THE GOLD STANDARD IN FAX SOFTWARE

• Includes Several Bug Fixes
• Addressed EOut Of System Resources error when constructing cover page.

• Internet Fax Service processing for FaxAge and SRFax has been split into 2 background threads.  One for inbound and the other for outbound.  This enhances the throughput since retrieving new incoming faxes does not have to wait on outbound status processing to complete.
• A new option was added to the internet fax services settings – “Do not collect incoming faxes”.  If this is selected then the inbound thread is not started and no incoming faxes will be processed.
• The processing of print jobs to the “snappy fax printer” has been enhanced, resulting in improved reliability.
• Automation Jobs were not being marked as completed which resulted in a job being processed repeatedly.
• Outgoing faxes were not being saved to external tif or pdf files.
• Batch Print was executing even though the user clicked the cancel button.
• The select range of pages on the print setup dialog was not being enabled so the user could select.
• Some toolbar buttons were not being enabled at the appropriate time.
• Fixed the problem with painting the data grid indicator row which only occurred if the column order of the grid had been changed.
• Fixed the issue of thumbnail images not being painted in the panel below the data grid.
• Scanner settings like page size, resolution, Show Scanner UI, etc. are now being saved across sessions.
• Dial prefix was not being properly applied.
• Fixed exception being thrown when clearing thumbnail information.
• Fixed issue with Help | About hanging.

• Added Watch Folder option to automatically retry failed faxes
• The option ‘Auto-Size Thumbnails’ has been deprecated, is always true now
• The option ‘Show Record Count in Navigator’ has been deprecated, is always true now
• Added new Email to Fax option, “Send Status Reply Only if Fax Failed’
• Notable performance improvements in executing certain SQL queries
• Saved Grid Filters were not being properly applied at startup
• The Ribbon can now be minimized by clicking the chevron drop-down button at the right edge of the Quick Bar
• When the Ribbon is minimized, annotation tools are shown in a floating window when the Image Viewer is being shown
• New folders can not be added to the Draft and Scheduled Faxes node in the Navigator
• New button on the mini-toolbar (above the data grid) allows you to lock specific records.  Locked records cannot be focused or selected by the user.  Requires password entry.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes

• Printer Setup option to print specific pages (print range) was not enabled when ‘Use Legacy Printing Code’ option was enabled in general settings

• The new printing methodology did not work for some (seems to be related to HP printer drivers).  A new option is now available under settings->general… ‘Use Legacy Printing’, this defaults to true.  The same printing method as has been always used is now the default.  If you run into instances of and exception ‘No default printer currently selected’, you will want to uncheck this option to enable the new printing method which avoids this exception.
• In settings->print options, print outgoing faxes, the print type selection combo box was not being enabled unless the ‘print confirmation’ checkbox was checked.  This issue has been fixed.
• In settings->general, the option ‘Use high speed drawing’ has been removed as there is really no need for this option.  There is no perceived difference in drawing speed with or without this option and this is treated as false by default because it offers safety against ‘out of resources’ exceptions.

We’ve been delinquent in updating the change log since December, however, be assured there have been many fixes, refinements and new features to make snappy fax easier than ever to use.  This list will bring the change log up to date since the last December 2019 release build.

