What Is Hoteling and Why Does It Call for a Flexible Print Environment?
Around the world, we’re in a period of massive change. To say that the modern workforce is adapting is the understatement of the year. As employees slowly return into the office, there’s more interest in dynamic workplace models like hoteling. Those new models create new challenges for IT.
First, let’s answer an important question: What exactly is hoteling?
What is hoteling?
Hoteling is a form of desk sharing. It’s based on the idea of how hotels assign rooms to their guests. In a hoteling workspace, employees don’t have a permanent desk. Instead they reserve desks in advance based on the days they plan to be in the office.
A variant of hoteling is the “hot desk.” That’s more like a first-come-first-served model.
Understandably, the shared office desk approach is already popular with companies that have highly mobile workforces. Today, however, more and more employees are working from home part-time. Therefore, traditional organizations are eyeing the benefits of hoteling workspaces too.
What does hoteling mean for IT?
Like anything that involves roaming users, hoteling can present challenges for IT. One tricky area is printing. If you have mobile workers, getting printers to those users can be like trying to deliver a package to a moving target.
In other words, it can be hit or miss. And when you miss, that’s when the support tickets flood in.
Some IT departments try to solve things with the “throw everything at the wall” approach. That involves giving users access to every possible printer they might come across.
Unfortunately, that can backfire. For starters, it can present users with too much choice. It’s easy for them to select the wrong device and send their print job to a distant printer. Furthermore, it can lead to driver problems if there are different printer models.
But careful control of printer deployments rarely works either. What happens when a mobile worker suddenly moves to a shared office desk on a different floor? Or in a brand-new location? They probably won’t be able to access the local printer. Cue the angry call to the helpdesk.
One thing is for sure, though. Print servers simply don’t make the cut. They’re legacy technology designed for static workplace models. And with so many users moving around, GPOs and scripts are clumsy, inefficient tools.
At the same time, a legacy direct IP printing model doesn’t make sense for hoteling. Every single printer change requires time-consuming, manual intervention. That leads to a never-ending management workload.
Mobile printing is ideal for hoteling
Clearly, old school printing methods make it hard to support your mobile workers. But that doesn’t mean hoteling is out of reach. Or that you’re doomed to spend the next decade drowning in support tickets.
PrinterLogic’s serverless printing infrastructure makes it easy to handle all the moving targets in a hoteling environment. Its centrally managed direct IP printing platform is unique, secure and flexible. As a result, it avoids the pitfalls of both print servers and legacy direct IP.
Here are some of the ways PrinterLogic and its mobile printing solution support today’s changing workplace:
- Native iOS and Android printing. End users can print right from their popular smartphones and tablets.
- Location-based deployments. Automatically get printers to users based on IP address or advanced AD/IdP criteria. No scripts or GPOs needed.
- Self-service portal. No printer? No problem. Users can install nearby printers by just clicking on a floor plan map.
- The power of the cloud. Using the PrinterLogic SaaS admin console, IT can manage printers and users from anywhere. And with almost instant effect.
- Effortless migration. Moving to PrinterLogic’s next-gen platform is quick and seamless. An automated migration tool imports existing printer objects, queues and settings.
PrinterLogic takes the pain out of supporting or shifting to a hoteling or hot desk model. As your users return to the office, you can be sure they’re getting the printers they need based on their current location and workspace. That will make life way easier on roaming users as well as IT.
Migrating from Google Cloud Print to Centrally Managed Direct IP Printing
By now you’ve heard that Google Cloud Print is on its way out, but at PrinterLogic we’ve developed the perfect migration option for you. The new PrinterLogic Chrome OS Client Extension empowers you to centrally manage direct IP printing for Chromebook users alongside Windows, Mac, and Linux. This means you can deliver a Serverless Printing Infrastructure with a single management interface and avoid sending your print jobs to the cloud. Since PrinterLogic licensing is not user-based, there is no additional cost required to deploy this to Chrome OS users.
So let’s talk about what it looks like to migrate from Google Cloud Print to centrally managed direct IP printing for Chromebook.
Step 1: Deploy PrinterLogic’s Client Extension to Chromebooks using G-Suite
Here’s the part where we start to migrate from Google Cloud Print. PrinterLogic will provide you with a Chrome OS client extension that you can push out to your Chromebooks through your Google Admin Console. Any G-Suite license will work to push out the extension. After you push this extension out, you have all the pieces in place to manage printers on Chromebooks.
