Organizations that have used Lane’s Passport platform at one site and are expanding to a second, or that are deploying Passport across a new facility after an acquisition or merger, often have the same question before they start: what does this actually look like?
The process is more straightforward than most IT teams expect, particularly because Passport is software-based and does not require new hardware at each site. But there are configuration steps that matter, and understanding them upfront makes the difference between a clean deployment and one that generates support tickets in the first few weeks.
This post walks through what new site configuration for Passport typically involves.
Starting With a Site Assessment
Before any configuration work begins, the Lane team works with the organization to understand the specific requirements of the new site. This covers the volume of faxes the site sends and receives, the departments and workgroups that will use the platform, the fax numbers that need to be active, the applications that need to connect to Passport for outbound faxing, and whether the site has any integration requirements with an EHR, LIS, or other business system.
This assessment shapes every decision that follows. A single-department clinic with modest volume configures differently from a multi-department hospital with high inbound volume and LIS integration. Knowing the requirements upfront prevents having to re-architect routing rules or integration connections after go-live.
Number Configuration and Porting
If the new site has existing fax numbers that need to carry over, number porting is typically one of the first steps to plan. Established fax numbers appear in referral directories, on letterhead, and in partner systems, and changing them creates downstream work for the organization and potential missed faxes during the transition window.
Passport supports number porting, and Lane’s team coordinates the porting process with carriers. The timeline varies by carrier and jurisdiction, but planning porting early in the implementation prevents it from becoming a delay at go-live. New numbers can be assigned quickly when porting is not needed.
For organizations deploying Passport internationally, Lane’s reach across more than 50 countries means that number configuration and carrier coordination follow the same managed process regardless of geography. The FAQ Friday post on international faxing covers cross-border fax capability in more detail.
Workgroup and Routing Configuration
Routing is where the functional configuration of Passport happens. The platform’s workgroup routing capability allows inbound faxes to be automatically directed to the right queue based on the receiving number, the sending number, time of day, or other configurable rules.
For a new site, this means mapping out which faxes should go where before configuration begins. A hospital site might route faxes arriving on the lab result line to the lab workgroup, faxes arriving on the referral line to the intake team, and after-hours faxes to a monitored overnight queue. Each of those rules gets configured within Passport and can be adjusted at any time without requiring a support call.
Passport’s workgroup routing is one of the capabilities that eliminates the missed-fax problem that plagues shared fax machines and legacy servers. Getting the routing logic right at configuration time means users experience Passport from day one as a platform that works rather than one they have to work around.
User and Administrator Access Setup
Each user who will interact with Passport through the Personal Communications Center needs to be provisioned with appropriate access. This includes individual user accounts, workgroup assignments, and administrator rights for the staff who will manage routing rules, monitor the Enterprise Status Manager, and handle day-to-day platform administration at the site level.
For organizations deploying Passport across multiple sites, user management is centralized. The IT team at the parent organization can provision users, assign workgroup memberships, and configure access levels for each site from a single administrative interface. Individual site administrators can manage their own queues and routing rules within the permissions assigned to them.
Integration Configuration
When a new site requires Passport to connect with an EHR, LIS, CRM, or other business application, that integration is configured during implementation rather than after go-live. The specific steps depend on the integration type.
For Epic-connected sites, Lane’s ERIS integration and Epic Print Services connection are tested against the site’s Epic instance before the site goes live. For Clinisys LIS environments, the Passport-to-Clinisys connection is established and validated as part of the implementation. For email integration with Outlook or Gmail, the SMTP configuration is set up and tested during onboarding so that users can send and receive faxes from their email clients on day one.
The goal is that by the time a new site goes live on Passport, every integration that was planned is working and has been validated in the production environment, not the testing environment.
Testing and Validation Before Go-Live
Before a new site goes live, Lane’s implementation process includes a testing phase where every configured routing rule, integration connection, and user access path is validated with real transactions. This typically involves sending test faxes through each active number, confirming that inbound faxes route to the correct workgroups, verifying that outbound faxes from integrated applications transmit and confirm correctly, and checking that administrators can access the monitoring tools they need.
This is the step that catches configuration issues before they become operational problems. A routing rule that sends faxes to the wrong workgroup, an integration connection that drops outbound jobs, or an administrator account that lacks the access level needed to update routing rules, all of these surface and get resolved during testing rather than after the first week of live operation.
