1. Principles

Here is a basic explanation of how it works, from a user's standpoint.

1.1 How to mail

There are three email address formats which allows one to send faxes.

• phone@fax.your_domain This is the simple case. It lacks the ability to encode the recipient's name on the fax front page. If your fax contains text information, this is ok.
• name@phone.fax.your_domain This format encodes both the phone number and the recipient's name. For example, many will encode an email-fax like this jacques.gelinas@999-9999.fax.solucorp.qc.ca This lets the fax gateway extract both the phone number and the full name, so a nice front page may be built.
• alias@fax.your_domain Linuxconf lets you define a list of aliases for faxes. This is handy when a lot of people need to fax to the same person.

1.2 The attachments

The mail to fax gateway will support email attachment and will try to convert them to formats managed by the fax engine you are using. Often a fax will be an empty email with a nice attachment in PostScript or another suitable format.