“They” say an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and while that may work for our own personal health, it doesn’t apply to enterprise fax servers. Fax servers, especially those that are critical to an organization’s day-to-day operations, need to be well maintained in order to limit downtime, prevent data loss and maintain compliance.
Apples won’t help your fax server stay healthy, but you can keep the “fax doctor” away by following these best practices:
Keep Your Server Up to Date
Whether you are using RightFax or any other fax solution, it’s important to keep your system up to date with the latest version. Using outdated fax technology is bad for a number of reasons:
- Bugs, glitches and security exploits are generally not patched on old software
- Old software can have compatibility and integration issues with newer applications
- Organizations miss out on new features and capabilities introduced in new versions
Not sure if your RightFax version is still supported? See the status of your version here. The latest version is 16.4. If you are interested in upgrading, get in touch with The Fax Guys team.
Review Your Fax Needs
Your fax needs are likely to change as time goes by. As your organization and your fax volume grow, you may need to add additional fax channels to keep up with the rising demand. If you fail to scale your fax server alongside your organization, it will eventually become overloaded and cease to function as efficiently as you need it to. Remember that faxes stuck in queue will greatly slow down your organization.
Check the Status of Your Server
Just as cars need oil changes and humans need a physical checkup, your fax server can benefit from a routine health check. This is especially true if you don’t have the IT staff in place to keep an eye on it. Getting a fax server “health check” will let you know if your fax server is:
- Running under capacity
- Has under-performing modules
- Has unidentified transmission errors
- Has other issues
Learn more about how you can get a fax server health check here.
For Critical Servers, Add a Fax-Testing and Alert System
If you need your fax server to be fully operational 24x7x365, it’s a good idea to implement an automated testing system that pings your fax machine or server every so often. These pings (which take place as often as every 15 minutes) test to see if your server is able to receive faxes. If the test fails, you will receive an alert notifying you that something is wrong. You can learn more about these types of fax server monitoring systems here.
Invest in Reliable Support
Even if your server is up to date and running well, you never know when problems can arise. That’s why it’s best to have a reliable support team to solve your issues as quickly as possible. At The Fax Guys, we support more than 1,200 RightFax environments across the country. Our award-winning support team is here to help your server stay healthy and up to date. Learn more about our support plans today.
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