Secure eFax FAQ

Jason Huffey

As with any new product we know everyone has questions. Here are the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about our premium cloud faxing solution Secure eFax.

1.    What is Secure eFax?

a.    Secure eFax is a cloud-based paperless, cost-effective, outsourced alternative to fax machines and servers that enables businesses to send and receive faxes quickly, privately, and securely by email. Access faxes anywhere via pc, laptop, or wireless device and eliminates fax hardware, supplies, and IT costs and headaches.

2.    What is the difference between Secure eFax and Fax-to-email or OfficeSuite Fax?

a.    Secure eFax is designed exclusively for security and compliance as it meets the strictest standards of heavily regulated industries or for companies with high volume faxing needs. Businesses can scale the Secure eFax fax solution for 1 to 10,000 employees with dedicated fax numbers and Secure User ID’s.

3.    How much does Secure eFax cost?

a.    Monthly fees include a personal fax number (Local or Toll-Free) for each subscriber with a fax line. Standard packages are available based on aggregated pooled usage of all users and total DIDs/Phone numbers. Monthy Commit packages are available from 300 pages per month to 1.5 Millon pages per month to meet all volumes of needs.

4.    Do users select a per-page plan or is it a pooled solution?

a.    Secure eFax is a total monthly per page pooled solution. For example, if there were 100 users and each sent 100 pages per month they would need a 10,000 page per month plan.

b.    Each user would also have a telephone number charge for their DID (Local or Toll-Free)

5.    Is there a minimum term requirement?

a.    Yes. Minimum of one year. Standard OfficeSuite terms are one- to seven-year contracts. Standard Package pricing is based on a 3-year term. However, there are advantages when you consider discounts, bundles with other products, and service guarantees.

6.    How does Secure eFax work?

a.    Each employee subscribing to Secure eFax receives their own local or toll-free eFax number and Secure User ID™ linked to their email address.

·  Receiving faxes: Faxes sent to your eFax number travel across the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN). Secure eFax converts the fax to a TIF, PDF, or EFX file, attaches it to an email, and forwards it directly to the employee’s email inbox.

·  Sending faxes: Faxes can be sent directly from your email inbox. If you don’t have email access, you can also send a fax by logging in to your account.

7.    Is international faxing available?

a.    No, not at this time. There is an initiative to align Secure eFax soon with our international footprint in the future.

8.    Do I need any additional hardware or software?

a.    No additional hardware or software is needed. Secure eFax is 100% Cloud-based.

9.    Will Secure eFax work with my multifunction printer?

a.    Yes, Secure eFax is an Internet-based document delivery service designed to replace or augment a company’s existing fax solution. Secure eFax works with any PC, laptop, or wireless device capable of sending and receiving email including multifunction devices (MFD).

b.    Additionally, we can integrate with virtually any multifunction device (almost all have an internet fax key). If the MFD is network-connected (they typically are) and can send emails, you can send via Secure eFax.

10. Can I keep my existing fax number?

a.    Yes. You can port your existing fax number(s) to your new Secure eFax cloud service. In certain circumstances, you can have your existing fax call forwarded to Secure eFax when porting is not available (which is rare).

11. How long does it take to port my number to Secure eFax?

a.    It depends on several factors. Overall a reasonable expectation would be 30-45 days. Documentation between telecommunications carriers, requirements for porting, or security items from the previous carrier can cause a delay if the information is unknown or was established and used by a previous employee of the customer.

b.    The best practice is to have current bills from all carriers and ensure that the customer contact can access any information from the current carrier working with any of the fax numbers being requested to port to Secure eFax.

c.    Additionally, ensure that LOAs are delivered to all carriers that the customer is receiving bills from for any fax number being requested to port over to Secure eFax.

12. Does your business fax service offer an auto resend option?

a.    Users either send by email or through their Secure eFax web interface and if the recipient’s fax number is busy, the system will automatically resend the fax.

b.    Our standard is to retry a busy fax number five times, spaced over increasing delays among each re-dial attempt.

13. How do I send faxes with Secure eFax?

a.    Secure eFax provides several easy ways to send a fax.

•  Sending a fax by email
  •  Create a new email.
  •  Enter the fax number in the email address field followed by @efaxsend.com. For example, [email protected]
  • Attach the documents to be faxed by selecting insert from the File menu. They will be faxed in the order they were attached.
  • Click to send the email.
  • You will receive a confirmation email when the fax has been delivered. Note: You can fax most file types by email.
• Sending a fax through My Account @ https://www.efaxcorporate.com/myaccount/login
  • Log in to My Account and click Send a Fax to send files as faxes from any computer, even if you don’t have access to your email account. Include the attachments you want to fax by clicking the browse button and selecting files stored on your computer. Fill out the form and click Send to fax the attachments.

14. Do you have a solution that’s compliant with applicable security and privacy standards such as HIPAA?

a.    Yes, eFax Secure, is our HIPAA compliant fax solution. It uses strong encryption for the protection of ePHI through TLS 1.2 and up, encryption end to end for email compliance, or secure portal access for email systems that are not able to comply.

15. Does your solution provide send and receive encryption?

a.    Yes, Secure eFax’s cloud fax solutions can enable the highest levels of encryption for both your inbound and outbound faxes. For sending and receiving secure faxes over Secure eFax’s secure network, our solution can enable the most sophisticated encryption standard, TLS 1.2 (Transport Layer Security), for successful encryption of email delivered to the end-users desktop.

