JP3922244B2 - Facsimile device - Google Patents

Description

  The present invention relates to communication technology, and more particularly to communication technology in an apparatus for transmitting and receiving facsimile data.

  In recent years, infrastructures such as ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), ADSL (Asymmetry Digital Subscriber Line), and FTTH (Fiber to the home) have been established, and it has become possible to always connect to networks such as the Internet at a low price. As a result, it is expected that Internet facsimiles capable of transmitting and receiving facsimile data using e-mail will become more widespread in the future.

  In such Internet facsimile, information devices such as a facsimile machine and an MFP (Multi Functional Peripheral) having a facsimile function communicate facsimile data based on, for example, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) or POP (Post Office Protocol). It has a function to send and receive e-mail attachments.

For example, Patent Document 1 discloses an e-mail processing function for exchanging image information and various reports as e-mails, and a group 3 (G3) facsimile transmission unit connected to a public network and using the public network as a transmission path. Describes a facsimile apparatus having a transmission function for performing image information transmission according to the above.
JP 2001-7975 A

  When using e-mail, the facsimile data is not transmitted after a communication circuit is formed by the information device on the transmission side and the information device on the reception side as in facsimile communication using G3, G4, or the like. For this reason, there may be a delay in the time from transmission to reception of facsimile data due to network traffic or a failure, or an electronic mail may not reach the mail server of the receiving information device.

  The present invention has been made in view of these points, and an object thereof is to provide a technique for improving the convenience of an apparatus for transmitting and receiving facsimile data.

According to the present invention,
  A facsimile apparatus that acquires a document as one image data for each page, and generates and transmits one e-mail for each image data,
  Index generating means for generating one index including identification information of the image data to be transmitted in one facsimile transmission;
  Transmitting means for transmitting the e-mail attached with the index to a predetermined destination together with the e-mail attached with the image data;
  Storage processing means for storing the electronic mail attached with the image data in the storage unit in association with the identification information;
  Receiving means for receiving facsimile data from a predetermined transmission source;
  Determining means for determining whether or not the facsimile data received by the receiving means includes information requesting transmission of the electronic mail stored in the storage unit;
  When the determination unit determines that the facsimile data received by the reception unit includes information requesting transmission of an e-mail stored in the storage unit, transmission is performed from the facsimile data received by the reception unit. An extraction means for extracting the identification information of the requested email;
Including
  The index is configured by associating the identification information of the image data with the identification information of the e-mail attached with the image data,
  Based on the identification information of the electronic mail read by the extraction means, the transmission means reads the corresponding electronic mail from the storage unit and transmits the electronic mail. .

In the facsimile apparatus of the present invention, the index includes a thumbnail of the image data, and can include the thumbnail and the identification information of the image data in association with each other.

In the facsimile apparatus of the present invention, the index generating means can generate the index so that the index includes identification information of the index, and the storage processing means can store the e-mail attached with the image data. As the identification information, identification information obtained by combining the identification information of the index transmitted together with the electronic mail and the identification information of the image data included in the index can be stored in the storage unit.

In the facsimile apparatus of the present invention, the storage processing unit can store the electronic mail attached with the image data in the storage unit in association with a time stamp of the electronic mail transmission by the transmission unit. The transmission unit reads the corresponding email from the storage unit based on the identification information of the email read by the extraction unit, and when the email is transmitted, the time stamp of the email in the storage unit Can be updated.

  It should be noted that any combination of the above-described constituent elements and a conversion of the expression of the present invention between a method, an apparatus, a system, a recording medium, a computer program, etc. are also effective as an aspect of the present invention.

  ADVANTAGE OF THE INVENTION According to this invention, the technique which improves the convenience of the apparatus which transmits / receives facsimile data can be provided.

