A fax confirmation is a notification you receive after you send a fax. This can take on different forms depending on whether you're sending a fax from a physical fax machine or from an online fax service.

Confirmation from a physical fax machine

A physical fax machine has three ways of confirming a fax transmission:

• By showing a (fleeting) "OK" on its little screen.
• By printing out a confirmation page after a fax has gone through
• By listing the fax on a concentrated fax report page (or "journal")

By showing a (fleeting) "OK" on its little screen.

Fax machine displays will present the entire progress of a fax as it is getting transmitted, including page transitions and duration. Once a fax is completed, a confirmation message that indicates whether a fax was successfully sent appears briefly on the control panel display.

By printing out a confirmation page after a fax has gone through

Fax machines can be set up to print confirmation reports automatically for each fax you send. Thois will come out on its own individual sheet.

Normally, to save on paper, fax machines are set to issue such a page only if there's a problem sending or receiving a fax. But most fax machines can either disable this feature completely or enable it for all transaction results.

Some fax machines will only print a little box with some details on the page. Others will include the entire first page of the transmitted fax, as in the example shown below.

By listing the fax on a concentrated fax report page (or "journal")

Fax machines can print a log of faxes that have been sent (and received) over a recent time interval. These are alternatively called "report", "journal", or "log". The resultant report looks like this:

Confirmation from an online fax service

Online services have three ways of confirming a fax transmission:

• By presenting an online confirmation page, if you're using a form-based web fax service
• By sending you a confirmation email
• For developers, by providing a response to a status call or by making a callback

By presenting a confirmation page, if you're using a form-based web fax service

When you submit a fax online, the provider might give you a link to a status tracking page, which turns into a confirmation page once a fax has completed. Here's what GotFreeFax's confirmation page looks like:

By sending you a confirmation email

Most online fax services have a feature where they'll email you a confirmation with all the details of the fax that you sent, once it's complete. Here's what faxZERO's confirmation email looks like:

For developers, by making a callback to your endpoint or providing a response to a status request

We won't go deep into the details of this, but here are links to how two providers do this:

• Documentation of the Phaxio web callback mechanism
• Documentation of the InterFAX status retrieval method