The Problem

In the fax industry, retries are a norm. Most fax providers give you the opportunity to setup how many retries take place per fax, and at what interval. You can do that at Phaxio as well.

But we wanted to make the standard of retries better. We dove into our data to determine if there was a smarter way for our users to use retries. Could we find a case where one well-timed retry could be more efficient than a “brute force” style multiple retries?

Discovery

Finally, we discovered it: Busy Lines.

Now we’ve been working on features to avoid busy lines for a while (see Batching & Collision Avoidance). But, through our data analysis we discovered that many of our restaurant ordering clients were simply resubmitting faxes that failed due to a busy line. Essentially, they continued to retry the fax machine until it finally finished the previous fax and was ready for theirs. This meant that they had to wait for multiple retries and resbumissions to Phaxio. 

Smarter Retries

We came up with a solution. Now, you can setup how many retries you want per fax and specify not only the general wait, but also the wait when the reason for failure is a busy line. So, if the fax needs to retry because the fax machine is out of paper, you can let Phaxio know it should retry in twenty seconds. But, if the reason for failure was a busy line, Phaxio can retry sixty seconds later. 

You can setup all of the retries in the new Fax Settings section of you account. (My Account –> Fax Settings.) My recommendation? Sixty - ninety seconds on a busy line, thirty-five seconds for a regular retry.

As they say in the Destiny’s Child Fan Club, “if as first you don’t succeed…”