(First embodiment)
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a configuration of a communication system 100 in the present embodiment.
The communication system 100 includes a first facsimile apparatus 102 and a second facsimile apparatus 130, which are connected by a network 150 such as the Internet. The first facsimile apparatus 102 and the second facsimile apparatus 130 are an Internet facsimile apparatus, an MFP (Multi Functional Peripheral), or the like. Hereinafter, a case where the first facsimile apparatus 102 is the transmission side and the second facsimile apparatus 130 is the reception side will be described as an example.

  Each component of the communication system 100 is, as far as hardware components, a CPU of any computer, a memory, a program that realizes the components shown in the figure loaded in the memory, a storage unit such as a hard disk that stores the program, It is realized mainly by a network connection interface, a facsimile communication modem, and the like, but it will be understood by those skilled in the art that there are various modifications in the implementation method and apparatus. Each figure to be described below shows functional unit blocks, not hardware unit configurations.

  In the present embodiment, the first facsimile apparatus 102 transmits to the second facsimile apparatus 130 a document that the user 152 transmits by facsimile and an index of the document. The manuscript may be anything, but it can be a catalog, for example. Here, one index is generated for each facsimile transmission. The index includes a thumbnail image of the document transmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102, index identification information, and an entry field for requesting retransmission of the document.

  When the user 154 of the second facsimile apparatus 130 requests re-transmission of the original received from the first facsimile apparatus 102, the user enters a check in the index entry column and transmits the index to the first facsimile apparatus 102. . The first facsimile apparatus 102 extracts necessary information from the index and retransmits the document requested to be retransmitted to the second facsimile apparatus 130.

  The first facsimile apparatus 102 includes a document reading unit 104, an index generation unit 106, a storage processing unit 108, a data storage unit 110, a mail generation unit 112, a mail transmission unit 114, a mail reception unit 116, A determination unit 118, an OCR processing unit 120, and a data reading unit 122 are included. Second facsimile apparatus 130 includes a mail reception unit 132, a printing unit 134, a document reading unit 136, a mail generation unit 138, and a mail transmission unit 140.

  Although not shown here, the first facsimile apparatus 102 and the second facsimile apparatus 130 have a function of accepting designation of a document transmission destination from the user 152 and the user 154, respectively.

  The document reading unit 104 reads a paper document or an electronic document requested to be transmitted from the user 152 as document data. The document reading unit 104 acquires a document as one image data for each page.

  The index generation unit 106 generates an index including thumbnail images of the image data acquired by the document reading unit 104. In the present embodiment, the index is image data such as a PDF file or JPEG. The index includes index identification information for identifying the index and image identification information for identifying image data included in the index. Details of the index will be described later.

  The mail generation unit 112 generates an e-mail attached with the image data acquired by the document reading unit 104. When the document reading unit 104 acquires a plurality of image data, the mail generation unit 112 generates a plurality of e-mails. The mail generation unit 112 also generates an e-mail attached with the index generated by the index generation unit 106.

  The storage processing unit 108 stores the e-mail attached with the image data acquired by the document reading unit 104 in the data storage unit 110 in association with the identification information. Here, the identification information of each electronic mail can be, for example, a combination of index identification information and image identification information for identifying each image data.

  The identification information of each e-mail can be the message ID of the e-mail. Further, the image identification information included in the above-described index can be, for example, a message ID of an e-mail attached with each image data. In this way, when there is a request for retransmission of image data in association with the image identification information from the second facsimile apparatus 130 on the receiving side later, a necessary e-mail is sent from the data storage unit 110 using the message ID as a key. Can be read and retransmitted to the second facsimile machine 130.

  In another example, the storage processing unit 108 can store the image data in association with the identification information instead of the e-mail in the data storage unit 110. Also in this case, the identification information of the image data can be a message ID of an electronic mail to which each image data is attached. Accordingly, as described above, necessary image data can be retransmitted using the message ID as a key. The identification information of the image data can be described in the header or comment area of the image data.

  The mail transmission unit 114 transmits the electronic mail generated by the mail generation unit 112 to the second facsimile apparatus 130. Specifically, the e-mail is transmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102 to a mail server (not shown) connected to the network 150 based on SMTP and stored in the mail server.