Step 2: Deploy Printers To Chromebook Users
Through PrinterLogic’s SaaS admin interface, IT admins can setup printer deployment rules that will automatically deploy printers to Chromebooks when users login. Existing Google Cloud Print printers will be silently converted to direct IP printers and made available to end user’s per existing auto-deployments. End-users can also be empowered to self-install printers through the Chrome OS client extension. Users can find printers they need and install them without having to call the helpdesk. Printers are deployed locally to the Chromebook and print jobs are rendered and sent directly to the printer.
Step 3: Keep Print Jobs on the Local Network
You are now ready to print directly to printers without sending print jobs to the cloud. Chromebook users won’t even notice anything changed—they can continue to print using the native Chrome OS printing interface, but now the print jobs will be spooled locally and sent directly to the printer. No more cloud printing, and no print servers required.
With PrinterLogic, migrating from Google Cloud Print is a simple, painless experience. You’ll have everything you love about Chrome OS, as well as one centralized print management platform for all your users, regardless of their operating system.
If you aren’t a PrinterLogic SaaS customer your migration from Google Cloud Print is simple. Spin up a SaaS instance today by clicking here.
How to Track Cost-Per-Page for Printing
Figuring cost-to-print involves a lot of network logistics. If you’re tasked with tracking and reducing these costs, it takes time to generate and analyze the information. We’ll look at common practices for cost calculations and then I’ll explain how the PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud) print-management solution can help by providing detailed stats for all the printers on your network.
Printer purchasing and cost considerations
If you’re buying a lot of printers at once, it may be easier to track costs by signing a lease agreement with the MFP provider. It’s common to have a cost associated with the printer, toner, maintenance, and the paper purchased. The number of printers you have affects the total cost. The longer a printer stays in service, the more economical things are in the long run.
Some providers incentivize customers by including toner and maintenance with the purchase or lease of a printer. They will usually provide a cost per page printed that starts around 4.5 cents per B&W copy and 6.5 cents per color page.
If you buy printers without a reseller agreement—or have printers that don’t have per-page costs associated with them—you can use the two formulas below to track cost per page printed. You will need to know the page yield of a printer cartridge, which is provided by the cartridge maker.
For monochrome or black and white printers, the cost formula could be as simple as:
(Black Cartridge Price / Page Yield) + paper cost = Total Cost Per Page
For color printers, you’ll figure costs per cartridge color, and add that to the cost of the black cartridge:
((Color Cart Price / Pg Yield) x No. of Color Cartridges + (Black Cart Price / Pg Yield)) = Total Cost Per Page
PrinterLogic SaaS Solution
The PrinterLogic SaaS solution provides statistics that facilitate building cost templates for each of your printers. Tracked categories include:
- Summary (includes B&W total, color total, duplex total, print-job costs)
- By Week
- By Hour
- Application Usage
- Job and Page Counts (total pages are organized by number of pages per print job)
- Simplex vs. Duplex
- Black & White vs. Color
- Paper Size
- User
- Job Title (Active Directory based)
- Manager (Active Directory based)
- Department (Active Directory based)
- Printer (printer utilization is shown by pages in a specified date range)
- Folder
- Records (a combination of the above criteria)
Figure 1: PrinterLogic SaaS can calculate cost based on printer templates.
To associate a cost-per-page to a printer, you can create a template in PrinterLogic SaaS’s admin web page. Choose the paper size and its costs per B&W, Color, Simplex, and Duplex page, then associate that template with a particular printer. PrinterLogic SaaS will begin tracking the associated costs.
Figure 2: PrinterLogic SaaS’s template menu covers common page sizes and preferences.
PrinterLogic SaaS can also manage print preference settings so you can enforce lower cost printer settings.
To experience all of PrinterLogic SaaS’s features, go to www.printerlogic.com/printercloud and click “Start Trial.” This gives you 30 days of free access so you can see how the solution provides IT administrators with the ability to eliminate print servers, centrally manage printer and driver deployments, and get reports on what you’re spending on print consumables in today’s SaaS environment.
A Better Way to Manage Printer Preferences
It’s common knowledge that one of the best ways to cut print costs across the organization is to default to printing duplex in grayscale. Getting users to comply with these guidelines can be challenging.
