Shared faxing facility

[Leslie Isaacs]

Hello All

I am using Windows 2000 Professional and Office 97 Professional, over a
peer-to-peer network of 5 PCs (in the dining room!), one of which is just
acting as a 'file-server'. The main activity has 4 people working on the 4
other PCs using an MS Access97 application, the backend of which is on the
'file-server'. I have stayed with Office 97 because the Access application
that was written in Access97 and that is now sufficiently complex not to be
upgradeable with the upgrade wizard (because of the modules I think). The
other reason for not upgrading is because it works perfectly well as it is,
so no reason to change: but depending on the answers I get to the questions
below, there may now be a reason?

Currently just one PC has email set up, with Outlook97, and faxes are
received seperately via a designated phone line to a fax machine.
I want to move from this to having email and fax available across the
network.
Should I set up faxing under Outlook97, or under Windows2000 - or something
else like WinFax Pro?
Is this a reason for me to move to Office2000 (and therefore Outlook2000)?
Do I need Exchange Server?
Ideally, I would like all incoming and outgoing faxes to be 'filed'
alongside corresponding emails. By this I mean that, for e.g. if I were
using Outlook for the faxing, I would create an Outlook folder for each
client into which all their faxes and emails were saved.

I realise that I may have a fairly complex task on my hands, but I'm the
nearest thing we have to an IT person so I'm going to have to work through
it - hopefully with some help from here!

I would be very grateful if someone could at least point me in the right
direction.

Many thanks
Leslie Isaacs

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

The only fax programs offered by Microsoft that can be shared are SBS Fax
and Windows 2003 Server Fax. Windows 2000 Fax cannot be shared and upgrading
to any version of Office won't help a thing.