  The mail receiving unit 132 of the second facsimile apparatus 130 periodically reads an e-mail from the mail server using POP or the like, and acquires the e-mail. The printing unit 134 prints the image data and the index attached to the electronic mail received by the mail receiving unit 132. Thereby, the user 154 of the second facsimile apparatus 130 can receive the originals read by the original reading unit 104 by the user of the first facsimile apparatus 102 and the indexes of these originals.

  FIG. 2 is a diagram showing the index 200. 2A shows the index 200 transmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102, and FIG. 2B shows that the user 154 of the second facsimile apparatus 130 wants to retransmit the document from the first facsimile apparatus 102. It is a figure which shows the index 200 after filling in the required item in the case.

  The index 200 includes a determination column 202, an index identification information column 204, a thumbnail column 206, an image identification information column 208, a retransmission request column 210, and a determination column 118 used for determination by the determination unit 118 of the first facsimile apparatus 102, which will be described later. , And a retransmission number column 212. The index 200 can be in the form of a mark sheet so that the first facsimile apparatus 102 can easily recognize characters.

  When the user 154 of the second facsimile apparatus 130 wants to resend any one of the originals, the user 154 checks the index retransmission request column 210, enters the number of retransmissions in the retransmission number column 212, and enters the second facsimile. The index is transmitted from the apparatus 130 to the first facsimile apparatus 102.

  Returning to FIG. 1, the document reading unit 136 of the second facsimile device 130 acquires the document as image data for each page, as with the document reading unit 104 of the first facsimile device 102. When the user 154 of the second facsimile apparatus 130 causes the document reading unit 136 to read the index, the document reading unit 136 acquires the index as image data.

  The mail generation unit 138 generates an e-mail attached with the image data acquired by the document reading unit 136. The mail transmission unit 140 transmits an electronic mail attached with image data to the first facsimile apparatus 102. Specifically, the e-mail is transmitted from the second facsimile apparatus 130 to a mail server (not shown) connected to the network 150 based on SMTP and stored in the mail server.

  The mail receiving unit 116 of the first facsimile apparatus 102 periodically reads an e-mail from the mail server using POP or the like, and acquires the e-mail.

  The determination unit 118 determines whether the image data attached to the e-mail received by the mail receiving unit 116 is normal document data or an index including a request for retransmission of document data transmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102 in the past. judge. The determination unit 118 refers to the determination column 202 of the index 200, and determines that the facsimile data is an index including a request for retransmission when the column includes a predetermined mark.

  When the determination unit 118 determines that the facsimile data is an index including a re-transmission request, the OCR processing unit 120 performs OCR processing of the attached index. The OCR processing unit 120 refers to the index identification information column 204, the image identification information column 208, the retransmission request column 210, and the retransmission number column 212 of the index 200 shown in FIG. Acquires image identification information and the number of retransmissions of a document.

  The data reading unit 122 reads the corresponding e-mail from the data storage unit 110 based on the identification information acquired by the OCR processing unit 120. The mail transmission unit 114 transmits the electronic mail read by the data reading unit 122 to the second facsimile apparatus 130.

  FIG. 3 is a diagram schematically showing the configuration of the communication system 100 in the present embodiment. Hereinafter, a case where the user 152 of the first facsimile apparatus 102 transmits a plurality of documents 1 to 4 to the second facsimile apparatus 130 will be described with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2 as an example.

  First, the first facsimile apparatus 102 reads a plurality of documents 1 to 4. The first facsimile apparatus 102 acquires these originals 1 to 4 as image data 1 to 4 and generates a plurality of electronic mails 1 to 4 to which the image data 1 to 4 are attached. Further, the first facsimile apparatus 102 generates an index of the plurality of image data 1 to 4 and generates an e-mail 5 attached with the index. The first facsimile apparatus 102 transmits the plurality of e-mails 1 to 5 to the second facsimile apparatus 130.