As a systems engineer with PrinterLogic, I’ve helped IT administrators in many industries and organizations come up with ways to enforce new printing policies. Fortunately, PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud) lets you apply customized printing preferences for all the major operating systems (Windows 7+, Mac OS-X, Linux) at the micro and macro level.
PrinterLogic SaaS’s printer profiles can be used to create a template that’s applied automatically when someone installs a printer, or when a printer is auto-deployed. PrinterLogic SaaS’s administration console can locate the printer driver on the printer itself, or in the Driver/Profile Repository. Whenever you add a profile, you can create default preferences for that driver, as illustrated below.
Figure 1: PrinterLogic SaaS gives admins the ability to set default driver preferences
Any feature or option the printer driver supports can be used to better manage printing resources. Once set, default preferences are sent immediately. Users can change the print preferences for a particular print job if they need to. PrinterLogic SaaS lets administrators decide when to re-apply profiles—after every print job, or at the start of each login.
Figure 2: PrinterLogic SaaS gives admins control over when driver profiles are reapplied
Once printing preferences are set by the administrator, users are more likely to print in compliance with company policies. Admins can verify that policies are followed using reports that track a variety of statistics—down to what was printed and who printed it.
The most general report is the “Overview–All” report found in the Print Job Records menu. You can specify a target date range to give a report on the following categories:
- Summary (includes black and white total, color total, print job costs, and duplex)
- By Week
- By Hour
- Application Usage
- Job and Page Counts (shows ranges, where the per-job page counts are grouped)
- Simplex vs. Duplex
- Black and White vs. Color
- Paper Size
If you need more details, other reports are available based on:
- User
- Job Title (Active Directory based)
- Manager (Active Directory based)
- Department (Active Directory based)
- Printer (how much each printer is utilized by pages for a specified date range)
- Folder
- Records (a combination of the above criteria)
Figure 3: PrinterLogic SaaS offers multiple reporting options in the administration console
Any of the reports shown here can be automatically sent to any email address on a scheduled time interval (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually). They can be attached to the email as a CSV file, or a PDF, depending on your needs.
These tools help IT staff promote cost-cutting policies and streamline ways to encourage users to follow these guidelines. They can view compliance reports over time to demonstrate improvements.
If you want to eliminate your print servers, reduce print job-related costs, and have an easier way to manage direct IP printers, then all you have to do is go to www.printerlogic.com/printercloud and click “Start Trial”. You will have full access to our product, and its documentation. Build and test everything before deciding if it’s right for you.
Print Management Security in the Cloud
Security is a hot topic in the technology field and print management security shouldn’t be left out of the conversation. Confidential documents being printed each day, IT staff is at work to make sure the right people access the right printers, and even integrating with existing security technologies such as badge readers at the printer are all needing to be managed better. As infrastructure is moving to the cloud we can start looking at PrinterLogic SaaS (formerly PrinterCloud), to start addressing these security issues.
We’ll cover three topics that PrinterLogic SaaS will help with:
- Give print access to the right people
- Hold print jobs until users are in front of the printer
- Use badge swipe to release held print jobs
PrinterLogic SaaS gives IT administrators and help-desk staff the ability to manage network printers without the need of a print server. Included in the management capabilities is the ability to auto-deploy printers as well as publish printers for self-installation without needing to setup complicated GPOs or scripts. For example, you can target Active Directory Users, Computers, Groups, Containers, and OUs to automatically install printers. This guarantees that users will automatically have printers installed that IT staff knows they should have installed.
PrinterLogic SaaS also has a self-service installation web page that users can access to install printers on their own. They find a printer on a floor plan map or in a list, click on it, and select “Yes” to install. On the backend, IT staff can make sure that the printers are published to the correct users by using PrinterLogic SaaS’s portal security filters. The filters include:
- Active Directory User
- Active Directory Computer
- Active Directory Group
- Active Directory Container
- Active Directory OU
- IP Address Range
- Hostname
- MAC Address
An example would be with an executive’s printer. You can isolate that printer in the PrinterLogic SaaS management interface to only show up on that executive’s self-installation webpage and no one else’s.
Now that we have the correct printers to the right printer, let’s address holding sensitive print jobs until users are in front of their printer. PrinterLogic SaaS calls this Secure Printing. With PrinterLogic SaaS’s Secure Printing, users can securely send a print job to the printer, choose to hold it, and then walk up to the printer to release the print job. They can authenticate using their Active Directory credentials on a web based release portal using their phone, tablet, laptop, or a kiosk device that has internet connectivity. This will present a menu where the users can select a job to release and it will print to the printer are in front of.
