Introduction to PhaxCodes

The Problem

Your application is receiving faxes but it has no way of knowing where the documents should be routed. Sure, you can have them all sent to a single person who sorts and delivers them to the proper place, but that takes up valuable time. What you really need is a layer of metadata on incoming faxes so that your application can properly insert them into a workflow.

Perhaps you work at a hospital and you’d like to put one fax number on your website. The problem is that you want forms that should go to the radiation department to print at the radiation desk, and forms for the oncology department to print at the oncology desk.

The Phaxio Solution: PhaxCodes

A PhaxCode is a Code-128 1D barcode that Phaxio generates, which can be embedded with metadata. The metadata is read by Phaxio and reported to your callback URL. Your application can take the information and make an informed decision about what is included in the fax, what should be done with that information, and where the fax should be routed.

Ideally PhaxCodes should be used through the API, but you can also manage your PhaxCodes in the Phaxio UI. For example you can download a PhaxCode in the Phaxio UI and manually attach it to a PDF yourself, or you can use the attachPhaxCodeToPDF operation to attach a PhaxCode to a PDF by supplying Phaxio with the X and Y coordinates of where the PhaxCode should be placed on the page.