  The second facsimile machine 130 receives electronic mails 1 to 5 via the network 150. The second facsimile machine 130 prints the image data 1 to 4 attached to the e-mails 1 to 5 and the index. Thereby, the user 154 of the second facsimile apparatus 130 can receive the documents 1 to 4 and the indexes corresponding to the image data 1 to 4.

  When the user 154 of the second facsimile apparatus 130 wishes to resend any one of the documents 1 to 4, the user 154 checks the index resending request field 210, and sets the number of resending sheets desired in the resending number field 212. Fill out. Thereafter, the user 154 causes the second facsimile apparatus 130 to read the index. The second facsimile apparatus 130 acquires the read index as image data, and transmits an e-mail with the index attached to the first facsimile apparatus 102.

  The first facsimile apparatus 102 receives an e-mail from the second facsimile apparatus 130 via the network 150. The first facsimile apparatus 102 determines whether the image data attached to the received electronic mail is normal document data or an index including a request for resending any electronic mail. When it is determined that the received facsimile data is an index including an email re-transmission request, the first facsimile apparatus 102 extracts necessary information from the index and sends the re-requested email to the second facsimile. Retransmit to device 130. Here, since retransmission of the document 1 and the document 4 is requested, the first facsimile apparatus 102 sends an e-mail attached with the image data 1 and the image data 4 corresponding to the document 1 and the document 4 to the second e-mail. Transmit to the facsimile machine 130.

  4 and 5 are flowcharts showing a processing procedure of the communication system 100 in the present embodiment. FIG. 4 is a diagram showing a process for transmitting a document from the first facsimile apparatus 102 to the second facsimile apparatus 130 by facsimile. Hereinafter, description will be given with reference to FIG.

  First, when there is a facsimile transmission request from the user 152 of the first facsimile apparatus 102 (S100), the document reading unit 104 reads the document and acquires image data corresponding to each document (S102). The index generation unit 106 generates an index including thumbnail images of image data corresponding to the document read by the document reading unit 104 (S104). The mail generation unit 112 generates an e-mail attached with the image data acquired by the document reading unit 104 (S106). The storage processing unit 108 stores each electronic mail in the data storage unit 110 in association with the identification information (S108). In step 106, the mail generation unit 112 also generates an electronic mail with an index attached. The mail transmission unit 114 transmits the electronic mail with the image data attached and the electronic mail with the index attached to the second facsimile apparatus 130 (S110). In the second facsimile apparatus 130, the mail receiving unit 132 receives the electronic mail, and the printing unit 134 prints the image data and the index attached to the electronic mail as a document (S112).

  FIG. 5 shows that the second facsimile apparatus 130 requests the first facsimile apparatus 102 to retransmit the electronic mail, and the electronic mail is retransmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102 to the second facsimile apparatus 130 accordingly. FIG.

  The user of the second facsimile apparatus 130 enters the original to be retransmitted and the number of retransmissions in an index included in the original transmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102.

  When there is a transmission request for this index from the user 154 of the second facsimile apparatus 130 (S120), the document reading unit 136 reads the index and acquires the index as image data (S122). The mail generation unit 138 generates an electronic mail with the image data attached (S124). The mail transmission unit 140 transmits the electronic mail generated by the mail generation unit 138 to the first facsimile apparatus 102 (S126).

  In the first facsimile apparatus 102, when the mail receiving unit 116 receives an e-mail, the determining unit 118 determines whether the image data attached to the e-mail is an index including a retransmission request (S128). ).

  When the determination unit 118 determines that the image data is an index (YES in S128), the OCR processing unit 120 performs character recognition processing of the index, and acquires the identification information and the number of retransmissions of the email requested to be retransmitted ( S130). Thereafter, the data reading unit 122 reads the corresponding electronic mail from the data storage unit 110 based on the identification information (S132), and the mail transmission unit 114 resends the electronic mail to the second facsimile machine 130 (S134). . At this time, the mail transmission unit 114 transmits the electronic mail after updating the time stamp of the electronic mail.