PrinterLogic SaaS can take advantage of security badges today by using a printer application that is designed to be installed on certain models of Ricoh, Lexmark, and Dell (Lexmark) MFPs. What this allows a user to do is send a print job from their computer, walk up to the printer, select the PrinterLogic SaaS icon on the MFPs touch screen, and swipe a badge to release the print job. It is required that the Ricoh MFPs be on platform 10, 11, and 12 and also have the Java module added to them. The Lexmark machines need to be on framework 3.x, 4.x, or 5.x. PrinterLogic SaaS will continue to add more make and model support.
With the ability to now easily distribute printers to the correct people, IT staff doesn’t have to worry about anyone erroneously printing to HR printers, executive printers, or to specialty printers such as plotters and receipt printers. HR and Finance departments can safely print their documents without racing over to the office MFP before someone sees their sensitive documents. We find that users become more accountable for what they are printing and paper waste is actually eliminated when using the secure print feature.
To see all these features and more, all you have to do is go to www.printerlogic.com/printercloud and click “Start Trial.” That will give you all the access you need to start securely managing your network printing environment.
Manage Direct IP Printers and Print Server Printers
If you have a print server that has to stay active but you want to move to a centrally managed direct IP environment, you can with PrinterLogic. PrinterLogic is designed to eliminate print servers and convert all the shared printers from a print server into centrally managed direct IP. There are some cases that don’t allow for the decommission of all print servers, which include scenarios that involve backend printing, EMR/EHR systems, or other application servers in the environment that require a print server to be online and active. In this blog we will walk through setting up a feature in PrinterLogic, that allows installation and management of both shared and direct IP printers.
**If you need to convert users printers from shared to direct IP printers, then you’ll need to leave the default PrinterLogic settings in place, roll the solution out to users, and after all the shared printers have converted on the end user’s desktops, follow these steps moving forward.
- Make sure you are on PrinterLogic version 17.1.1.87 or newer. (You can locate the update files on printerlogic.com or contact the support team for help)
- Go to the Administration webpage of PrinterLogic and log in (typically you can get there by opening a web browser and typing in the FQDN or DNS Alias associated with the server hosting PrinterLogic followed by “/admin”)
- Go to “Tools > Settings > Client”
- Find the “TCP/IP Printer Settings” section towards the top
- Check the box labeled “Automatically manage all end-user TCP/IP printers”
- Check the box labeled “Create connections to shared TCP/IP printers”
- Uncheck “Only apply in terminal services sessions”
- Check the box labeled “Allow direct IP printers to be installed from the portal”
- Go to the bottom of the Client Settings webpage to a section called “Microsoft Printer Conversions”
- Uncheck “Enable Printer Installer Client to convert end user’s Microsoft printers to TCP/IP printers that have been imported into Printer Installer as TCP/IP printers”
- Save the settings
At this point we have told PrinterLogic to stop converting shared printers from print servers and allow both direct IP managed printers to be installed as well as printers that are tied to print servers to be distributed using the PrinterLogic software. What we need to do next is specify which printers are going to be linked to the print server and which printers are direct IP printers.
- Go to a printer that needs to be tied to the print server
- Select the “Deploy” tab and add a deployment for the “Active Directory > Computer Name” of the print server
- Check the available box on the deployment labeled “Share”
- Make any other deployments as needed so users or computers/servers can have this printer installed automatically
- Save the settings
- Select the “Deploy” tab and add a deployment for the “Active Directory > Computer Name” of the print server
- Install the PrinterLogic desktop client on all end user machines as well as print servers
**You can only specify one print server deployment per printer object in PrinterLogic. If you need to share a printer from multiple print servers then you’ll need to copy the print queue for each server it needs to be shared from. If you are simply sharing this printer to multiple users or servers/computers then do so without checking the “Share” box on further deployments made in the “Deploy” tab.
If you need any printer to be deployed or self-installed as a managed direct IP printer, make sure the printer does not have a print server deployment made to it as described in step 7 and it will be installed correctly. You will need to duplicate printer queues in PrinterLogic to have separate queues tied to print servers while also managing queues that are direct IP printers.
With these settings in place you are labeling the point of origin of a shared printer to the correct print server. Now anytime you setup an auto-deployment of that printer queue or someone installs it from the self-service installation portal, they will receive a printer that is shared from the print server. Any other printer that does not have the print server deployment selected will install as a direct IP printer.
