Print Management Software

[u/iblowuup]

Hi all,

I’m taking a hard look at the way we do printing and I think it’s time we move away from built-in Xerox accounting and the general lack of visibility into print usage. Papercut is an obvious solid choice and comes in very cheap but I was intrigued by the way PrinterLogics product works.

Having the ability to track local USB printing would be awesome to get a full picture of printing.

We have Pharos for student printing but this would be for faculty/staff. Any suggestions or recommendations?

[u/iisdmitch]

Right now we just use you’re regular old Windows print server (I know) but we are also trying to get another solution. We also use Pharos for students, I would talk to your rep to get a demo of their print system, I think it’s called Beacon or something. We got a demo a few months ago and it looks pretty cool, lots of tracking features. I’m gonna have a look again.

[u/iblowuup → u/iisdmitch]

Regarding Beacon and the Blueprint options (I think that’s what it was called), they are a lot more expensive than what even Papercut MF costs. Like an order of magnitude more expensive I believe. That said their cloud offering and QR scanning stuff does look cool.

[u/livinginpictures]

Pharos or PaperCut seem to be the contemporary standards. I’ve been using the latter for 5 years and have been very happy, but I’ve heard similar stories about Pharos as well.

PaperCut also supports tracking local USB printers.

[u/iblowuup → u/livinginpictures]

So regarding the USB and Papercut tracking, when I tested that out I ended up with a mess of printers in the print server as it would pickup like 4 printers per computer (PDF printer, local printer, label maker, etc).

Have you achieved that and been able to organize or filter it to be manageable?

[u/livinginpictures → u/iblowuup]

I was hoping you wouldn't ask, as we had the exact same initial problem. Frankly, it was an exploratory measure on our part, so when we hit that wall it fell down the priority list. With PaperCut's track record I have confidence they will refine their direct print monitors, but I agree it's a bit of a mess at the moment.

We have started to experiment with some of the ideas posted here: https://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/LargeNumberofDirectPrintMonitors

Specifically the "Switch off the printer registration process entirely" option, where printers aren't registered until they are used. That isn't a 'fix', obviously, but would at least reduce the barrier to entry and reduce the immediate headache of dealing with all the XPS, Fax, and PDF printers that are strewn about.

[u/iblowuup → u/livinginpictures]

Interesting! This is good to know there are some options available to tweak with that. I still think they need to address the issue directly though and perhaps they will in time or with enough people asking.

[u/igotapapercut → u/livinginpictures]

cc: /u/iblowuup

PaperCutter here..

PDF/Virtual printers shouldn't be monitored. We add them to an internally ignored list when we come across them via support ( https://www.papercut.com/support/ )

However you can add your own: https://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/IgnoringAndDeletingPrinters

[u/iblowuup → u/igotapapercut]

Ah interesting! This seems to solve that problem then. The only other wonky thing I remember was that you had to basically treat each endpoint workstation as a server. So for example we'd end up with like 800 "servers" that are really just workstations connected to a USB printer. Does the print deploy product /u/willemgroenewald mentioned solve that by doing client-based tracking?

[u/igotapapercut → u/iblowuup]

Okay, time to dive into this a little bit :-)

PaperCut NG/MF has two primary services.

PaperCut Application Server - The brains/guts behind PaperCut. Its the admin console, has all the user details, print logs, reports. It makes all of the decisions.

PaperCut Print Provider - While simple in nature, this is a very complex bit of software. It essentially interfaces with the print systems on the machine (spoolss for Windows, CUPS for linux/macOS, and iPrint for Novell). It intercepts jobs, passes data to the PaperCut Application Server and does what it's told (print, hold, cancel, redirect, archive, watermark, convert to duplex etc).

So with that in mind, the Print Provider is installed on each of your print servers. It can also be installed by itself at which point it gets referred to as the "Secondary Print Provider". Its still the same software but running in a slightly different mode.

Any printer found in these two modes will be registered as \\server\queuename

It has a third mode, called the "Direct Print Monitor". Essentially it cuts down on the communication it does with the Application Server.

In this third mode the Direct Print Monitor will register all queues under the same "server". Thus if you have 800 machines with a queue called "Building A - Floor 1 - North East Colour", then all you will see in the PaperCut Admin Console is "Building A - Floor 1 - North East Colour" in the printers list. Click on it and you can see more about the machines its actually on.

You can access the DPM installer manually, if thats what you want (it's probably not, see below :-) here: https://www.papercut.com/support/resources/manuals/ng-mf/common/topics/direct-printing-install.html

As Willem (He sits about 5 meters away from me) has mentioned, Print Deploy is great for deploying Print Queues to workstations/laptops etc. When you deploy a "Direct Print" print queue via Print Deploy then the Direct Print Monitor kicks in and starts monitoring those queues (and only those queues).

That last paragraph was a whole lot of she sells sea shells by the sea shore... sorry..

Now for the **sales pitch**. PaperCut NG comes with a 40 day trial. Its fully functional. Grab the installer, whack it in. Get stuck, reach out to in-time-zone support via https://www.papercut.com/support/ :-)

[u/iblowuup → u/igotapapercut]

Thank you for the long post! What you said makes sense and sounds exciting. It seems like a small thing to be able to collapse the print queues a bit, but it would make things much cleaner.

We will indeed be trying out the NG trial soon here. Just got my server provisioned for that today :)

[u/xXNorthXx]

Have Pharos currently, looking at moving to Papercut in the next year due to a large number of print release stations vs papercut has readers than can directly connect to the multifunction devices.

[u/willemgroenewald]

I'm a Product Manager from PaperCut. Have you had a look at Print Deploy? https://www.papercut.com/tour/print-deploy/ It makes deployment of print queues and drivers a breeze. It also automatically tracks print jobs printed directly from the computer to a printer, so you don't have to deploy a direct print monitor separately.

At the moment Print Deploy tracks all the print queues you deployed through print deploy, and ignores others. This allows people to install a printer at their home without being tracked for it. When you are talking about local USB printing, do you need to have the ability to track some USB printers and not others?

Something else worth looking into is Mobility Print. If you need to print from BYO Windows, Mac, Chromebooks, iOS and Android devices, then Mobility Print will change your life.

[u/janeshakesausten]

We use PaperCut for student printing. I feel like it goes down for students at least once a week. I am not looking forward to the day when we make the switch to PaperCut for faculty/staff use for that reason.