  If the determination unit 118 determines in step 128 that the image data is not an index (NO in S128), the first facsimile apparatus 102 performs normal processing (S138). Here, the normal process is a process of printing facsimile data attached to an e-mail or transmitting data to a user terminal connected to the first facsimile apparatus 102 via a LAN (Local Area Network) or the like. That is.

  Here, an example in which an e-mail is stored in the data storage unit 110 has been described. However, when image data is stored in the data storage unit 110, in step 132, the data reading unit 122 starts from the data storage unit 110. Read the corresponding image data. Thereafter, the mail generation unit 112 generates a new e-mail attached with the image data read by the data reading unit 122, and the mail transmission unit 114 transmits the e-mail to the second facsimile device 130. Here, image data and index identification information are stored in the data storage unit 110 in association with each other, and an e-mail destination (here, the second facsimile apparatus 130) to which the index identification information and the index are attached is stored. Can be stored in association with each other. As a result, the e-mail can be automatically retransmitted to the destination that first transmitted the index using the index identification information as a key.

  As described above, according to the communication system 100 in the present embodiment, when document data is transmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102, the index of the document data is also sent to the second facsimile apparatus 130 that is the transmission destination. Since it is transmitted, it can be easily confirmed whether or not all the original data has been received on the second facsimile apparatus 130 side. Also, since the index includes thumbnail images of document data, the user of the second facsimile apparatus 130 can immediately grasp the received document data. Further, when it is desired to resend any of the document data, it is possible to receive the resend of the document data simply by filling in the necessary items in the index and transmitting it to the first facsimile apparatus 102.

(Second embodiment)
FIG. 6 is a block diagram showing a configuration of communication system 100 in the present embodiment. In the present embodiment, the same components as those described with reference to FIGS. 1 and 2 in the first embodiment are denoted by the same reference numerals, and the description thereof is omitted as appropriate.

  In the present embodiment, the first facsimile apparatus 102 has an HTML generation unit 172 instead of the index generation unit 106 shown in FIG. Further, the first facsimile apparatus 102 can be configured not to include the OCR processing unit 120. This embodiment is different from the first embodiment in which image data is attached in that the index transmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102 to the second facsimile apparatus 130 is an HTML document.

  The HTML generation unit 172 of the first facsimile apparatus 102 generates an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) document as an index. The HTML document includes an image tag for capturing image data of a plurality of documents as thumbnail images, and a form tag for allowing a user of the second facsimile apparatus 130 to input information regarding a document desired to be retransmitted. The form tag includes a “send button”, and is set so that a reply mail reaches the first facsimile apparatus 102 when the user of the second facsimile apparatus 130 presses the “send button”. Details of the HTML document will be described later. The HTML generation unit 172 also generates a thumbnail image of the image data acquired by the document reading unit 104.

  Although an HTML document is described here as an example, the HTML generation unit 172 generates a document described in another document description language such as an XML (Extensible Markup Language) document or an SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) document. It can also be.

  In the present embodiment, the second facsimile machine 130 is connected to the user terminal 160 of the user 154 via a second network 174 such as a LAN. The second facsimile apparatus 130 in the present embodiment includes a provision processing unit 146 that provides data to the user terminal 160. Although not shown here because the function of the communication system 100 in this embodiment is not related, the second facsimile apparatus 130 is similar to that shown in FIG. 136, a mail generation unit 138, a mail transmission unit 140, and the like may be included.

  In the present embodiment, user terminal 160 includes an acquisition unit 162, a display processing unit 164, an input reception unit 166, and a transmission unit 168. The user terminal 160 is a personal computer, for example.

