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The 4 Line Model is for 4 dedicated fax lines. Do you use the digital phone lines for calling or are they for fax?

the digital lines are primarily for phone and are digital; I was hoping to use them for outgoing faxes if needed so as not to block the dedicated analog fax line

sameer

You could. Probably best to not use all three in case someone is trying to call the office. Just disable receiving on the additional fax line.

Sameer,

Late to the questions. Sandeep is correct, but let me make it simpler. First, you did not need a four-line fax board. That would be for an office that is receiving and sending tons of faxes daily. You could have easily gotten away with a one or two port board, in fact, that is all you can use right now.

Look at it this way. Use all of your other lines for what they were before. Digital phone lines. You have one dedicated fax line. It has to go in one analog port on your fax card. Period. It will be used for sending out and sending in. You will likely not have issues with faxes blocking each other as these are very smart cards. As long as you have them set up to do multiple tries.

If you have two lines (with two separate fax lines), you can set it up with one in, one out or one line for in and out and one for incoming.

What scares me is that you only have one dedicated fax line. So what do you use for your walk-up fax? Do you expect every one in your office to do all faxing through the fax server. I would guess you would have a mutiny. For instance I just printed ten pages for ten scripts (has to be that way) and couldn't ePrescribe. I asked my staff to fax them. They are not going to scan them in and then fax them. So you would need another line for that fax.

Most people get by with one fax line. You set up the Mainpine to send/receive on the fax line and the fax machine to send only on the same line. Almost every fax machine has that setting that disables receiving. Lots of those scan snaps also have push button faxing. But my point is you can keep both on one line without issues. You can also do as Bert says and keep the walk up fax on a lightly used phone line. Just disable receiving. I don't think you need 2 dedicated fax lines unless you have very high volume.

I do agree that four port is unnecessary. Bear in mind that the 2-Line Model is able to receive 2,000 faxes a DAY. The 4 Line is for 4,000 faxes a DAY. Most practices only need the one line model.

Agreed. I have a two-line model, and I don't use the second. Sandeep warned me, but I didn't listen.

Ours is set up as Sandeep suggests above with an added wrinkle of using delayed call forwarding, so I thought I would bring it up.

We use Updox so we upload our faxes from the fax server to Updox for free now, since it it a great way to get images into AC. But, at first we call forwarded all our faxes to Updox and were paying $70 a month on top of their $35 montly fee for the privilege of using Updox as our cloud based fax line. They charge a few pennies per fax. Saving money with a robust 1 line Mainpine fax board and setting up a fax server was the way to go.

But every once in a while my receptionist would answer a phone call from a fax machine, so some idiot was frustrated enough with trying to send us a fax to our busy fax server that they would send to our voice line.

So if you use a fax server and Updox, I recommend that you have your phone carrier change your fax line to call forward to the Updox 800 number IF the fax number has not been answered by so many rings, I chose 5 rings.

In Updox you can see how the fax got to Updox and less than 5% of the faxes get there for us by the delayed call forwarding trick.

So I am getting as many fax lines as I need to get every fax answered without all the high fees of having Updox be my first fax line.

Are you saying that one of your voice lines is set up to receive a fax if no one answers? Like Wal-Mart does?

No, my phone system is too old and too busy for that.

Whoever was sending us a fax to our busy fax number was frustrated enough to try sending it to our voice line number instead.

So the receptionist answers the phone and gets the screech. That's what let me know we could use another fax line.

Now Updox makes sure every fax is answered by backing up the fax server. The fax server answers 3-4000 faxes a month and keeps all those faxes that are delay call forwarded to Updox less than the 500 included in their monthly fee.

Oh, gotcha. Yeah that does suck.

That's actually pretty smart, Dan. Great solution. Using UpDox to handle calls while the Fax server is processing something. Also, lots (/almost all) of fax machines will automatically retry if the receiving line is busy. But that solution is great especially if you already have UpDox for the patient portal.