Combine Multiple PDF attachments when sending email to fax

[Logicwrath]

Other third party faxing services will allow users to send more than one attachment with their email to fax services.  The service providers combine the PDFs and then send them as one fax.

We have already had to start training certain end users on how to combine multiple PDFs into one before sending their fax.  This creates extra work for users that routinely need to send more than one PDF as a fax.

Additionally, it creates more support work for us to help these users work efficiently.

It would be great if in the PDF conversion process you would check for and combine multiple PDF attachments into one PDF before sending the fax.  I suspect this would not be a huge amount of work to develop/improve.

I opened the following issue regarding this enhancement request:
https://2600hz.atlassian.net/browse/UI-2168

[Karl Stallknecht]

Ditto times 10 :-)

[Isaac]

Hello,

I myself have not seen this requested before. As you stated, usually the end users do this prior. Thank you for the feedback and for opening a JIRA case. I will keep an eye out and let you know of any progress.

[Karl Stallknecht]

Most users have no idea how to combine PDFs Isaac - it's actually not super simple for non-tech people. We get probably 3-4 support tickets every month from clients who complain that the fax didn't send when they tried to attach multiple PDF files. Even if we warn clients during training, their employees will often forget and try to attach multiple PDF files since it looks like an email and there's nothing that stops them from doing it. Every other eFax service that I have used supports multiple PDF files.

[Karl Stallknecht]

And to be honest, even for a tech person such as myself I still consider it a hassle to have to combine PDF files. What if I need to fax two separate documents that have nothing to do with each other? I end up having to create a third file with them combined for the sole reason of being able to send it as one fax. It's just a hassle.

[Isaac]

Hey Karl,

I understand where you are coming from and it makes total sense. We now have a JIRA ticket to track this and I will talk to the team as well. I'd be interested to hear from others who have customers with faxbox users. Are they getting the same requests?

[lazedo]

I'm just curious..., how would you handle the order of the documents ?
how would you explain to users that the order of the attachments is important ?
how would you explain to the users that they can't just select a group of files and drop them at the same time because order is important ?

[Karl Stallknecht]

If they are attaching multiple documents it would be assumed that they didn't care about the order. If they cared about the order then they would need to combine the PDF files.

[Logicwrath]

I agree.  If PDF1 is before PDF2 it doesnt make a difference, as long as the pages in each PDF are in order.  If this is something that is getting built out you could consider using ascending order for file names 0-9, a-z etc.. so that we could communicate that to end users if they actually cared.