  When the mail receiving unit 132 receives the e-mail, the provision processing unit 146 stores the received e-mail data in a storage unit (not shown) and sends the e-mail to a terminal such as the user terminal 160 connected to the second network 174. Broadcast that it has been received. The acquisition unit 162 of the user terminal 160 acquires e-mail data as necessary according to the broadcast from the provision processing unit 146. The display processing unit 164 starts a browser and performs processing for displaying an HTML document transmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102 on a monitor or the like (not shown). Here, the “browser” is a browsing program that can perform arbitrary display based on a document description language such as HTML, and is used for general purposes. When the browser analyzes the HTML document, an interface for accepting user input is formed on the browser. The input receiving unit 166 receives input from the user. The transmission unit 168 transmits an e-mail to the address set in the HTML document via the second network 174.

  FIG. 7 is a diagram showing an HTML document according to the present embodiment. FIG. 7A shows an HTML document displayed on the browser. The HTML document 220 includes an index identification information field 222, a thumbnail field 224, an image identification information field 226, a retransmission request field 228, a retransmission number field 230, and a send button 232. The send button 232 is configured to send an e-mail to the first facsimile device 102 when the user of the second facsimile device 130 inputs necessary items and then presses the send button 232.

  FIG. 7B shows an e-mail generated when the user of the second facsimile apparatus 130 presses the send button 232. Here, the address “Fax1@XXX.com” of the first facsimile apparatus 102 is input as the destination “to:” of the e-mail. As the transmission source “from:”, the address “Fax2@xxx.com” of the second facsimile apparatus 130 is input. Also, in the body part of the e-mail, index identification information “001”, identification information “pic001”, “pic002”, “pic003”, “pic004” of image data requested to be retransmitted are described. .

  8 and 9 are flowcharts showing a processing procedure of the communication system 100 in the present embodiment. FIG. 8 is a diagram showing processing for transmitting a document by facsimile from the first facsimile apparatus 102 to the second facsimile apparatus 130. Hereinafter, description will be made with reference to FIG.

  First, when there is a facsimile transmission request from the user of the first facsimile apparatus 102 (S140), the document reading unit 104 reads the document and acquires image data corresponding to each document (S142). The HTML generation unit 172 fills in a thumbnail image of the image data corresponding to the document read by the document reading unit 104, an image tag for capturing the thumbnail image, and a request for retransmission to the user 154 of the second facsimile apparatus 130. An HTML document including a form tag to be generated is generated (S144). The HTML generation unit 172 may cause each image data itself to be taken into an HTML document as image data, or may take a thumbnail image along with the HTML document.

  The mail generation unit 112 creates e-mails to which the image data acquired by the document reading unit 104 is attached (S146). The storage processing unit 108 stores each electronic mail in the data storage unit 110 in association with the identification information (S148). In step 146, the mail generation unit 112 also generates an electronic mail attached with an HTML document and a thumbnail image. The mail transmission unit 114 transmits the electronic mail with the image data attached and the electronic mail with the HTML document attached to the second facsimile apparatus 130 (S150). In the second facsimile apparatus 130, the mail receiving unit 132 receives the e-mail, and the providing processing unit 146 provides the user terminal 160 with image data and an HTML document attached to the e-mail received by the mail receiving unit 132. To do. In the user terminal 160, the display processing unit 164 activates a browser and displays an HTML document (S152).

  In FIG. 9, a request for retransmission of an e-mail is made from the user terminal 160 to the first facsimile apparatus 102, and the e-mail is retransmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102 to the second facsimile apparatus 130 accordingly. It is a figure which shows a process.

  When the user 154 views the HTML document and inputs necessary items and presses the send button (S154), the sending unit 168 generates a mail (S156), and the second facsimile machine via the second network 174 and the network 150 An e-mail is transmitted to 130 (S158).

  When the mail receiving unit 116 receives an email from the user terminal 160, the determination unit 118 determines whether the email is an email requesting retransmission (S160). The determination unit 118 can make a determination based on whether or not a specific character string is included in the text of the received electronic mail. For example, in the present embodiment, as shown in FIG. 7B, the determination unit 118 uses an e-mail requesting retransmission when the body of the e-mail starts with “index”. It can be determined that there is.