How to Set up Advanced Group Deployments of Printers
Getting printers to the right people at the right time in the right place is a very simple and straightforward process when using PrinterLogic’s software for printer management. It has a feature called Advanced Deployments that allows you to set up a multi-criteria requirement that will auto-deploy printers to the qualifying users based on said criteria. You can specifically allow or deny access to the criteria. These are the criteria you can specify:
- Active Directory User, Computer, or Group
- Active Directory Container, or OU
- IP Address Range
- Hostname
- MAC Address
- Terminal Service Session
Here are steps that you can follow to setup Advanced Deployments within PrinterLogic:
- Log into the PrinterLogic Administration webpage. (Typically you open a web browser and go to the FQDN or DNS Alias address of the PrinterLogic webserver followed by “/admin”)
- Go to the top right corner and select “Tools > Advanced Groups”
- Create an Advanced Group deployment by clicking “Add” and give it a name to easily identify it later.
- There are two types of “Operation” choices. One is “Contained in” and the other is “Excluding”.
- If you want to add the criteria and have that criteria receive the printer, then you’ll select “Contained in”.
- If you want to exclude anyone that matches your criteria, then you’ll select “Excluding”
- To select criteria, hit the drop-down menu labeled “Select a rule type…” and pick how you want to deploy either a specific printer or group of printers.
- Click on the “+” button to add multiple criteria or rules for deployment.
- Once you have your Advanced Group created, go back to the main menu of the Administration webpage by clicking on “Return to tree view” at the top right
- Select a printer that you need to deploy to your Advanced Group and go to the “Deploy” tab
- Click “Add > Advanced Group” and select the group you created for the deployment of the selected printer and click “Add”.
- You now have the option to set this printer as the default printer for anyone that matches the criteria exactly. You can set it to install automatically as the default “Once”, “Always” or “No”.
- Click “Save” to complete the auto-deployment
The next time the PrinterLogic desktop software checks in with the server hosting PrinterLogic it will auto-install the printer to whoever matches the criteria. If users don’t match the criteria exactly then it will not auto-install. If they matched the criteria before but no longer match it in the future, the printer will be removed from their desktop.
You are not limited to one deployment per printer. You can set up multiple deployments for the same printer, and it does not have to only include Advanced Groups in the deploy menu of a printer either. Simply put, if there is a deployment added to a printer and you match the criteria set, then you will get the printer automatically installed when you log into your desktop.
One example of an organization that uses the Advanced Group deployment is a healthcare customer that uses thin clients as the nurses’ workstation. Throughout the day, the nurses will log into the thin clients across the healthcare campus. While they can be the same user logging in each time, they get a unique experience with regards to available printers because PrinterLogic’s Advanced Groups are in place. They have their advanced group set up so that a nurse needs to be in a specific OU, logged into a certain thin client, and have hostname that matches naming convention they set up for the different floors. With PrinterLogic’s Advanced Deployments, nurses can go where they need to go and have the satisfaction of getting the closest printer automatically added to their workstation no matter where they are in the hospital.
PrinterLogic provides a free complimentary proof of concept to anyone that would like to test this feature. Simply go to printerlogic.com and start your free trial today.
How Do I Migrate My Windows 2003 Print Server to a Windows 2016 Server?
If you have ever come across the need to move printers from one print server to another, then you know how much of a headache it can be. If you still have the legacy Windows 2003 print server then it can even be more daunting. What’s more, if you want to stay ahead of the curve and your server refresh time is near, then you’re wanting to find a quick and straightforward way to move the print services over. The clearest path to migration is to upgrade in stages.
Stage 1: Migrate from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012 R2: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj134150(v=ws.11).aspx (the caveat here is that the old server must only have the print services role on it and no other roles or it will cause issues with the other roles).
Stage 2: Go from Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server 2016: https://www.faqforge.com/windows/migrate-print-services-server-2012-server-2016/
The steps are straightforward and will take a bit of time to make sure everything is done correctly. They also have scenarios where it may not be possible to migrate off the server onto a new one. As improved as the new servers can be, sometimes to go to them from an old server can be more trouble than just starting over from scratch on that new server. If you’re contemplating starting over then WAIT! There is an easier way to do it than you think: PrinterLogic.
