second data set of the database; and organizing the faxes for transmission over the network at the Fax assembler.