I'm new to programming, and my only area of expertise is web design/simple development on platforms like wordpress/expression engine. (Yea, you guys can laugh).
I have a new client who currently receives medical faxes through an online form (the user fills out a form concerning their prescriptions and once submitted, it faxes the info).
I'm completely redesigning their site, and I'm not sure how online faxing works.
Has anybody dealt with internet faxing? How does it work? Does/can it go through email?
And is it possible to send a fax through a form with javascript/php or route it through email?
Don't pay for it! All you need is a modem on the server and a standard phone line. Then set up a fax print driver under your os (you can do it on windows and unix).
The unix way is mgetty/sendfax : http://mgetty.greenie.net/doc/mgetty_3.html#SEC3
The Windows way : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306657
There are other ways but unless you can't get a phone line you'd be mad to pay fees for it.
Would it not be helpful to look at how it is currently being done, that way you can learn a thing or two about the process before trying to go do it again? That way you can find if it is using any special libraries or techniques or services to send the fax and you can then either duplicate the code or use it as a template to get started on your own solution.
All of what your asking is possible. I would recommend finding a service provider who can send the fax for you. They all have different interfaces requirements and pricing. I used to use DataOnCall which is now called Fax.com
They had a web service which we would post the document to be faxed plus additional information. They were a preety reasonable service. This was several years ago so I can't speak how they currently fair.
Take a look at eFax's SDK. I haven't used it, but it looks like it might be useful to you.
Yes, you can send faxes via email through several services; this link seems to have some useful information. I worked at a company previously that did this same sort of thing, and while I don't recall the exact service we used, most of them are very similar, and they work reasonably well.
Related
I'm def not looking for someone to do this project for me, just bouncing off some ideas with a guru or two.
I have emails going into a global box that is shared by a few employees. I need to find a better way to assign the work out. In the past, it was grab and go. Today, an employee assigns the work out.
I'm trying to find a simple way using maybe Excel or Access, that I could copy/drag the email and it would provide who should work it and how much work they have done by week/month/year.
It's not possible to use an inhouse ticketing system, because it is non employees that send mail to this inbox, so they would not have access to using the in house ticketing system.
Would it be easily possible to design something like this or is this a more daunting task? What software would you recommend or method would you use?
Thanks for your time.
I recommend converting emails to Tickets, using a CRM/ticketing system with such feature. It would save you the hassle of developing and mantaining custom code, for a commom feature needed not only by you, but many other firms:
A quick search for "convert emails to tickets" yielded:
https://wiki.vtiger.com/index.php/Mail_Converter
http://community.geminiplatform.com/blogs/15/how-to-convert-emails-to-tickets-with-gemini
Both vTiger and Gemini are free to use.
I want to build simple web based app, where users, for example, could push the spacebar button, and then do something further, like answer a question, and while other users at the same time only sees that this question is not available any more for answer. When user submits answer, everyone see it.
All right, here is an example. I have seen TV shows, where four players have one button, if one or two of them know answer, they hit a button, and one lamp turns on and the first is allowed to answer, while other keeps their mouths shut. I want to build the same idea, but in the web.
But problem is that, I don't know where to start, what keywords I should search for help on google and so on. I see, that it might work on HTML5, maybe JavaScript and so on.
I have idea using Ajax, but request it every second to get latest actions made seems rubbish. Also I found one service called Pusher, but it has limited users in one time, which doesn't fit my needs.
I need just ideas. Thanks.
Before you read the rest, a disclaimer: I work for Realtime.co but I do believe I can help here so I'm not trying to "pitch a sale".
You can check out Realtime (www.realtime.co). It's basically a set of tools for developers to use real time technologies on their projects. It uses websockets but does fallback to whatever the user's browser supports (such as long polling, for example).
Behind Realtime you have a one-to-one/one-to-many/many-to-many messaging system that will transport your messages to and from your users.
There's also a plus which is the fact that the Realtime framework is actually cross-platform. This means that you can even have your web users communicate with iPhone users, Android, users, Windows Phone, desktop applications, server applications, etc..
You can learn about the JavaScript API here: http://docs.xrtml.org/getting_started/hello_message.html#javascript.
You only need to register at Realtime.co as a developer and start using the free license.
I really hope that helps.
Okey, I think I will go with node.js.
