Premiere Global supports both the Caller ID feature and the Transmitting ID feature. In the fax world there are two types of Identifiers, the Transmitting Subscriber Identification (TSID) and the Called Subscriber Identification (CSID). The CSID is what shows up on your Caller ID display telling you who is calling you, while the TSID is what shows up on your fax machine and is intended to identify the fax machine that is calling and while they could be the same, most often they are different.You may ask why does this matter? A big difference between these two features is that the CSID is controlled by the phone company and cannot easily be changed, the TSID however is controlled by the person who owns the fax machine and can be easily altered. The TSID field can be 20 alpha numeric digits and is programmed by the person who sets up the fax machine for the first time. Unfortunately the majority of fax machines being used today are not properly programmed to identify themselves or they utilize a generic name like “Fax Machine”, because of this you cannot develop special rules based on the sender. When you are able to receive the CSID field you can do some very special things that you just cannot do if you are only receiving the TSID.
If you are able to receive the CSID, and are receiving your faxes via email, you could route a fax to a specific call center, route the fax to a customized business process or even set special alerts when faxes come from premium customers, and this can be accomplished without using any Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Software. Unfortunately not all fax providers make it easy for you to determine if you are in fact receiving the TSID or the CSID, so make sure you know what you are getting and how you will be using this valuable feature. In my next article I will explain how you can use the Caller ID (CSID) to block Spam Faxes and keep your mailbox from getting cluttered.
Tags: Desktop Fax, Document Delivery
Interesting concept.
Don’t most fax broadcast vendors including Premiere Global omit the CSID?
Most vendors use “unknown” and do not include the CSID when dialing outbound faxes, this can create issues for the receiver, especially if they block “unknown” callers. PGI does use different CSID when dialing depending on the service and the features you subscribe to.