5 Common Printer Redirection Problems with Remote Desktop Services (RDS)
How to Optimize Print Management in EMR and EHR Environments
Let’s face it. There’s no perfect way to get a job done. While Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software like Epic, MEDITECH, and Oracle Health EHR are undoubtedly valuable tools for accessing and maintaining medical records, they don’t make print management a walk in the park. Instead, they often turn print management into a nightmare scenario by placing rigorous demands on a print environment’s hardware and workflow.
The unification of a rock-solid print management solution and EMR software may have seemed unlikely before; however, PrinterLogic makes it a reality by providing an integrated next-generation EMR print management solution that’s uniquely suited to solving the fundamental printing problems with EMR systems.
Let’s examine three fundamental issues of EMR and EHR print architecture and how PrinterLogic solves them.
1. Confusion Caused by Dispersed Print Environments
It’s tough to manage a printer fleet that is spread across multiple locations. This is one of the significant issues that IT professionals face in a fragmented and complex print environment that depends on print servers. Dispersed printing environments make fundamental practices like adding a printer to the network a chore. The prime reasons are that the IT departments have to make sure the printer is compatible with every type of environment and come up with GPO deployment rules.
Not only must the IT department scramble to find solutions to printer problems, but employees are also left scrambling to find the right printer to print to. In a dispersed print environment, convenience is hard to come by, and end users feel powerless. Plus, they constantly rely on the IT helpdesk to fix issues that could be solved with a user-friendly interface and more user empowerment.
Solution
Eliminating your print servers makes consolidating and simplifying print management possible. Using PrinterLogic’s web-based management portal allows you to administer your entire print environment—no matter how distributed—from a single pane of glass. Any changes you make can be instantly synchronized across any number of EPSs throughout your organization. That saves time and reduces the likelihood of mistakes, as OhioHealth discovered when simplifying its Epic printing environment by deploying PrinterLogic’s print management software.
2. Lack of Control Over Front-end and Back-end Printing Due to Limited Visibility
It takes a ton of effort to increase transparency in a conventional healthcare printing environment because most don’t have the monitoring, auditing, and reporting features that are needed to keep up. This is evident in a typical Epic printing environment. Each Epic print server (EPS) requires manual intervention when adding, changing, or removing printers. This means that a single change for, say, one model of printer has to be repeated for every single EPS–and commonly for every single instance of that printer model on that EPS.
Not only is that style of management incredibly tedious, but it is also short-sighted. It creates disparate systems between locations, teams, and processes, potentially causing duplicative print queue management. It’s a painfully inefficient and potentially problematic approach to EMR print management.
Solution
Output Automation from PrinterLogic allows you to view and manage all front- and back-end print activity from across your entire organization from a single interface.
With strengthened visibility, admins are able to gather and assess data quickly, giving insight into:
- Which printers are seeing the most traffic
- When certain print jobs were carried out
- Which users account for the most print jobs in a given department
- Who printed “classified” documents
These features show the holes in your print environment, allowing you to utilize Rules & Routing and better manage the security of your print environment. Most importantly, Output Automation sets you up for future success by providing the full scope of your print environment, leading you to make more informed decisions tailored to your organization’s specific needs and growth.
3. Risk of Exposing Confidential Information
Keeping client information confidential seems like a simple task, but it continues to be a problem even with the technological advances in print management. Maintaining the privacy of sensitive client information is especially difficult in distributed healthcare environments since employees are constantly rotating shifts or moving from department to department.
In dynamic environments like this, client information gets lost easily through accidentally being picked up over other print jobs or remains a vulnerable piece of paper in a random printer tray waiting to be picked up by anyone around. It’s hard to stay HIPAA compliant in an environment where you can’t manage who sees your clients’ information.
Solution
PrinterLogic gives end users the power to hold their print jobs in their workstations through Secure Release Printing. Not only does it keep sensitive data in the hands of employees who need it, but it also greatly minimizes cost, keeps your company HIPAA compliant, and requires minimal effort by employees to execute a print job.
Using PrinterLogic’s Secure Release Printing feature, you simply click “Print” but instead of the job being sent directly to the printer, it is held at your workstation. Once you are ready to print, simply walk over to the nearest printer and authorize the print job by using a badge/card reader, a PIN, or our smartphone app (iOS and Android). For an extra layer of security, badge+PIN or user ID+PIN options are also available.
