question

Hello Catie,

Let's try to answer your questions...

1. Can we integrate RingCentral's fax service and program it to be able to send fax to a samba printer with a Unix system?

Answer to #1: Answering this will require detailed knowledge of the system architecture, but I will provide as much of an answer as possible.

There are a couple of ways I can think of to send faxes to a samba share printer with a Unix system. For now, let's assume that you have a Samba (SMB) host running on a *nix (stands for Unix, Linux) machine, and this *nix SMB host has a connected printer.

• If the printer is addressable over the network, you could use the Samba Client utility:
  smbclient -U <user> //server/printer -c "print <filename>"
  
  
• If the printer is not addressable from your machine over your network. You could create a custom PHP application using the RingCentral Developer Portal which would run on the Unix server, that would subscribe to particular extension's Message Store events (as faxes are received, the application could download the fax attachments from the message store and then use the smbclient utility to send this data to the connected printer).
  
  
• If the printer is addressable over the network (and you only want to send from a local computer which has RingCentral Desktop running), you could use the "Automatically print incoming faxes" feature of RingCentral Desktop app.
  
  
  

2. Can we fax using another system called SStars?

Answer to #2: I did some web searches and was unable to locate this specific system. Could you provide a direct link or more information please?

3. How can we do this? I'm not sure what these are they just said that these are the hard codes:

HARD CODES needed to automate the service 

./CE29H/send_letters.sh 
/' | lp -csdhpfax #MP012909 
/' | qprt -Phpfax -D $LOGIN #MP012909 
----- 
./CE29V/re_send_remit.sh 
/' | lp -csdhpfax 's/$/\ 
----- 
./CM60K/send_remit.sh 
/' | lp -csdhpfax 's/$/\ 

Answer to #3:

• I'm assuming when you say "How can we do this?", you mean how to print faxes to a Samba shared printer.
  
  
• When you say "they said that these are the hard codes", who is they? I'm assuming you mean your IT team since those are shell scripts which are located in a directory on a *nix-based machine (I'm guessing an IBM AIX OS since they're using qprt command) which pipe their output to subsequent BASH commands. It appears they have provided you with the information needed to achieve these goals, but it is going to require a developer to integrate properly.
  
  
• It looks like whoever provided you with these commands has given you three commands:
  
  1. send_letters.sh
  2. re_send_remit.sh
  3. send_remit.sh
  
  Each of these shell scripts creates some type of output (I'm guessing one or more files for printing), which is sent to subsequent *nix printing commands:
  
  - lp command: http://www.computerhope.com/unix/ulp.htm
  - qprt command (usage can differ based on the OS version): https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/ssw_aix_61/com.ibm.aix.cmds4/qprt.htm
  
  
• You could use a server-side programming language (like PHP, Node.js, Ruby, etc..) and create an application (as I mentioned above) to execute these shell scripts with the appropriate data in an event-driven manner. This will require access to the RingCentral Connect Platform and Developer Portal. Once you have defined a server only application which is able to monitor the Message Store events for inbound faxes, your application could download the data associated with the fax and then execute these scripts (depending upon what you need to do and what the scripts do themselves, but I cannot know this with the information at hand).
  
  Example of executing a shell script in PHP: $output = shell_exec('./send_letters.sh'); $printItem = shell_exec('lp -csdhpfax #MP012909 $output');
  

Reading your question, the information you've provided, and not wishing you to waste time...I would highly recommend that you seek out a developer or system administrator for the *nix machine whom would be able to provide assistance.