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Troubleshooting eFaxes
Updated over 2 months ago

Since the start of COVID-19, eFax on local analog phone lines has been leveraged more. As a result, faxes may fail from time to time. eFax delivery success rates are much better that the 80% success rates offered by a typical fax machine. For example, sending and receiving 100 pages per day could result in up to 5 pages needing attention. Remember, faxes are telephone calls that can drop or be affected by networks involved.

💡 Tip: Always check your fax volume when analyzing success rates for eFax.

The following offers some more information around eFax and what to expect.

  • Sending and receiving:

    • eFax service supports up to 98-99% success rate; however, up to 5% of faxes may need to be resent.

    • Like any phone call, your fax calls can drop and affect incoming fax. This is due to using local analog fax lines.

    • eFax relies on many things to be successful, such as:

      • Your internet network

      • Recipient network

      • Internet provider

      • Analog phone lines, if using a local fax number, and

      • The systems such as CHR or our servers

    • Also consider that using a VOIP system with a local fax line can affect incoming faxes. To reduce issues, ensure your VOIP system administrative settings include the fax line as dedicated to eFax.

    • At times, your faxes can be queued at times and may take some time before being delivered successfully. For example:

      • An 80-page patient referral fax may take up to 40 minutes to be delivered successfully. This then causes delays for other out going faxes from your clinic.

    • Faxes shown as "pending" in your queue are eventually sent. Attempting to resend queued faxes causes further delays in fax transmissions.

  • Partial faxes

    • If your incoming faxes are interrupted, e.g. due to a dropped call, you'll receive a partial fax.

    • Partial faxes are also valuable as they alert you to a dropped call and serve as a reminder to follow-up with the sender should you not receive the full fax.

  • Support for faxing issues

    • Contact your us as soon as you notice a trend occurring with your faxes. Include the following details:

      • Both fax numbers involved: yours and the facility you are sending to or trying to receive from

      • Date and time of the faxes so they can be traced

      • If the content of the fax is a risk or privacy issue, inform of urgency for awareness

        💡 Tip: If you report the issue within 24 hours, it is possible to trace the calls and determine why they were dropped. However, a trace may not be possible if you report the issue after 24 hours have passed.

    • Troubleshooting faxing issues may require your partnership working with your IT support, your internet provider and more due to all the networks involved.

    • If you continue to experience eFax issues on a local analog phone line, you may want to consider adding a toll-free fax line to your account. These toll-free numbers don't use an analog line.

      💡 Tip: Toll-free lines are easier to troubleshoot for identifying issues and offer a great alternative or backup to analog lines.

Updated September 26, 2024

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