Equisys Technical Notes

Technical guidance, explanations and fixes for our products

PRB: Inbound faxes are deleted by the mail gateway if the mail server is offline



ID: ZTN1148

This Zetafax technical note applies to:

  • Zetafax 6 and later


This issue affects the Zetafax SMTP gateway and all versions of the Zetafax mail gateway that communicate directly with a mail server, this includes Lotus Notes, ccMail and Novell GroupWise.

The Microsoft Exchange gateway is not affected as it communicates with the Zetafax connector.


Inbound faxes that are received correctly are not forwarded to your email inbox if the mail server is offline (e.g. Routine maintenance).


When the mail server is down or unreachable the Zetafax mail gateway will delete incoming faxes as they are unable to be delivered.


Equisys recommend stopping the Zetafax server during planned down time of the mail server. To protect against loosing faxes during unexpected down time we also recommend enabling archiving of received faxes to ensure there is a backup of all received faxes.

To enable archiving follow the instructions below:

  1. Launch the Zetafax configuration program and navigate to 'Server Settings'.
  2. Double click the 'Archiving of messages received or sent' and check the 'Archive received messages' and 'Save fax images with transmission reports' boxes.

  1. Specify a UNC path in the 'Directory to store files' text box (e.g. \\fax-server\zfax\server\z-recd)
  2. All incoming faxes will now be archived in this folder in a sub-folder for each day. These archives are accessible from the Zetafax client and may be forwarded to other Zetafax users.



Last updated: 17 August 2001 (JS/DH)


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