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This section covers 3 examples of ProtoFax at work.  The examples use a hypothetical company, ExampleNet, which summarizes just some of the solutions that ProtoFax provides.   

Example Company:  ExampleNet 
Domain Name:  examplenet.com 
Statistics: 
•  10 employees 
•  4 Enterprise Web Servers 
•  5 Development Workstations 
•  5 Back office, Sales, Marketing Workstations 

Description of Business:  Internet Solution Provider 
Specialty:  E-Commerce 
Director of Information Services:  Bob Smith  
 

E-Commerce 

Project 1: Faxing E-Commerce Orders to Clients 

ExampleNet hosts many e-commerce sites for many clients.  Web users from all over the world come to ExampleNet's clients' Web pages and place orders for goods ranging from home furnishings to vacation packages.  Delivering these orders from ExampleNet's web servers to their diverse client base has always been a weak point in ExampleNet's customer service.  For 'Internet-centric' clients, emailing the orders to them worked well.  However, for other clients, email did not work so well.  For these clients, their Web page was just one facet of their marketing program. While many of them had email, they lacked 'real time' email and logged into their provider at various intervals to check their email and check for orders.  Many clients viewed this as inefficient and unfriendly.  Some customers even asked ExampleNet to please fax them their orders, but ExampleNet had no means of doing this. 

In an effort to provide first class customer service and distinguish themselves from their competitors,  Bob Smith, ExampleNet's Director of Information Services, realized that if they could fax the orders to their clients in an automated fashion, an order could be submitted on their web page at say 1:00 pm and be on the clients fax machine at 1:01pm.  This was definitely the 'customer service oriented' solution that ExampleNet's marketing people wanted to provide to their customers. 

Bob did an Internet search and discovered ProtoFax.  After skimming the ProtoFax Web page and downloading ProtoFax Server, he realized that he could install ProtoFax on one of his existing Windows®, NT, 98 or 95 machines and use a fax modem that he retrieved from the parts locker.  He chose to install ProtoFax on one of his Web servers, and was quite pleased that ProtoFax did not require a dedicated machine or proprietary hardware. 
Now, getting down to work, Bob set out to determine a way to send ExampleNet's clients their orders via fax.  He saw that ProtoFax did email-to-fax, and had many options for this.  Up to now, he had been emailing orders to clients' email addresses.  It would be quite easy to use this email-to-fax feature, requiring only a change of the email address on his Web server scripts.  Bob determined that: 

•  he could create a new mailbox on his mailserver 
•  email orders to this mailbox 
•  have ProtoFax check that mailbox and deliver 
   the orders via fax to the appropriate clients. 

Bob created a new email address called fax@examplenet.com on their mail server.  The password for this new account was bigsecret.  The address of their mail server is mail.examplenet.com.   Bob then went to the ProtoFax Server Administrator and created a ProtoFax user with the following properties: 

Username:                           fax 
Account Type:                      POP 
POP Account Password:       bigsecret 
POP Server Address:            mail.examplenet.com 
Retrieve Fax # from subject:   checked 

and on the Services tab, he checked 'Load on Startup' for POP and Fax/Pager services.  After clicking 'Apply', Bob saw that ProtoFax was counting down to check email.  At the end of the interval, ProtoFax checked the fax@examplenet.com email account for new messages. 
As a test, Bob composed the following message in his email client: 

To: fax@examplenet.com 
From: bsmith@examplenet.com 
Subject: 591-9217 

This is a test fax 

and he sent the message.  ProtoFax checked the fax@examplenet.com mailbox, retrieved the email, and delivered the contents to his fax machine at 591-9217.  This was exactly what ExampleNet needed.   
Bob reconfigured his Web server scripts to email orders to fax@examplenet.com and placed the fax number in the subject line.  ProtoFax retrieved these orders and faxed them to the clients.   

HTML and Fax 

Project 2: Using HTML to format fax orders 

ExampleNet was now successfully faxing clients orders that were generated from their web pages.  However, just like the email orders, the email-to-fax orders looked quite bland.  Some clients even commented that they were hard to read, as all the text looked the same and none of the important information jumped out of the page. 

These comments filtered back up to Bob and he went back to work.  After reviewing ProtoFax, he saw that it could read HTML and render it onto a fax.  Then after sending an example fax from the ProtoFax Web page at http://fax.protonet.com/sendfax.html, Bob concluded that ExampleNet could embed HTML tags in the email messages that he was sending to ProtoFax.  ProtoFax would render these codes onto the fax page.  He could use different fonts, tables and graphics.  By using HTML, Bob could produce faxes where the important information jumped off the page. 
 

Alphanumeric Pagers and the Internet 

Project 3: Integrate alphanumeric pagers  
                with the Internet 

ExampleNet held its monthly staff meeting.  Both marketing and technology people were there.  Sending clients data via fax was a great success; clients really appreciated the extra service.  Now ExampleNet's staff proceeded to determine if they could use this technology to create new business.  

One idea involved alphanumeric pagers.  They knew that there are millions of alphanumeric pagers in use, particularly by business people.  Sales people in particular use alphanumeric pagers.  Recalling that they had just done a Web site for a real-estate company, the staff of ExampleNet proposed a new service to offer: 

•  Construct a Web site with a form that asked the Internet user about the type of house they wanted. 

•  Send a synopsis of the data to a ProtoFax Alphanumeric Pager Account. 

•  ProtoFax would deliver the data from the Web page to the real-estate agent's pagers. 

The real-estate agents could call back the Internet user with an offer of service.