  If the determination unit 118 determines that the email is a retransmission request email (YES in S160), the data reading unit 122 acquires the identification information and the number of retransmissions of the email requested to be retransmitted from the email, and based on the identification information, The corresponding e-mail is read from the data storage unit 110 (S162). The mail transmission unit 114 transmits the electronic mail to the second facsimile machine 130 (S164).

  If the determination unit 118 determines in step 160 that the email is not a retransmission request email (NO in S160), the first facsimile apparatus 102 performs normal processing (S166).

  Also in the present embodiment, the second facsimile apparatus 130 can be configured to have a printing unit 134 as described in the first embodiment, and an HTML document can be selected by the user's selection. Printing can be performed by the printing unit 134. In this case, as in the first embodiment, the user of the second facsimile apparatus 130 can fill out the printed document and send it to the first facsimile apparatus 102. When the HTML document is viewed with a browser, the retransmission request field 228 is a check box as shown in FIG. 7A. However, the second facsimile apparatus 130 performs OCR when printing the HTML document. To facilitate processing, it can be printed as a fillable box.

  As described above, also in the communication system 100 according to the present embodiment, the same effects as those in the first embodiment can be obtained. In addition, the user of the second facsimile apparatus 130 can receive the re-transmission of the document data simply by inputting necessary items into the HTML document displayed on the browser and pressing the send button. Also, the first facsimile apparatus 102 can acquire a request for retransmission of document data as electronic data, so that the processing can be simplified.

(Third embodiment)
FIG. 10 is a block diagram showing a configuration of second facsimile apparatus 130 in the present embodiment. Also in this embodiment, the first facsimile apparatus 102 has the same configuration as that described with reference to FIG. 1 in the first embodiment. Also in the present embodiment, the same components as those described in the first and second embodiments are denoted by the same reference numerals, and description thereof will be omitted as appropriate.

  In the present embodiment, second facsimile machine 130 includes a non-reception detector 170. The non-reception detector 170 compares the e-mail attached with the image data transmitted from the first facsimile apparatus 102 with the index to determine whether the second facsimile apparatus 130 has received all e-mails. To detect. If the second facsimile apparatus 130 has not received all the e-mails, the e-mail generating unit 138 generates an e-mail requesting retransmission of e-mails not received by the second facsimile apparatus 130, and transmits the e-mail. Unit 140 transmits the electronic mail to first facsimile apparatus 102.

  Thus, when a plurality of originals are transmitted by facsimile, it is possible to automatically request retransmission of the originals that did not reach the receiving side.

  In the present embodiment, the first facsimile apparatus 102 describes image data identification information in the header or comment area of the image data, and the same identification information is stored in the header or comment area of the index thumbnail image. It can be described. The non-reception detector 170 can detect e-mails that are not received by the second facsimile apparatus 130 by comparing these pieces of identification information.

  In the present embodiment, the index may include only the identification information of the image data and may not include the thumbnail image. As a result, the amount of data in the index can be reduced, and smooth communication can be performed.

  The present invention has been described based on the embodiments. The embodiments are exemplifications, and it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various modifications can be made to combinations of the respective constituent elements and processing processes, and such modifications are within the scope of the present invention. .

  In the first embodiment, the first facsimile apparatus 102 has the OCR processing unit 120. However, the second facsimile apparatus 130 may have an OCR processing unit. In this case, information acquired by the OCR process is transmitted from the second facsimile apparatus 130 to the first facsimile apparatus 102. Based on this information, the data reading unit 122 reads a necessary electronic mail from the data storage unit 110, and the mail transmission unit 114 transmits the electronic mail to the second facsimile apparatus 130.

  In the above embodiment, the first facsimile apparatus 102 is described as the transmission side and the second facsimile apparatus 130 is the reception side. However, one facsimile apparatus can have both functions of the transmission side and the reception side. .

  The determination column 202 shown in FIG. 2 can also be configured to be printed by the receiving facsimile machine. In this way, when one facsimile apparatus has functions of both the transmitting side and the receiving side, an unwritten index 200 as shown in FIG. 2A is transmitted, and FIG. The case where the index 200 including the retransmission request as shown in b) is transmitted can be handled separately.

