Processing Faxes Automatically - IDEAS Beyond Recognition
- From: Milind Joshi <milind.a.joshi@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:34:55 -0800 (PST)
Hi,
Thought that members in this group might be interested in the article
below...
Best Regards,
Milind Joshi
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Is fax used anymore?
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While it might be tempting to ask the above question, apart from those
who are on the cutting edge of electronic communication, fax remains
an integral part of their overall communications strategy.
What is also interesting that incoming faxes account for a major
portion of the "paper" received by companies working with a large
distributed client base. We're talking about consumer services
companies, law firms, accountants, government agencies, sales
agencies, doctors, hospitals...
Most times, faxes are simply handled like paper mail - printed on
paper, stamped, filed, copied, annotated with highlighting and
markers, and passed around.
Even at places where incoming faxes are electronically received, often
the first step is to print them out.
So why do businesses and people continue to use fax, even if it has
become so "old fashioned"?
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So why use "Old-fashioned fax"?
-------------------------------------------------
1. Simple, easy-to-use: just put the paper on the tray, enter a phone
number, and push "Start"
2. Inexpensive: Fax machines are inexpensive, telecommunication
expenses are inexpensive, and it costs just cents to print out a fax
3. Convenient: paper faxes are "there before your eyes when you need
them", assuming you can find them of course.
4. Still somewhat more secure than email - though this is highly
debatable, considering more and more fax traffic is routed over the
Internet, and once it reaches the receiving end fax, anyone who
happens to be around can see it.
5. Part of the fabric: People are used to them
6. High penetration: Almost every small business has a fax. Many small
businesses and individuals don't have a website or Internet access
during work hours but the fax machine is usually present and connected
to a phone line
7. Easiest form of "electronic signature": In the absence of a clear,
platform-independent, user-friendly, inexpensive electronic signature,
a faxed document with a signature on it is often the fastest way of
getting an "electronic signature" on a document
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So what are the problems with faxes?
---------------------------------------------------------
Sending faxes is easy enough, and receiving is too, but fax
transmission is often plagued with problems.
1. Incoming faxes can easily be misplaced, whether paper or electronic
2. There is no way for sender to verify transmission quality without
calling to check
3. If there was a problem with transmission, receiver and/or sender
need to co-ordinate to get the information across with lots of manual
efforts
4. If faxes are being printed to paper, there is a waste of paper and
toner
5. Finding faxes, whether printed or as electronic images is by
manually looking through each one
---------------------------------------------------------------
Some More Challenges with faxed images
---------------------------------------------------------------
The quality of incoming faxes is essentially determined by the sender
- the sending device sets transmission quality. Generally, fax
machines use the CCITT Fax Group 3 or CCITT Fax Group 4 TIFF format
for compressing and encoding transmissions. To save on the amount of
data transmitted, compression is used. Usually, compression results in
a reduction of detail and quality. The idea is to compress as much as
possible without sacrificing clarity and readability, but factors like
line noise means that the received fax could be more deteriorated than
anticipated.
Even though the receiving end fax can recover from some errors,
usually, there is little chance for recovery on significant
deterioration.
-----------------------
Some Solutions
-----------------------
1. Use electronic faxing: The first step is to use electronic faxing,
both for outgoing, and incoming.
Outgoing faxes can be sent electronically:
a: Windows, Linux, and Mac offer tools to send a fax by "printing"
your document to a fax device. This is simply by connecting a phone
cable to your fax/modem port and the other end plugs into a wall jack
like a normal fax machine.
b: Subscribe to an online fax service - you send out an email to
this service, and the online service will forward it on as a fax
c: License an electronic fax server for your office network
d: Several multifunction devices such as multifunction copiers,
faxes, etc., offer electronic faxing capabilities
Incoming faxes can be received electronically:
a: Windows and Linux offer "fax receiving" tools - programs that
run on your PC and use the PC fax/modem port to answer incoming fax
calls
b: Subscribe to an online fax service - faxes sent to this number
are either accessible via an online portal similar to webmail, or
forwarded onto your email address. Charges are either per fax, or a
fixed monthly charge similar to an office phone account
c: License an electronic fax server - this is connected to your
fax lines and manages incoming faxes electronically including
forwarding to email addresses, save to folder, etc.
2. Index outgoing and incoming faxes
a. Incoming faxes should be stored at least like other electronic
documents, named properly, saved in a dated name format in the least
b. A copy of all outgoing faxes should be stored electronically,
named properly, and saved in a dated name format in the least
c. Incoming faxes can be processed with OCR/ICR/Barcode
recognition software, with suitable enhancements so that the fax
content could be searchable either by full-text engines, or fielded
search, or both
d. Both incoming and outgoing faxes could be stored in an
Electronic Document Management System similar to other electronic
documents
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Innovations in fax image processing
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1. The orientation of fax images can be auto-detected and faxes auto-
rotated with the latest software. This makes viewing online faxes much
easier.
2. With latest barcode formats such as PDF417, the barcodes received
do not deteriorate significantly even after the heavy mangling by fax
machines
3. Advanced image pre-processing software can improve the quality of
the images so that automatic processing such as full-text recognition,
searchable PDF conversion, forms processing, etc., can be done with
fax images.
4. When fax images are pre-processed and converted to searchable PDF,
text search engines can index them, auto-classification tools can
route them, and a whole new world of auto-processing and content
management possibilities
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Web Resources
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fax
http://communication.howstuffworks.com/fax-machine.htm
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306657
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/CCITT.html
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About The Author
-------------------------------------------------------
Milind Joshi is CTO at IDEA TECHNOSOFT, and is keenly interested in
leveraging simple, reliable technologies in business processes,
finding innovative uses for "old" technologies, and bringing cutting
edge theoretical research in Machine Learning & Computational
Linguistics to Real World Applications.
-------------------------------------------------------
About us
-------------------------------------------------------
IDEA TECHNOSOFT is a leading provider of Custom Document Capture
Solutions, backed by a strong Applied Research & Integration team. We
solve tricky problems in Data Capture.OCR, ICR, OMR, MICR, Barcode,
Document Classification, Auto Content Extraction are some areas we
work in. For more information, contact us at info@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
or call us 416-927-8956 x1
-------------------------------------------------------
Your Comments are Vital
-------------------------------------------------------
Agree or disagree with something? Have a pleasant experience or
nightmare to share? Have ideas on what you'd like future newsletters
to be about? Write to us and let us know!
Sincerely,
Milind Joshi
IDEA TECHNOSOFT INC.
.
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