16. Do you have an API solution that can enable a secure fax from our EHR System?

a.    Yes, Secure eFax offers custom fax API integration through our eFax Developer API with Professional Services implementations. This allows businesses to connect cloud faxing directly to their existing workflow platforms and productivity tools — including CRM or ERP systems such as Salesforce, Sage, or Netsuite. In the case of healthcare firms, Electronic Healthcare Records systems such as NextGen, MediTouch, or Cerner via a simple to plug-in XML API. TLS can be enabled for the highest levels of encryption. All of these API options let businesses more easily and efficiently manage their electronic faxing, by allowing them to generate and send their faxes directly from the productivity platforms and applications they use every day.

17. Does this product need to be purchased with other Windstream products or can it be purchased individually?

a.    Secure eFax is supported as a standalone product.

18. Where can I get training for Secure eFax?

a.    Secure eFax in the general session (OS Live & Secure eFax) on Friday's @ 10:45 EST. Sign up here - https://www.windstreamenterprise.com/m/weekly-officesuite-training/ .

19. Can my company use custom cover pages?

a.    Yes, customer Cover pages are added at the admin level and then made available for users.

20. Is Secure eFax supported on mobile browsers?

a.    No. Not at this time. If mobile is required for sending, you can download the mobile app.

21. Is there an interface so users can monitor the status of faxes and see the faxing history?

a.    Yes. Secure eFax’s intuitive and secure online fax interface for our customers’ administrators is called My Account.

b.    My Account gives administrators a secure environment to easily review reports of inbound and outbound fax traffic — by an individual employee or fax number, by department, or company-wide.

22. Can users add custom cover pages?

a.    No, but admins can upload global cover pages for the entire enterprise through the admin portal,

23. Are there mobile applications?

a.    Yes. Currently, there are mobile applications available in the iOS App Store, and Google Play store.

b.    Please note, that these are listed under eFax and when downloaded after signing in for authentication you will be redirected to another download for eFax corporate.

c.    Mobile applications are for sending faxes only. Please use your mobile email application to receive incoming faxes for Secure eFax.

24. What is the maximum number of email addresses that can receive a Secure eFax?

a.    The maximum number of recipients/email addresses is 6.  1 Fax #/1 User - 1 primary + 5 add’l email users.

b.    Email distribution lists can be used as a valid recipients.

25. Do all users have the same license?

a.    Yes. There is only one license type of Secure eFax. All named users with a telephone number are of equal value with access to the same features.

b.    Portal access is for one named user only. Since it is secured with a user name and a password these are not meant to be shared. However, anyone can send faxes through Secure eFax (if the domain is whitelisted) from their email address without a named user license or a telephone number for fax. Please have this discussion during the sales/scoping phase

26. Are there cover pages available?

a.    Yes, one stock cover page is available. Customer cover pages are uploaded by admins and made available by admins to the end-users.

27. Can I set a new password?

a.    Yes. You may log in to the user portal, click on the account details badge (gear icon), under profile click edit on the “password account ID”. There are complex password requirements of minimum length 8 characters, 1 uppercase letter(s), 1 number(s), 1 symbol(s).

28. Do Secure eFax passwords expire?

a. Yes, passwords expire for both users (every 90 days) and administrators (every 60 days).

29. Does Secure eFax have an Access Recovery Charge?

a. No, Secure Efax does not. Regardless of what types of lines the customer previously had for faxing Secure eFax is removing the need for all of those and will be delivered through the cloud, thus there is no need for any kind of line that would have an ARC applicable to it.

30. Can an end-user or an administrator block certain spam fax numbers?

a. No, Secure eFax does not offer a way to block spam fax numbers by the end-user or the administrator. There is not a "black list" option/ability. 

31. Is there a idle session timeout in the web portal for users and administrators?

a. Yes, session timeout is 10 minutes. This cannot be adjusted. This parameter is in place to accommodate for the FEDRAMP certification

32. If there is more than one losing carrier will more than one LOA be needed or if all numbers are not on the same account with the same carrier?

a. Yes, for example, if the customer numbers are with Verizon, ATT, and Windstream, there would be a total of (3) LOA's needed (one for each carrier).

a. If the numbers are not on the same account number (2) LOA's will be needed to account for the respective telephone numbers. The Porting team will also ask for an invoice for those numbers and the along with the filling out of the Port Set-up User List (PSU). These are required. The PSU can be obtained from a Windstream Account Representative.

33. How many numbers can a single fax message be sent to at once?

a. 50 fax numbers can be input in the address line for distribution with the send-to fax number. The Secure eFax solution would handle it. If there is a real use case for a higher number that is not spam fax, this can be accommodated on an ICB basis during the implementation.

34. Is there a page number or a file size limit when using Secure eFax to send?

a. File Size Yes, the total size of the attachment that can be sent in a Secure eFax transmission is 18 Megabytes (18 Mb).

a. Total Pages, Yes. The total number of pages that can be sent in one fax transmission is 999. However, if a single attached document is under 18Mb (as stated in a previous question) the transmission will be split into two separate faxes automatically by the Secure eFax cloud without end-user interaction.

35. Who provides the Customer questionnaire?

a. The Secure eFax - Customer Questionnaire - this document will be used as the master project datasheet. It is acceptable to send to customers early and often so they understand the expectation of what will be required for a successful implementation. This will also be distributed by Service delivery during the implementation process. It is required for the completion of the Secure eFax Service as SOC Team works with the customer to complete the questionnaire.