• Watch folder processing has undergone a number of changes, you will notice the ‘Watch Folder’ data view now contains a toolbar which contains some “convenience” buttons that allow the user to accomplish in one click operations that previously took several.  You can also view the fax image, sent fax confirmation or both directly from the Watch Folder view.  There is no longer any need to locate the item in the outbox in order to accomplish that.  Note that items in the watch data table that were existing before this feature was implemented cannot be processed since there was no way to link the watch data record to the outbox data record.  If you select such an item, snappy fax will alert you that there is no link for that record.  Other ‘convenience’ buttons allow the user the remove a grouping if the data has been grouped or expand or collapse the grouping view.  You can also extract a watch file from the data , create a new watch item from an existing data item or open and/or save the watch file.  Note: the watch file being referred to here is the original .pdf, .docx or other supported file type that was dropped in the watch folder.  You can also define a new watch folder from this view or delete a previously defined watch folder without the need to access snappy fax’s settings.
• Watch folder items to be processed with email routing are now handled specially by a background thread since no user interaction is needed.
• The Watch Folder view contains a new data grid (lower in pane) which reflects procedures performed when the watch item was processed.  This can be useful for troubleshooting.
• Image printing has been enhanced to produce better print quality and the ‘no default printer is currently selected’ has been eliminated.  This was a rare and fleeting bug but finally it has been resolved once and for all.
• The ‘move to another’ folder popup menu item (applies to inbox, outbox, archives, etc.) has a ‘New…’ button now which allows the user to create a new folder to move the selected items to.  There is no longer a need to first create a new folder and then perform the move operation.
• Fixed a bug which caused the cover page body (message text) on Email to fax items to be improperly formatted.
• The application icon which shows on the taskbar and the large circular button at top left of snappy fax main window will contain a warning symbol if any outbound fax attempt has failed during the session.  There is also a new button on the quick bar to allow the user to dismiss the icon and reset it to normal when applicable.  This new button is not visible unless the application icon has been set to the warning icon.
• Fixed a bug (SQL parse error) when marking an inbox item as read or unread.
• The method of converting Microsoft Word or Excel documents for fax processing has been changed so that the Snappy Fax printer driver is no longer needed for the conversion process.
• There was a rendering problem with some images that caused a grayscale image to be rendered totally black.  This was related to the option ‘Optimize images for better thumbnail appearance’.  This option has been eliminated and the image rendering has been improved.
• When loading a multi-page file in the image viewer, the wrong page was being loaded into the single page view.
• On the snappy fax main window you will also notice some ‘convenience’ buttons have been added to the small toolbar above the data records to allow removing grouping, expand or collapse grouping, etc.
• For most data grids there is a new popup menu that can be accessed by right-clicking on the grid’s header.  This menu contains items related to grouping, sorting and grid appearance.
• You can now drag and drop a contact record(s) from Outlook’s contact view onto the snappy fax address book maintenance screen to automatically add a new contact(s).
• There has been a lot of other drag and drop functionality added to snappy fax.  You can drag an image file from other applications or Windows file explorer and drop them into snappy fax.  For example you can drag an image from PaperPort and drop it into snappy fax’s draft window when preparing a fax from PaperPort.  You can also drag a snappy fax data item from the outbox or inbox and drop onto the Windows Desktop or Windows Explorer to create a new file.  This operation will result in a .pdf file and is governed by the new option in settings->general ‘Drag and Drop File Format’.  If this option is unchecked, the .tif file format will be used.  Experiment with drag and drop in different areas of snappy fax you will find this very useful.
• There have been a number of bug fixes and code refinements.

• Fixed issues with forwarding incoming faxes to other fax machines
• The outbox display was not refreshed automatically upon sending a fax using faxage or srfax
• Fixed bug in processing Print Driver Override
• Added code to determine if running in VirtualBox
• Tif and Pdf files can now be dragged and dropped onto the inbox or outbox from Windows File Explorer to create new database entries.  This is useful if you have tif or pdf files that were created with another fax program and you want to include them in the snappy fax database.  Dragging and dropping file from Windows File Explorer onto any other view in snappy fax will load the related file images into the image viewer as before.
• Some minor cosmetic improvements
• Other minor bug fixes

• Express Setup throws exception when Finish button clicked.  Expected global object not yet created.
• An image file might be unexpectedly deleted if a grid refresh occurred in the background when the main window was not the active window.  For example, during print preview.

