Although World Fax includes a standard report for your fax broadcast jobs (HTML based report), World Fax also provides for more extensive reporting through the Reports Add-On Module.  This chapter covers how to install and use the enhanced features that are available with the add-on. You can use World Fax build in reports and add your own custom build reports.

Analyzing Your Fax Broadcasts

The World Fax Client shows you the progress of your job in terms of how many successful and failed faxes have occurred during the broadcast. After your job is complete however, you may want to know more about the broadcast than the basics.

How much time did the broadcast take?

At first thought, this should just be a count of the number of hours between when the broadcast started and when it finished.   However, jobs can be suspended, changed and resumed. Jobs may also be following a schedule of certain periods per day or have other factors which affect "how long" the broadcast lasts.

In any case, the real question is "how much time is going to be on the phone bill?". To answer this, World Fax tracks the duration of the individual faxes after a connection has been made. 

Therefore, the World Fax Reports will show the Total Duration for the fax broadcast as the sum of the individual faxes' duration.

How much is it going to cost on my phone bill?

In addition to the duration of the individual faxes, the cost associated with the fax depends on many other factors such as:

For this reason, World Fax does not currently provide any standard reports that estimate the actual cost of your phone bill.

What is the average duration?

Typically, you will want to see this statistic broken down by success or failure.  Specifically:

This way you will be able to tell how much time is being "wasted" on failed faxes.  If the failed faxes are a high percentage, this could indicate noisy phone lines, an out-of-date database or other problems.

Sometimes an artificially high percentage will be caused when you are using several retries on your jobs -- that is, there could be a lot of wasted time re-dialing bad numbers.

Another related statistic is:

Again, while these won't appear on your phone bill, you can estimate the effectiveness of your broadcast by comparing it to the other measurements above.

Are the fax ports being utilized efficiently?

World Fax provides a report that is organized by servers and fax ports.  This allows you to see if the fax load is being balanced properly across the servers and ports.  Generally, the numbers of faxes sent and failed will be close, with a certain natural variability of a few percentage points.  If you see any ports giving abnormal results, you might have a hardware problem with one of your phone lines or fax boards.

What types of errors are occurring?

The success rate for a broadcast has many variables -- logical factors such as the quality of the fax database or the time of day and physical factors such as the quality of the phone lines, fax boards, etc.  It is worthwhile to monitor the types of errors that occur to see if there is anything out of the ordinary. 

"Normal" errors are things like "Busy", "No Answer", "Unsustainable Connection" and the occasional "Remote Unit Disconnected".  Depending on the factors above, a success rate of 70% or better is usually considered acceptable.  With an established, well-maintained database, success rates often climb to 90% or better.  If you are consistently getting below 70%, there is usually a problem with some aspect of the system.  Are the phone lines all plugged in?   Has there been an area code change?   Do you have the World Fax Dialing Rules (location.ini) properly configured?

Installing the Crystal Reports Modul

World Fax CD (Manual Method)

Starting the Crystal Reports Module

Description of Available Reports

The Reports screen shows all of the available reports.

All Job Faxes

This report shows all of the faxes from the broadcast

All Job Faxes by Date

This report shows all of the faxes from the broadcast sorted by date.

Successful Job Faxes

This report shows only the successful faxes from the broadcast

Failed Faxes and Errors

This report shows only the failed faxes from the broadcast

All Job Faxes by Port

This report shows all of faxes from the broadcast sorted by the fax port they were sent on.

All Job Faxes by Retry

This report shows all of the faxes from the broadcast sorted by the number of retry attempts

Number of Pages Transmitted

This report shows all of the faxes from the broadcast with the number of pages transmitted.

Faxes Send Duration

This report shows all of the faxes from the broadcast, with the total duration for the broadcast included on the last page.

Faxes Send Duration (Summary Report)

This report shows a one-page summary of the job, including the total duration.

Summary Report

This report shows a one-page summary of the job.

Viewing the Report Information on Screen

To view the report you selected, click the Print button.

After a few moments, a new window will appear with the report information you selected for your fax broadcast.

Enlarging the View of the Report Information

After viewing a report on the screen, you can enlarge or shrink the view if so desired by using the Magnification Box.

Printing a Hard Copy of the Report Information

After viewing a report on the screen, you can print a hard copy if so desired.

If the report is on screen, press the "printer" icon  to bring up the print dialog.

Select any printing options you want such as a specific page range. 

Click OK

Exporting the Report Information to a File

After viewing a report on the screen, you can export the file to one of several file types.   This may be desirable if you want to put the data into another program for detailed analysis or special billing requirements.

If the report is on screen, press the "envelope" icon  to bring up the export dialog.

The default format is "Character-separated values".  This is essentially the same as using the CSV log file for the job.  Click the down arrow to see what other formats are available (e.g. DBF or Excel XLS).

Click OK.  You will then be prompted for a filename.

Type an appropriate name and make a mental note of the folder in which the exported file will be saved.  You can also change the location to a more convenient folder.

Click OK.  The contents of your report will be converted to the selected format. 

Open the exported file using another program.  For example, open Excel to read an XLS file.

Filtering the Report Information

You can filter the information in your report in a number of ways.

To Apply a Filter

Selecting CSV Data for the Report

The *.CSV files which contain the raw data for the report are stored in the "C:\Program Files\World Fax Client 7\Crystal" folder by default.  Since they are really just in comma separated format -- the same type of format as used for the World Fax fax lists -- they can be opened  by NotePad, WordPad, Excel or any text editor.

To select a job's CSV log file for a report:

Deleting Old CSV Files

If you delete a job from the Job List, the CSV log file for the job will still be available.

These will appear in the list with Job Name showing "LOCAL FILE".

Click the "Delete File" button to remove the files from your hard drive.

Customizing the Reports

The fax broadcast reports were designed using a third-party program called "Crystal Reports". If you have this program, you can modify the report format of any World Fax Report.  For your convenience, this program can be ordered directly through World Fax or an appropriate representative.

If you prefer, World Fax can also make modifications for you on a consulting basis.  Please contact an appropriate representative for an estimate.