Q
Upgraded an installation of Unform 8.0 on Windows Server 2008 to Unform 9.0 on Windows Server 2012 r2 and customer using msfax. Worked correctly in v 8.0 on Windows Server 2008. They did not test faxing before the upgrade and now are reporting that no faxes have gone out since the upgrade. I got in this morning and the deliver.ini configuration file was exactly the same on v9.0 as was in v8.0 (faxserver is located on a different machine than either Unform 8 or 9). User running service is same domain user in v8 and has permissions for fax server.
initially was receiving message that support server was not configured, but it had been configured for both GS and Imagemagik. This is a windows Unform server so I had not specified the local machine as the location of the support server (I did not have to in v8) So I configured to use the local host name (did not use localhost) and specified the local port for the support server.
Next run also did not work, but instead I got a different message "Timed out waiting for support server response" I have the support server set up for detailed logging and get nothing in the support server log except the startup messages.
A
We remember something about needing to install the 'desktop experience' on new Windows servers. That adds some features that enable msfax to work. One thing we seem to remember is that it adds some sort of TIFF viewer and registry entries related to TIFF images. The upgrade to 2012 would probably have lost some things that way. Here's a link:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn609826(v=ws.11).aspx
We think personally that msfax is sometimes more trouble than its worth. We can code everything perfectly to work with their ocx interfaces, and still it will drive you crazy with little configuration nuances and poorly documented requirements (like yes, you really need the right registry entries to use a 'printto' shell action on a tiff file, something we spent days and days one time finally figuring out).
Anyone with low volume could easily and cheaply use an internet fax service, and anyone with high volume should probably be on something more robust, like vsifax.