• Fixed bug in saving fax images, if new feature was enabled to not save external (backup) files

• Fixed bug in forwarding pdf to email
• Fixed issue with deleting record from Watch Folder items table
• Fixed issue with user chosen font on “Prepare fax job” screen not being saved across sessions
• When Snappy Fax is being used with Snappy fax server, it will now retrieve the license from the fax server.  No longer a need to apply the license to each and every client on the network.
• Some other tweaks and bug fixes

• Email to fax bug fix, not processing cover page

• Added a migrator module to assist user in moving snappy fax to another computer.  The migrator can be accessed from a new button “Move to another computer” from the Utilities ribbon tab.  The migrator will create a migration file (zip format) which will contain all configuration information and data files.  Once this file is created, it can be copied to the new computer and then the migrator can be run on the new computer to establish the data files and configuration information there.  Important:  The migrator does not process any external files saved in .pdf or .tiff format to folders specified in your snappy fax settings-fax file saving options.  These files are managed by the user exclusively, if you need to move those files you can do so manually.
• When changing snappy fax’s configuration from use fax server or not use fax server, a restart is no longer required.
• Added a new button on the horizontal toolbar beneath the image area on the image viewer tab, “Open with Associated Windows Application”.  This is handy if you want to open the .tif file in the viewer in the default windows application for handling .tif files.
• The options to keep transmission logs is now separated for incoming and outgoing faxes.  If you normally don’t experience transmission failures, you can set the options to ‘No Transmission Log’ to save disk space and processing time.
• When a page was cut from the image viewer, the update database image button was not enabled as it should be.  Fixed.
• Deleted the FaceBook and Twitter buttons, in reality, there is no need for these
• Other minor bug fixes and tweaks.

• Minor bug fix in settings when connecting to the database server over internet

• Fixed a bug in email to fax feature
• Check for updated version returned an incorrect result when the server was not reachable

• Email to fax feature was expanded to allow multiple fax recipients to be processed.  Simply separate each recipient with a semi-colon on the email subject line.  If a cover page subject designation is to be used (part following underscore character, only needs to be included for one recipient in the email subject, like this: John@18005551212_cover page subject;Tom@18776665876;Mike@12345436666
• The problem with mixed resolution incoming faxes has been fixed.  For example, if the cover page is high resolution and the other pages in the fax are standard resolution, the conversion to a tif image resulted in an image that appeared to be squished.
• The horizontal toolbar beneath the image area on the “Image Viewer” ribbon tab now contains two new buttons: “Recreate tif image from apf file”, this button can be used to fix a squished image that has been previously processed (mixed resolution fax) and “Resample image to fax size”, this button is useful to re-dimension a fax image that is distorted.
• In Settings->forwarding to email, if the user added a new recipient to the list by way of clicking the address book option, it was not effectively added to the list.  Bug has been fixed.
• On the “Prepare Fax Job” screen, a new checkbox was added “Set as default cover page”.  Useful if you want to change the default cover page at that time and avoid going into Snappy Fax’s settings.
• After receiving a “manual” fax, the start receive mode button was not being enabled.
• The install snappy fax printer will no longer run as part of the install if it has already been installed.
• Windows XP users were experiencing a cosmetic problem with checkboxes blacked out on the “Prepare Fax Job” screen.
• Image thumbnail background color settings set in the Grid Layout Options screen, as well as other grid options are now applied correctly to all such controls in Snappy Fax.
• Record counts in the navigator pane are now shown for all categories.
• Method of detecting installed modems was changed to be more “friendly” to virtual machines.
• Miscellaneous cosmetic changes and bug fixes.

• The Email to Fax feature was enhanced by adding the number of pages to the status reply email that is sent to the user.  Also, additional options were added in settings->email to fax to have the fax image itself sent as an attachment in the last status reply email.
• The default Email to fax cover page selected the user was not being loaded properly across application invocations.
• Fixed a bug when authentication was attempted when using SRFax.com

• Fixed field name misspelling.  Fast typing talent is not always a blessing.

