Lab/Development Environments – RightFax Simulation & Testing

At our company we have a lab environment that we utilize to replicate a large number of our customer implementations.  This environment runs on Virtual Servers in order to keep the cost and maintenance down for our organization.  Here are a few of the many advantages for us to maintain this type of environment for our customers;

1. The ability to reproduce issues and in turn expedite resolution and impact to the customer
2. A proactive approach to determining the impact (positively or negatively) of new patches, builds, and versions of software
3. Through development procedures (testing, QA, QC) can take place without affecting customer environments
4. The ability to give our support technicians, engineers, and developers a thorough understanding of the solution implemented

One issue that does arise on occasion is the ability to reproduce an issue that is occurring in a customer environment where we don’t have the underlying hardware or software.  This can be due to a proprietary product the software is interfacing with or a solution that is not realistic for us to manage internally.  One such case is with OpenText RightFax (formerly Captaris RightFax).  We have customers with all types of configurations from analog and digital fax boards to fax over IP (FOIP), and it doesn’t make sense for us to maintain all types of solutions.

The good news is that RightFax provides an “out of the box” capability to setup a RightFax solution without requiring fax boards or phone lines.  The power of this functionality is that it allows you to send and receive faxes internally to your RightFax system in order to simulate the real world functionality of the software.  This capability is referred to as running RightFax in simulation mode.  The following information takes you through the steps to enable simulation mode on your RightFax v9.4 (older versions of the software also have simulation mode, but the configuration is slightly different) system:

1. Install RightFax and get it functional, with the exception of the Board Server
2. Launch the Enterprise Fax Manager (EFM)
3.  
4. Open the RightFax Server that you want to configure

• Right click on the “RightFax DocTransport Module” and choose “Configure Service”
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• When the DocTransport Module opens, click the Add Transport add the bottom of the window
• In the Transport Select window, select Simulation Device and click the Select button
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• You will now notice that you have a Simulation entry in your DocTransport configuration
• The Simulation entry can now be configured as if you are setting up a fax board (e.g. setup the Fax ID for routing)
• Next, you will need to create a dialing rule.  In EFM right click “Dialing Rules” and choose “New” to bring up the Rule Edit configuration.
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• Simply accept the default pattern of “+” to apply the rule to all numbers.
• Go to the Destination tab, choose “Receive into Fax Server”, and set the name to your RightFax Server.  Click OK to close the Rule Edit configuration screen.
• Lastly, you need to save the dialing plan.  In EFM, click on the File Menu and choose “Save Dialing Plan”
• You are now ready to send and receive faxes on your RightFax Server.  The faxes can be sent to any of your configured users utilizing their routing codes.

The ability to run RightFax in simulation mode is a great trick for setting up and testing a RightFax server in your development or lab environment.  If you have any questions on this functionality or other topics related to this post, please let me know.  Thank you.