[Today's post comes to us courtesy of  Roderick White and Shawn Sullivan]

By design, user accounts that do not belong to the Windows SBS Fax Administrators group are not able to manage the SBS 2008 Fax queue from the Windows XP Fax Console. This is due to the enhanced fax security configuration in Windows 2008, which requires you to create a fax account through Windows Fax and Scan on Vista or Windows7 before managing the queue. This option is not available for Windows XP. However, users will still be able to send a fax from XP using applications such Notepad, Word, and Outlook.

You can expect the following behavior when opening the Windows XP Fax Console as a domain user:

• An “All fax printers are inaccessible” error is displayed at the bottom right.
• No options to manipulate fax are available from the Menu Bar.
• No faxes are displayed in the Incoming, Inbox, Outbox, or Sent Items folders.
• A connection error is shown under Tools > Fax Printer Status

You can verify that you still have the ability to send a fax by doing the following:

1. Open notepad and type a test message.
2. Select File > Print > Select <Fax on Server> and select Print
3. Complete the Send Fax Wizard
4. Verify at the remote site that the fax was received successfully.
5. You can also open Windows Fax and Scan on SBS 2008, Vista, or Windows7 as Administrator after creating a fax account to verify the fax was sent. For more information on this, see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd346633(WS.10).aspx

We recommend that you do not change the default security configuration for SBS 2008 Fax Service. However, if decommissioning Windows XP is not an option and you require ability for users to manage and send faxes from the XP Fax Console, you can take the following action:

1. Click Start > Administrative Tools > Fax Services Manager
2. Right-click on the Fax(Local) select Properties
3. Select the Security Tab, you will have two options:
   1. Select the Individual Domain User and give both Fax and Manage Fax Documents permission. 
      
      
      
   2. Select the Windows SBS Fax Users group and add the Manage Fax Documents permission. User accounts created by the SBS 2008 console will be members of this group by default. 
      
      

Note: User accounts that have Manage Fax Document permission will now have the same experience in the XP Fax console that they would in Windows Fax and Scan. Besides the ability to send fax, they will also see all unassigned faxes within the Inbox and see only faxes that they have sent in the Outbox and Sent Items.