• Fixed two memory leaks 
• Fixed a couple of problems in the Email to fax functionality, which interestingly only occurred if snappy fax was running on an evaluation license.  This pointed out the need for our testers to always test as both a virgin user and a licensed user.  🙂
• Changed the duration of the startup nag screen displayed during the evaluation period from 10 seconds to 5 seconds.

• This new “feature” was driven by a customer request.  The customer had a “cloud” server in another country to which he wanted to save his external fax image files over a VPN, which requires the internet, of course.  When a fax was received and a save attempt was made, if the internet connection was temporarily down the save failed.  There was no provision to later save the item.  The same scenario applies if a forwarding to email attempt was made.  This called for a new “feature” to plug the hole.  In this version a new data table is created to hold the failed items when the failure occurs.  A background thread takes care of resolving the failed items when conditions permit (ie internet connection reestablished).
• Another user was somewhat annoyed by the popup alert that shows when a fax is rejected in accordance with junk fax filter configuration.  We’ve added an option under settings->fax filter (junk fax) settings to suppress these alerts.

• Created a new settings category “Printer Driver Override”.  This should not be used unless you are running in a Citrix environment.  The Citrix environment may thwart the normal printer driver processing when printing to the “snappy fax printer”.  This option provides a workaround to that problem.
• Fixed non-critical problem with deleting rubber stamps, etc. from annotations.
• On the Image Viewer, annotations can now be deleted by pressing the delete key as well as using the delete button in the annotations ribbon group.
• Fixed a minor problem with the navigator’s folder population at startup.
• Added a check at startup to check the Fax Host configuration entry.  If blank, the user is alerted to fix the issue before startup continues.  Only applies if using Snappy Fax as a client to the fax server.
• On the “Prepare Fax Job” screen, a check was added if the user types in a non-existent file name when the “Load From File…” button is clicked.
• Fixed the memory used displayed on the About window.
• The default configuration value for use ribbon style (under general settings) has been changed to false.  Using the ribbon style might result in a more pleasant display but causes the startup load to be slower.
• Some first-time run behavior was undesirable.  If a test fax was being sent then the nag dialog was displayed over the progress view and if receive mode at startup was selected on the express setup screen, starting receive mode was attempted prematurely, before the test fax completed.  These issues have been fixed.

• After submitting a fax to the fax server from a watched folder, a flag was not being set properly, causing repeated processing.

• When an image was rotated in the Image Viewer, only the thumbnail was rotated, not the full image display.
• Fixed some layout problems with the Incoming Fax Progress view.
• Added the Email to Fax feature.

• The fax server would get into a “hung” state if using FaxAge and an error was encountered in building a cover page.
• Addressed problem of Out of System Resources when building cover page.
• Miscellaneous bug fixes.

• Sender’s fax number was not being populated on the cover page.
• Added metric in status bar to show memory used.
• Folder naming using internet fax service inbound fax number as part of folder hierarchy was broken.
• The fax server was hanging when Help | About on the menu was selected, this has been fixed.

• New item on data grid popup menu (outbox only), “Show FaxAge Life Cycle for Selected Item”.  If using FaxAge, this will show the history of an item from original submit to life cycle end.
• FaxAge and SRFax processing has been split into two separate background threads, one for incoming faxes and the other for outgoing faxes.  Increases throughput since retrieving new incoming faxes does not now have to wait for outbound status checking to complete.
• An orderly shutdown of the fax server can now be accomplished from the command line by typing “sfserver3 QUIT”.  (No Quotes)

• Help | Store Client Software License will now validate the selected license file before storing it in the fax server.  Leaving it up to the user to select the *client* license file instead of the *server* license file was a bit optimistic 🙂

• Minor bug fix
• Update to snappy fax *database* server

• Fixed problem saving modem configuration after a modem was removed from service

• Fixed bug causing some settings to be lost

• Fixed bug in saving fax file storage settings

• Fixed a couple of Express Setup issues when using with faxage or srfax
• Fixed a bug in the “Restart database server” functionality (under Utilities menu item)

• Introduced new menu item under “Help” on main menu – “Store Client Software License”.  Use this to store the snappy fax client license in the fax server’s database.  Once you do this there will be no reason the you should need to apply the client license to any snappy fax clients on the network, it will retrieve the license automatically.  This is a huge timesaver for a network configuration with many, many clients installed.