Writing all this previous post, made me think in right way :)
I would like to know if and how it is possible to create a clickable email-link for websites, that are "encrypted" in a way emailspiders can't collect them and it is still possible for living users to click it to open in email-clients or even copy it.
I saw some links that were done in javascript but I on't know how they did this and how "safe" they are.
thank you in advance for any reply
Most approaches to this are splitting the address across multiple elements and inserting extra formatting; then for JS-enabled browsers, they use JavaScript to turn it back into an e-mail address.
The poster example for this is SpamSpan, which even has several "levels" of obfuscation - each level progressively less and less resembles an e-mail in the source code, yet it still manages to piece it back together by JS. Although some spambots today are supposedly capable of executing JavaScript, te vast majority doesn't - and the e-mails are still human-readable with JS off. An advantage of JS-assisted de/obfuscation is that it doesn't rely on external servers, you just need to (simply) integrate the JS library.
Another approach is taken by reCAPTCHA Mailhide - the e-mail is revealed only after solving a CAPTCHA (same type as for normal reCAPTCHA). This is less convenient for the user, but practically safe against robots. A disadvantage of this is that it depends on reCAPTCHA's servers (in essence, on Google) - some people are dead-set against any external dependencies.
This would be a very simple and effective way:
Scramble email addresses
All it does is convert it into ASCII, and all you need to do is insert it where your email address would go!
Although there are more (crazily) secure ways you can choose, this would be the simply option. You can also try this solution, it uses JavaScript to protect your email.
Hope this helps!
I'm trying to figure out a solution to manage our transaction emails (such as the welcome email, you've got a bid, etc...)
We would like to be able to allow marketing to manage the content of the emails, and create split tests to test content / subject lines / etc...
Ideally we could invent our own success metrics to report back to the email management system (such as user completed registration, accepted bid, etc...).
Right now we have our emails in templates using stringtemplate. The code replaces tokens with the correct content for that email.
Strongmail is a potential solution, but it is pricey - anybody have experience with alternatives?
I'm looking for the same kind of service, and https://www.sendwithus.com/ seems to do the job.
Have you taken a look at PostageApp?
Currently, it's a layer between your web app and your SMTP server which has additional features for your transactional emails.
With PostageApp, you are able to create two different templates and have them triggered alternately with different content and subject lines. However, the metrics that you would want to use for A/B testing aren't built into the system yet, so I'm not sure if it would be a good fit for you.
Full Disclosure: I work for The Working Group, the company that created PostageApp.
But if you do have questions about what we can help you with and what we can't, definitely let me know and I can answer plenty of questions for you!
Try http://www.cakemail.com/
It is a third party, you design your workflows and give them your contacts.
I work for a 6 million a year website company and we direct all our clients to them, so far so good, everyone is happy.
You have to contact them to have a price but you can get a free account for testing
I'm nearing the completion of migrating our existing website to a CMS and I've just finished creating all the various contact forms. The CMS I'm using has CAPTCHA built into it's form builder, which is great, but the only method available is the "decipher-the-noisy-image" method.
This approach works well, but it limits access for people who might have reading or sight disabilities. I've worked around this by having a "help" page which allows those with disabilities to contact us by telephone and I'm considering having a single-field form which says "Send us your email address and we'll contact you". Accessibility is of particular importance to me as a web developer, but from an organisational perspective; so is reducing the amount of form spam we receive.
So what I'd like to know is, has anyone in the community had any experience with other CAPTCHA methods and how have you managed to make them accessible to people with disabilities?
As a blind person I find that recaptcha is one of the better CAPTCHA services out there as far as an audio option. The issue with using sms as the only alternative is the fact that many visually impaired users don't have cell phones that allow them to read text messages.
A good captcha, like reCAPTCHA, usually includes an audio CAPTCHA. Also I have seen a site that will
send a SMS message and you enter the code in the sms (Google-gmail will do this).
I am very interested in this because I am implementing a CAPTCHA in jQuery right now.
Many sites, including this one I believe, have an option to play noisy audio with embedded spoken numbers, as an audio equivalent to the traditional CAPTCHA image.
I find the result pretty spooky, actually. Reminds me of numbers stations.
As Michael said, audio with each character of the CAPTCHA text spoken for better or worse is a common option provided. If your CMS is PHP-based or if PHP is available on the hosting infrastructure you are using anyway, here's an open source CAPTCHA application with an audio download option:
http://www.phpcaptcha.org/
I've implemented a production site with phpcaptcha, and it works as advertised.