  In the above embodiment, it has been described that when an e-mail retransmission request is made from the second facsimile apparatus 130, an e-mail attached with the same image data as that transmitted first is transmitted. First, an e-mail attached with image data having a low resolution may be transmitted, and an e-mail attached with high-quality image data may be transmitted when a retransmission request is made.

  In the embodiment described above, the first facsimile apparatus 102 and the second facsimile apparatus 130 exchange facsimile data via the network 150 such as the Internet. However, the present invention is not limited to the transmission side and the reception side. The present invention can also be applied to a mode in which communication is performed using G3, G4, or the like. Even in such a case, if an index can be transmitted from the transmission side to the reception side, or re-transmission of document data can be requested from the reception side by simple processing, the convenience for the user is improved.

It is a block diagram which shows the structure of the communication system in embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows an index. It is the figure which showed typically the structure of the communication system in embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the process sequence of the communication system in embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the process sequence of the communication system in embodiment of this invention. It is a block diagram which shows the structure of the communication system in embodiment of this invention. It is a figure which shows an HTML document. It is a flowchart which shows the process sequence of the communication system in embodiment of this invention. It is a flowchart which shows the process sequence of the communication system in embodiment of this invention. It is a block diagram which shows the 2nd facsimile apparatus structure in embodiment of this invention.

Explanation of symbols

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 100 Communication system, 102 1st facsimile apparatus, 104 Document reading part, 106 Index generation part, 108 Storage processing part, 110 Data storage part, 112 Mail generation part, 114 Mail transmission part, 116 Mail reception part, 118 Judgment part, 120 OCR processing unit, 122 data reading unit, 130 second facsimile machine, 132 mail receiving unit, 134 printing unit, 136 document reading unit, 138 mail generating unit, 140 mail transmitting unit, 150 network, 152 users, 154 users, 160 user terminal, 162 acquisition unit, 164 display processing unit, 166 input reception unit, 168 transmission unit, 170 non-reception detection unit, 172 HTML generation unit, 174 second network, 200 index, 20 HTML document.

Claims (4)

A facsimile apparatus that acquires a document as one image data for each page, and generates and transmits one e-mail for each image data,
Index generating means for generating one index including identification information of the image data to be transmitted in one facsimile transmission ;
Transmitting means for transmitting the e-mail attached with the index to a predetermined destination together with the e-mail attached with the image data ;
Storage processing means for storing the electronic mail attached with the image data in the storage unit in association with the identification information;
Receiving means for receiving facsimile data from a predetermined transmission source;
Determining means for determining whether or not the facsimile data received by the receiving means includes information requesting transmission of the electronic mail stored in the storage unit;
When the determination means determines that the facsimile data received by the reception means includes information requesting transmission of an e-mail stored in the storage unit, transmission is performed from the facsimile data received by the reception means. Extraction means for extracting the identification information of the requested email;
Including
The index is configured by associating the identification information of the image data with the identification information of the e-mail attached with the image data,
2. The facsimile apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the transmission unit reads the corresponding email from the storage unit based on the identification information of the email read by the extraction unit, and transmits the email . The facsimile apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the index includes a thumbnail of the image data and includes the thumbnail and the identification information of the image data in association with each other . The index generation means generates the index so that the index includes identification information of the index,
The storage processing means uses the identification information of the index transmitted together with the e-mail and the identification information of the image data included in the index as the identification information of the e-mail attached with the image data. The facsimile apparatus according to claim 1 , wherein the combined identification information is stored in the storage unit. The storage processing unit stores the electronic mail attached with the image data in the storage unit in association with a time stamp of the electronic mail transmission by the transmission unit,
The transmission unit reads the corresponding email from the storage unit based on the identification information of the email read by the extraction unit, and when the email is transmitted, the time of the email in the storage unit 4. The facsimile apparatus according to claim 1, wherein the stamp is updated .

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