• Prep fax failed items are no longer treated as an error, they are deleted and added back to the jobs table.  Windows will occasionally refuse to supply a compatible Device context handle for bitmaps used when creating a cover page.  The error reported by the runtime “out of system resources” is actually wrong.  A second attempt at the process will succeed when executed.
• When using faxage, if an attempt to submit a fax to their server times out, it is no longer treated as a failure, the item is processed in the same manner as a prep fax failed as described in the previous item above.
• In Fax Storage options, a date formatting option has been added if create subfolder by date is selected.
• Other minor bug fixes and tweaks.

• Mixed resolution incoming faxes are now converted correctly.  A mixed resolution fax previously would result in a tif image that looked “squished”.
• Other cosmetic changes, optimizations and bug fixes.

• Fixed issue with SRFax.com authentication

• This new “feature” was driven by a customer request.  The customer had a “cloud” server in another country to which he wanted to save his external fax image files over a VPN, which requires the internet, of course.  When a fax was received and a save attempt was made, if the internet connection was temporarily down the save failed.  There was no provision to later save the item.  The same scenario applies if a forwarding to email attempt was made.  This called for a new “feature” to plug the hole.  In this version a new data table is created to hold the failed items when the failure occurs.  A background thread takes care of resolving the failed items when conditions permit (ie internet connection reestablished).
• In the past, fax resolution in the fax server has always been forced to high resolution, even if the user selected standard resolution.  This was done for a number of reasons, none of which were entirely valid.  Standard resolution is now allowed and supported as it should be.

• The option ‘Create Sub-folders by Modem’ when using FaxAge.  The “folder” is named according to the FaxAge fax number.  Useful when you have more than one fax number established with FaxAge.
• Fixed the memory used displayed on the About window.
• Software update notice email was not being sent if the update file had already been downloaded.

• The ‘Set as Default’ folder popup menu option was enabled when right clicking on the Trash folder.  Fixed, as it be disabled because it is not allowed.
• Fixed Access Violation when clicking on the modem status navigator item before the modem status list had been populated.

• An outbox fax can now be resubmitted from the fax server itself.  Previously, if a job needed to be resubmitted fo the fax server it had to be done from the client that submitted the job originally.  There is a new button on the toolbar just above the outbox data grid for this.
• Fixed a problem in the iFaxThread where a pointer was referenced before it was fetched, leading to an Access Violation.

• Incoming Fax Progress window did not show each received page in the thumbnail view

• Unwanted temporary files were being left behind.  Those are now deleted.
• A new option has been introduced “Use Legacy Printing Code”.  The default is true (checked).  If you have a problem printing your fax images, typically with the error “no default printer is currently selected”, you can uncheck this option and it will likely resolve the issue.

• Snappy Fax will ignore any serial comms on the computer when scanning for modems on the system, unless it is being run in a virtual machine.  These are registry entries that may or may not be valid modems and typically should be ignored unless using a virtual machine like VmWare or VirtualBox.  This can become a source of confusion to some users.

• Fixed “Index out of bounds” error , when attempting to send a fax.  This usually occurs when the ‘Tapi’ Windows service is not running.
• When clicking the “Send” button in “Prepare Fax”, if the “Selected Recipents” list is empty, but there is an entry in the name and fax edit boxes, they will be automatically added to the list and the fax will be sent.  Otherwise, the user will be prompted that there are no selected recipients for this fax.

• Mixed resolution incoming faxes are now converted correctly.  A mixed resolution fax previously would result in a tif image that looked “squished”.
• Other cosmetic changes, optimizations and bug fixes.

• Fixed “<text> is not a valid integer value” error when configuring pop before smtp options in settings->email