Outbound fax web service

The Interfax Fax Web Service is a commercial subscription-based service which enables transmission and reception of fax messages without the need to install any hardware or software. The original document to be transmitted may be of various formats, such as HTML, Microsoft Word, PDF etc. Received faxes are in TIF format.

As an extension to sending capabilities, the Interfax Fax Web Service provides facilities for retrieving status information regarding fax messages sent through it.

It supports both secure and non-secure communication between the custom-programmed application and the Interfax server.

For advanced uses, the optional Interfax Admin Web Service allows user preference management and addition or removal of users and services.

See Side-by-side comparison of web service methods.

Requirements

Access to the Internet over port 443.

Support for XML Web Services. Such support is available through a wide range of tools, such as:

  • Microsoft .NET languages (VB.net, C#, ASPX)

  • Java

  • SOAP toolkits

  • etc.

Service endpoint

The InterFAX outbound fax Web Service WSDL may be accessed at the following endpoint:

TLS over HTTPS, port 443

https://ws.interfax.net/dfs.asmx

The WSDL for the service is available at https://ws.interfax.net/dfs.asmx?WSDL

Programmer’s guide

The simplest way to send a fax is by using the SendCharFax method for textual files (such as simple ASCII), or the SendFax method for binary files (MS Word .DOC, MS Excel .XLS, etc) or the. These require minimal data and enable a quick submission of a single document to a single destination fax number.

Upon successful submission of a message to the Interfax Web Service, SendCharfax and Sendfax return a token value that can later be used to query the fax’s status. This token is called TransactionID. This is the actual numerator of the fax within the InterFAX system.

In case of an error in submitting the message to the service, an error code is returned.

If you require more flexibility in sending a fax, you may want to use the SendfaxEx_2 method.

This method requires more parameters but enables more advanced sending capabilities, such as:

  • Sending multiple documents

  • Sending a fax to multiple destinations

  • Scheduling the transmission time of a fax

  • Controlling the CSID and Reply email address

  • Providing a reference (Subject field) to be used when obtaining message status

Upon successful submission of the message to the Interfax Web Service, SendfaxEx_2 returns a token value that can later be used to query the fax’s status.

In case of an error in submitting the message to the service, an error code is returned.

If you wish to programmatically retrieve the status of a previously submitted message, you can use the FaxStatus or FaxQuery methods. FaxStatus and FaxQuery return status information for either one or multiple messages in a single call.

The image of a fax can be obtained by calling the GetFaxImage method. The GetFaxImage request is submitted with a TransactionID and in return downloads a multi-page fax image in TIFF format. The image can be stored as a file on a disk, viewed or printed by standard fax viewers, such as Imaging for Windows)

SOAP method reference