Make EMR Print Management Easy for All with PrinterLogic
PrinterLogic has simplified healthcare printing environments and, at the same time, eliminated companies’ costs of purchase, operation, and maintenance—not to mention their single points of failure. Here are some of the companies that have benefited from PrinterLogic’s EMR print management solution:
- Guthrie: PrinterLogic simplified Guthrie’s Epic print environment by enabling mobile employees to print from any office and reducing the time and cost of print-related helpdesk calls.
- Saber Healthcare Group: PrinterLogic’s centralized Admin Console helped take pressure off a distraught IT team that needed simplified, around-the-clock print capabilities for a growing business.
- UW Health: PrinterLogic helped stamp out their WAN chokepoints by leveraging direct IP printing while maintaining centralized management. This greatly increased their overall print speeds and helped avoid headaches associated with high network traffic.
- OhioHealth: To keep their goals of a 10-fold expansion to their Epic print environment within reach, PrinterLogic offered OhioHealth a solution for streamlining print server and printer configurations. With one simple click, they can now update all printers and servers automatically.
- Princeton Community Hospital: Utilizing a MEDITECH print environment, Princeton Community Hospital realized that MEDITECH’s inability to work well in heterogeneous environments was causing them too much inconvenience. After installing PrinterLogic, they gained unprecedented print availability and uptime, and user-initiated printer installations.
Along with the ability to integrate with Epic and MEDITECH, PrinterLogic has added Oracle Health EHR to its list of compatible EMR software.
Implementing PrinterLogic to enhance your printing environment takes the complexity and chaos out of EMR print management—even in distributed organizations with hundreds or thousands of printers. In addition to providing security to client data, PrinterLogic’s advanced reporting capabilities make it simple for admins to track print jobs and how client files are being printed. By saving time, headaches, and ultimately costs through its small footprint and ease of use, healthcare organizations can place focus on delivering superior customer service and stop devoting unnecessary time and effort to delivering basic EMR printing to end users.
Direct IP Printing vs. Print Servers: Pros and Cons of Each
All IT managers and system administrators who manage print environments must eventually choose between print servers and configuring direct IP printers on their endpoints. Either approach has trade-offs, and several factors come into play when deciding which method is best.
Company Size Matters
If your company only has a handful of employees, the differences between using a print server and managing printing via direct IP are not that obvious. However, as the organization grows, the pain points stemming from IT’s print management choices become evident.
Why Use Print Servers?
A print server can alleviate growth-related pain points because admins get centralized management for drivers, profiles, and print job auditing. You can set printer permissions and use Group Policy to map printers to users or workstations. They integrate with backend applications like EMR, CRM, and ERP and provide one print environment for the entire company. They also haven’t changed in functionality for decades, so they are easy to maintain and manage with the proper experience.
Where Print Servers Miss The Mark
Despite the few positives of employing print servers, it’s hard to keep up with them in the modern-day workplace because they require more maintenance than ever before. Company data is at risk if you fail to stay up-to-date with print server patch installations. Print servers also thrive with homogeneous printer fleets, meaning a printer fleet of mixed manufacturers can cause serious issues.
Additional negatives of print servers include:
Vulnerabilities: Print servers introduce many headaches and vulnerabilities. This means there is a single point of failure for everyone attached to that server. Organizations can expect performance and functionality issues when every printer driver lives, works, and spools on the same print device.
Unreliable GPO Scripting: If there are multiple locations and only one print server, some of your print job traffic will traverse the WAN, often increasing the time it takes to print. On some WAN links, print job traffic can cause congestion and impact other communication across the link.
Price: You can install print servers at each location, but depending on how you deploy them, it can get expensive. Think of the hardware, licensing, and maintenance costs when using multiple print servers.
Limited Support: Windows print servers are typically set up for Windows clients only. There are ways to support Mac clients, but they come with limitations.
Figure 1: The advantages and disadvantages of print servers
The Benefits of Direct IP Printing
With direct IP printing configurations, users are free to manage their printers and profile settings. You gain the advantage of local spooling and rendering print jobs which boosts security. And those jobs go directly from the workstation to the printer.
Direct IP printing is the most efficient way of printing and reduces overall network traffic. A driver issue or a job stuck in the print queue will only affect one user instead of your entire organization. Direct IP is also cost-effective because there’s no additional print management hardware to buy or maintain.
Problems with Direct IP Printing
The decentralized nature of direct IP printing environments is often considered a pain point for IT teams. Admins can’t track costs or identify print job activity throughout the company without employing a third-party print management solution for assistance. Plus, direct print from IP isn’t ideal for hybrid or remote work environments that are constantly changing.