PrinterLogic has a print management solution that migrates printers away from print servers (yes, even Windows 2003 print servers), and actually allows you to start managing direct IP printers connected to workstations instead. No more print servers to manage, no more headaches when updating server operating systems, and no more bottlenecks for printing. All you need is a server to host PrinterLogic.
The software itself has many benefits and here are a few for quick reference:
- Management of direct IP printers (jobs are spooled locally from the workstations and sent directly to the printers)
- If the management server goes offline or loses connectivity to a site then anyone with a printer can still print
- Easier management tools available through a webpage UI experience
- Eliminate scripting and GPOs to deploy printers
- Print tracking to see how much printing is going on and who is printing what
- And so much more…
The steps to migrate off a Windows 2003, 2008, 2012, or 2016 print server are as easy as 1, 2, 3. First, you install PrinterLogic on your new server. Second you use a built-in import tool to select the printers from your print server and import them into the management interface. Third you push out a software client to each desktop which will auto-convert the shared queues from the print server into managed direct IP printers in the background. It won’t alert the end users and runs in the background as a system service so you don’t have to elevate the user’s privileges.
The process of migrating the printers over is usually no more than 30 seconds a queue and it’ll keep going one by one until they are all copied over and ready for use. As you push out the agent that converts the queues from shared to direct IP, you’ll be able to keep the print server on and everyone will be able to continue to print. As soon as the roll out of the client is finished and all the queues have converted, you’ll be able to move forward with a new server and a better print management solution. In the future, if you need to move the software from your new server to a newer server then all you do is run a backup command in the windows command prompt or PowerShell and restore it on a new server that is running a blank instance of PrinterLogic. Migrations just got a whole lot easier!
How Can I Auto-Deploy Printers?
Getting the right printers to the right people at the right time can be a challenge. You have a wide range of methods you can choose from, ranging from teaching the end user how to connect to a shared printer all the way to writing a logon script to install printers based on specific criteria. It seems like however you decide to accomplish the goal, there are always obstacles. There will always be that one person who doesn’t want to learn how to double-click a printer they need and instead wants the printer to show up automatically whenever they log into their computer no matter where they are geographically. There are also those times when your automatic process simply doesn’t work because of unpredictable computer flaws that can happen. Worst of all, what if you are in charge of figuring out how to auto-deploy printers to not only Windows workstations but Mac workstations as well? The task can be daunting and frustrating.
There is a solution that makes all those headaches go away. No need for end user training, no need for writing scripts, no need for print servers, and it’s not a problem if you have Windows and Mac users. The solution is a part of the print management software from PrinterLogic. It allows IT staff to auto-deploy printers based on specific criteria. You can auto-deploy printers based on Active Directory User, Computer, Group, Container, or OU. You can also deploy printers based on the end user’s computer IP Address, Hostname, or Mac address. It works across both Mac and Windows to provide a unified experience that automates printer installation as well being consistent in its performance.
The best thing about auto-deployments through PrinterLogic is how easy it is to implement the solution. You spin up a virtual server running Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, or Windows Server 2016 and run an executable provided by PrinterLogic. That will take you to an administration web page where you add printers. The software is designed to directly migrate you either off your existing print server or take your direct IP connected printers and add them into the solution. There are import tools that help facilitate that process so it’s smooth and easy. Once you have the printers added just simply push out a software client to each workstation (Windows and Mac). The client is programmed to take over the existing printers on the workstation and provide a seamless transition into a new way of print management. With PrinterLogic, you manage direct IP printers connected to computers. That allows the workstations to spool and submit jobs locally. It’s designed to remove the bottleneck that a print server is and give you improved tools that you previously needed with a print server.
My favorite deployment type is the IP Address deployment option; it allows you to specify an IP Address range that you want printers to be deployed to. If a user enters that IP Address range on their laptop then they will automatically get that site’s printers installed. When the laptop leaves the IP Address range then the printers will be removed and a new set of printers can be added for a new range. The printers essentially follow the traveling users and they never need to call the help desk to get printers installed when they go to new locations.
Finally, if you run into that one user that prefers their printers added manually by selecting from a list, then PrinterLogic can help. PrinterLogic provides users a self-service web page where they can access printers they have permissions to view and install them with a single click. You can even upload a map to help users identify where their nearest printer is. Gone are the days of scripting, GPOs, and user trainings to auto-deploy printers. You can also say goodbye to print servers on top of all that!