Programmatically Controlling Windows Fax Services Using VB.net - Starting to Write the Application (Page 3 of 4 )
It's very unlikely you will be writing the application on the same machine on which you have installed the fax services, so you need to connect to the shared fax device on your development machine. Its just as simple as running the Add Printer wizard and pointing it at the shared fax device on the server.
Once you have installed it on your machine, send another test fax from your machine, and also make it email you a job receipt (on the delivery notification screen, give it your email address). If the job is successful the fax should arrive on your fax machine, and you should receive an email in your in box that looks similar to this:
Fax Fax Job #!72686!# was successfully sent to Customer at 01772 123456
Fax submitted: 17:05:04
To server: fax1-svr
Transmission started: 17:05:05
Transmission end: 17:06:27
Number of retries: 1
Number of pages: 2
You can also look at the job information on the fax server by using the fax console app. This lists all incoming and outgoing jobs in a similar way to Outlook, and shows all the information and documents associated with the job.
If that has worked okay, you now need to get a copy of the fxscomex.dll file. This is contained in the Windows 2003 Platform SDK. You need to install the Core platform SDK. It can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload/platformsdk/sdkupdate/
When you have installed this, look in your Windows folder for a file called fxscomex.dll, and just to be on the safe side, run regsvr32 on this file to make sure it's registered. Once that is done, fire up Visual Studio and create a new Visual Basic project called something like TestFaxServices.
Once the project has been created, add a COM reference to the dll. To do this in Visual Studio go into the Project menu, then Add Reference and click on the COM tab. From the list, select Microsoft Fax Service Extended COM Type Library and hit the select button, then OK. You are now set up to use the library.
Next: Connecting to the Fax Server >>
More Visual Basic.NET Articles
More By Luke Niland