Additional pain points of direct IP printer environments include:
Time-Consuming Configuration: IT teams have to add printer drivers and configure them by IP address on every workstation. Not to mention IT teams have to keep up with changes and driver updates.
Difficult Printer Replacement: A simple task of changing out a printer could require IT staff to touch all affected workstations, which is time-consuming. In dynamic environments, these efforts will inevitably fall behind, hurting user productivity.
Less Oversight and Management: Employees set their own printing rules without centralized group policy management, making it hard to keep up with print environments.
Not a Scalable Solution: When the number of printers in your fleet reaches the hundreds and thousands, the manual labor required becomes overbearing just to keep printing flowing.
Figure 2: Direct IP printing benefits and disadvantages
PrinterLogic: The Best of Both Worlds
What if I told you there is a way to get the centralized management benefits of a print server while maintaining the stability and efficiency of direct IP printing? You know, have your cake and eat it too.
PrinterLogic eliminates the need for print servers while providing a way to manage and install direct IP printers centrally. With PrinterLogic, you can easily convert your existing Microsoft print server environment to our serverless direct IP printing solution.
Have multiple print servers? We take care of that too.
You can also manage all printers and drivers from a single web-based Admin Console. PrinterLogic gives you more visibility into printing activity with an Advanced Reporting feature, allowing for a detailed view of all print jobs by users, departments, printers, and more.
PrinterLogic offers an on-premise solution and PrinterLogic SaaS (our cloud printing platform), so you can choose which version works best for you without sacrificing features or functionality. We have plenty of technical documentation to help your set-up go smoothly, too.
Enterprise Secure Printing Systems: Why You Need Printer Security
Not to be confused with pull printing, secure printing has become a household name in the print management industry. Internal document theft is up. The financial damage caused by data breaches is getting harder to swallow. And companies are taking note.
So what are secure printing solutions, and why do you need them?
What is secure printing?
Secure printing is the process of releasing a print job at a designated printer using one of several authentication methods. Documents are held in a queue until the user is physically present at the printer. Authentication methods vary—from entering an employee PIN to scanning an ID badge or using a mobile application—and can be released only when the user is physically present at the printer.
This is slightly different than its pull printing counterpart. Pull printing allows jobs to be released at any pull printing-enabled network printer. Regardless, secure printing and pull printing offer an additional layer of security that protect confidential documents. But secure printing solutions provide benefits that extend to the remote workforce and help future-proof your print environment.
Enterprise Secure Printing Systems
Enterprise secure printing systems provide robust security and control over your organization’s printing environment. With features like secure release printing, documents are only released after user authentication at the printer. This prevents sensitive information from sitting exposed in output trays.
Comprehensive auditing and tracking capabilities allow you to monitor printing activity across your large organization for compliance purposes. Advanced encryption and secure printing protocols safeguard data as it traverses your network.
Centralized printer management streamlines configuration, enables print policy enforcement, and saves IT staff time versus managing individual devices. With the high-volume centralized print centers enterprises require, you maximize printer uptime and reduce costs.
Enterprise secure printing mitigates risk, bolsters compliance, and enhances operational efficiency–key priorities for any large business that can’t afford data breaches or operational disruptions.
How can secure printing solutions benefit you?
Whether you’re an enterprise looking for a secure printing system or an SMB needing a more secure solution to protect your data, the following advice is relevant to both business environments.
They help you reduce legacy infrastructure.
Secure printing solutions aren’t exactly “secure” if you can’t reduce legacy infrastructure. In this case, I’m not talking about your grandfather’s printers.
I’m talking about your print servers.
After the whole PrintNightmare fiasco, it became clear that print servers needed to be wiped from the picture. Secure printing solutions take print servers out of the equation and don’t hold print jobs in a spooler queue. Instead, print jobs are held on the workstation or the printer and remain on the local network until a user is ready to release it.
They allow remote workers to print securely.
Remote workers need a way to print securely without having to resort to printing on an unmanaged, off-network home printer. Secure printing solutions can give contractors, remote workers, and roaming employees the ability to print to an in-network printer while being on an outside network.
This type of functionality enables end users moving between their home and the office to print freely and release their documents at the office at their convenience, encouraging employees to stop using home office printers which are a huge security liability and impossible for admins to track.
Furthermore, secure Off-Network Printing capabilities offer employees a flexible way to deliver confidential documents to someone in the office instead of sending personal or customer information to them via email.
They adhere to Zero Trust standards.
