Granular mail delivery controls for Scan to Fax using the Basic (Generic SMTP) connector

“Help! I’ve just started to use PaperCuts generic SMTP connector for Scan to Fax, but I need more granular control over the mail delivery to appease my fax provider or SMTP server. How can I do things like change the from address to a generic email account, or include body text in the email?”

In version 21.0.1 of PaperCut MF we introduced a new scan action type called Scan to Fax. There are two methods available to deliver scan jobs from an MFD to your fax provider, one of which is the Basic (Generic SMTP) connector. This accomplishes delivery by asking you to provide details of an SMTP server which the Application Server can use to deliver the scan job. The SMTP server defined here (and the related configuration) is completely separate from the SMTP server which you might have already configured for notifications and/or Scan to Email actions.

By default, this delivery method will send a message from the email address of the user who is logged into the MFD, with no body text, and the scan file as an attachment.

The problem

For some SMTP server types (Microsoft Exchange), asking to deliver a message with an attachment but no body text can be problematic; the SMTP server may actually encapsulate the entire message into an attachment on another email, which can then cause issues further downstream because the fax provider receives a message with a .eml attachment, rather than the actual scanned document. Things can also get tricky because some fax providers won’t accept messages that do contain body text.

Other SMTP server types (O/M365) may not permit the Application Server to send mail on behalf of a users email address, as we’ve seen with Scan to Email actions in the past.

How to solve the issue with granular controls

At the moment, granular controls to be able to configure these items in the Scan Action settings page do not exist, but forunately, we can adjust these settings by using a configuration file on your Application Server, to apply globally to all Scan to Fax actions using the Generic SMTP connector.

• Login to the Application Server and use a generic text editor such as Notepad to create a new, blank .txt file. Once saved, rename this .txt file to generic-conf.json
• Open this .json file in the same text editor, and paste the following text into the file, and then save it:

{
  "from": "youremail@here.com",
  "body": "The body text you want to see in the email"
}

• This configuration file now contains two key-value pairs. The first one (from) is to specify the email address where the Scan to Fax emails will send from. The second one (body) is to specify any body text you’d like the email to send with. If you only need one or the other, feel free to remove one as need be (remembering to remove the comma at the end of the line respective line if you’re only specifying one key-value pair). Replace the value portion of a pair with the email address or body text that you require, enclosed in double-quotes as above.
• Move the file into the following directory: [app-path]\PaperCut MF\server\bin\win\connectors\scan\fax\
• Now try to perform a Scan to Fax from one of your MFDs and confirm the resulting email has the correct from address and/or body text.

Still have questions?

Let us know! We love chatting about what’s going on under the hood. Feel free to leave a comment below or visit our Support Portal for further assistance.