Overview
This article describes a possible cause and solution when inbound faxes are no longer received on the assigned fax number that has been working before.
Depending on whether a fax tone can be heard or not the issue might be either with the carrier or the non-availability of the fax number in GFI FaxMaker Online.
Solution
Begin the troubleshooting process to isolate the possible cause by checking the subscription status and dialing the fax number to identify whether a fax tone can be heard.
Confirm that the account is not locked due to insufficient credit/balance. See Account is locked or Invalid for more details and instructions on how to get the account unlocked if necessary.
For accounts whose subscription is still active and the bundle plan has not been exhausted, proceed with the resolution as follows:
- If a fax tone is not heard, the issue might be a carrier issue, which should be investigated further with your carrier as transmission issues are out of support scope.
- If a fax tone can be heard, but no activity is shown in the activity log for inbound faxes, the fax number may have been deactivated or ported away from FaxMaker Online. This can also be an indication of a routing issue that can be resolved by manually entering an override to send faxes through a different route. For all these scenarios, Submit a support request so that we can verify the status of the affected fax number.
- Customers should be aware that there is a known issue affecting German fax numbers due to wide-scale infrastructure and telephony policy changes in Germany where current fax and voice infrastructure is transitioning from analog/physical to strictly digital/VoIP. This has resulted in faxes to/from multiple German origins failing due to their VoIP service lacking compatibility with both the g.711 and T.38 codecs. For this scenario, see German Fax Numbers Ring Busy When Called for more information and submit a support request for further assistance from the back-end team.
<supportagent>
Support agents should follow these steps once the ticket is received and after confirming the issue.
- Escalate the support request to Concord for resolution. For German fax numbers experiencing issues, be sure to highlight the possible codecs issue for investigation/reconfiguration.
- Refer to Opening a Support Case with Concord for important information on how and when to open the support case with Concord Premium Support.
- Inform the customer that you will update the ticket as soon as you receive feedback from the Server Team.
</supportagent>
- Call forwarding to an off-network number introduces jitter and latency into the fax call, which causes packet loss that can result in partial faxes, early disconnects, or outright negotiation failure. Further, our infrastructure team has no insight or control over the leg of the transmission from the sender to the forwarded number, which inhibits our ability to effectively troubleshoot problems.
- For this reason, FaxMaker Online does not support call forwarding. We instead recommend that the forwarded number should be ported to our carrier as described in Porting Existing Fax Numbers to FaxMaker Online.
- Porting may alleviate some of the issues, as well as be a cost-effective solution since you would not have to pay for the forwarded number as well as the FaxMaker Online issued destination.
Testing
After receiving confirmation from the support team on the status of the affected fax number, verify that inbound faxes are now being received and appearing in the activity log after sending a test fax.