Secure printing is a crucial aspect of complying with Zero Trust standards. The additional layer of security means confidential information stays in the hands of those who printed it. That level of authentication is a step in the right direction. But to be considered a Zero Trust-caliber secure printing solution, it has to integrate with the identity providers (IdPs) you use in your environment.
IdPs provide your company with a double layer of security your end users must go through before they can print. They also restrict users to the necessary applications they need to do their job. Adding secure printing functionality on top of that dramatically reduces the risk of identity and document theft, helping you achieve Zero Trust Printing.
They give users mobile printing capabilities.
Secure printing capabilities can extend to your end users’ mobile devices. If you’re managing a BYOD environment, leveraging phones, tablets, and laptops to print securely is a great way to cut down on costs and boost productivity simultaneously. Users can send a print job to a designated printer on the company network and release it later—without having to hop on specific company computers just to print a few documents.
There is a caveat to this one.
Not all secure printing solutions offer 100% compatibility with all printer models and operating systems (this one does). So make sure to choose a solution that checks all the boxes for the devices and printers in your environment.
They future-proof your business.
Theft isn’t going away. But it’s possible to mitigate it.
Secure printing solutions set you up for future success and reduce the chances of information being exploited for personal gain or a competitive advantage. They’re able to meet the demands of a hybrid workforce and offer a consistent end-user experience that doesn’t hamper productivity. They enable printing from an array of mobile devices and are built around maintaining compliance throughout all industries.
And most of all, they take pressure off IT.
Secure Printing Solutions on a Single Platform
One problem with most of the secure printing products on the market is that they require a print server, which means that if your print server goes down, everything ceases to work.
PrinterLogic eliminates your print servers and removes the single point of failure while providing a centrally managed direct IP printing platform. On top of that, PrinterLogic is 100% device and OS-agnostic and integrates with all major IdPs.
PrinterLogic’s version of secure printing, Secure Release Printing, holds print jobs on the user’s workstation and empowers users to release print jobs using one of the following methods:
- Smartphone App/QR Code
- Control Panel
- Web Browser
- Badge reader
Plus, get access to additional secure printing features like Off-Network Printing, Mobile App Release, and Concurrent IdP Support to extend the security reach of your print environment.
See firsthand how PrinterLogic leverages secure printing features in the cloud and gives you the protection you need in today’s print environments.
Chromebook Printing Got You Down?
Originally published March 14, 2023.
January 2021 marked the beginning of something special: no more Google Cloud printing.
Google Cloud Print offered Chromebook users an easy way to print, but let’s be honest, it wasn’t exactly the most robust printing application on the market.
Why is Chromebook printing important?
Chromebook printing is important because Chromebooks generally offer the same memory, speed, and functionality as other operating systems—without the high price tag.
Chromebooks are cheap (mostly under $400), the operating system is stable and fast, they have an outstanding battery life, and are utilized heavily in the education industry for distance learning.
Additionally, it’s easier to put Chromebooks in the hands of students and workers alike because they give them all of the tools needed to perform daily tasks.
Except for printing with a Chromebook, that is.
Here we are two years after Google Cloud Print’s deprecation. You’re still digging to figure out how to manage Chromebook print environments. Or you might be stocking up on Chromebooks for the first time, wondering what all the fuss is about.
Either way, don’t let Chromebook printing get you down.
We’re here to help by providing you with a list of Chromebook printing “don’ts” and an easier path to Chromebook printing once and for all.
The Don’ts of Printing from a Chromebook
Before you start endlessly researching How to print with Chromebooks or How to print after Google Cloud Print, let’s eliminate the complicated tutorials and jump right into the “don’ts” of Chromebook printing.
Don’t spend money on Chromebook-compatible printers.
Many quick fixes ask you to buy printers compatible with Chromebooks. Chromebooks can connect to newer printers via WiFi or a USB cable and have the drivers built in to handle most manufacturers. Many network and USB printers can work with your Chromebook right out of the gates.
Have a lot of older, incompatible printers in your fleet?
Before you start thinking about buying Google-certified printers just to get your Chromebook print environment off and running, some solutions offer extensions that provide you with the compatibility you need to have a fully Chromebook-agnostic print environment. Solutions like these help you save money on time and hardware costs.
Don’t forget to update your systems.
If you haven’t updated your system in a while, it might cause your Chromebook to be uncooperative. Even if you set Chromebooks to update automatically, you still might have to “Restart to Update” to complete the installation.
Furthermore, don’t forget to keep your printer firmware up-to-date to avoid running into future problems. Updating your printer firmware ensures smoother printing, enhances security, keeps compatibility with new operating systems, and unlocks new features that may not have been available on previous firmware versions.
