Programmatically send fax with minolta bizhub

Question

The office recently bought a Minolta printer that can also fax. I need to send faxes from an input from sharepoint. The problem doesnt rely in the connection between the fax sending software and sharepoint but rather in trying to send the right data to the fax.

Minolta created drivers for sending faxes, here is a screenshot of this.

It is accessed by trying to print and then selecting the minolta bizhub as a fax.

I tried to use FAXCOMLib as connect to it has if it was a fax server but i got en error while trying to connect. I called the support service of minolta and they have no idea how to achieve this.

Answer 1

FAXCOMLib is usable as a Fax driver on Windows computers without an external device. The Fax logic is built into the software. All you need in the computer is a RJ11 port, a telephone port.

I'd say if you want to programmatically send a fax, just use FaxComLib and don't worry about the external fax-capable printer. And using FaxComLib from .NET/C# is prety straightforward.

There may also be a way to programmatically invoke a printer driver; in fact I know you can do this in WCF. On the other hand, that wouldn't be through FaxComLib; it would likely be through some other interface, or at the last resort, it would be through the UI Automation classes in Windows.