Don’t waste time manually connecting Chromebooks to your printers.
Admins assigned to a large fleet of printers with different makes and models simply don’t have the time to manually connect printers to their Chromebooks. Even if you successfully complete the daunting task of manually connecting all your Chromebooks with your printers, you’ll likely still be running infinite circles to ensure your users can always print.
Some older printers don’t have the internet capability to connect manually via an internet connection. If you have a lot of older printers in your fleet, you could find yourself connecting Chromebooks using a USB cable. This old-school process significantly reduces end user mobility and wastes more of your valuable time.
Don’t limit user mobility.
It’s easy to throw in the towel and ask your end users to connect to the printer via USB to print. Although it’s a great security measure, it’s not the best in educational settings or professional environments. Students moving from classroom to classroom need to be able to print on the fly. The same goes for hybrid work environments where users move from office to office.
Any time a user is on your company network, they should be able to print to the nearest printer on the local network. Connecting via USB or limiting a group of users to a specific printer decreases productivity and doesn’t allow you to fully utilize other printers in your environment or equally disperse print job traffic.
Don’t sacrifice security.
It’s common to see admins manage Chromebook print queues using print servers. While they may be effective in terms of management, they pose too much of a risk in today’s print environments. Print spooler vulnerabilities like PrintNightmare turned routine printer installations and driver deployments into full-on marathons so users could print.
Not to mention, there are situations where end users may use their Chromebooks to print to their home office printers, which aren’t always on a secure network. Printing to unsecured printers not only puts personal information at risk but puts the company’s critical data at risk as well.
So how do you get the most out of Chromebook printing in your environment without overspending on compatible printers, wasting time on manual updates, and sacrificing security?
Chromebook Printing for Enterprises and SMBs
Take all the uncertainty out of Chromebook printing with the PrinterLogic Chrome OS Extension. Get broad printer compatibility with driverless printing technology and access your printers’ advanced features on-the-fly to get the best possible output on every print job. The 100% device-agnostic Extension quickly pulls the printers’ settings and configures them for Chromebook users.
No more IT intervention necessary!
Better yet, no internet connection or a cloud-based service is needed to make printing work.
FAQs
What printers work with Chromebooks?
While you’ll see various articles recommending Chromebook-compatible printers, we don’t recommend that as your first step. We’ve built a Chrome extension for Chromebook printing that bypasses the need to purchase new printers just so they “work with Chromebooks”.
How do you print from a Chromebook?
By using our Chrome extension, of course. But if you’re not using that, there are quick steps to print from your Chromebook. Simply hit CTRL + P, select your Destination and preferred Printer. Click Print. Again, the challenge is some available printers may not be compatible with your Chromebook so try out our extension if you have trouble.
Why can’t my Chromebook connect to my printer?
The most common issue is your devices are not connected to the same network. If that’s not the case, consider rebooting the devices involved: printers, Wifi, your Chromebook, etc.
Start getting the most out of your Chromebook print environment and provide your end users with the flexibility they need to print on the go.
Printing Management Software: Do You Need It?
Originally published July 5, 2023.
According to printing giant Xerox, 61% of organizations have experienced data losses due to unsecure printing practices. Internal document theft is up. The financial damage caused by data breaches is getting harder to swallow. And companies are taking note.
These are staggering threats from something as simple as printing a document. The good news is that secure printing solutions can protect your organization, as well as offer some cost-saving benefits.
So, what are secure printing solutions, and why do you need them?
What is secure printing?
Secure printing is the process of releasing a print job at a designated printer using one of several authentication methods. Documents are held in a queue until the user is physically present at the printer. Authentication methods vary—from entering an employee PIN to scanning an ID badge or using a mobile application—and can be released only when the user is physically at the printer.
Secure printing is slightly different than pull printing. Pull printing allows jobs to be released at any pull printing-enabled network printer. Regardless, secure printing and pull printing offer an additional layer of security that protects confidential documents. However, secure printing solutions provide benefits that extend to the remote workforce and help future-proof your print environment.
How can secure printing solutions benefit you?
1. They help you reduce legacy infrastructure.
Secure printing solutions aren’t exactly “secure” if you can’t reduce legacy infrastructure. In this case, we’re talking about print servers.
After the PrintNightmare fiasco in 2021, it became clear that print servers needed to be wiped from the picture. Secure printing solutions remove print servers from the equation and don’t hold print jobs in a spooler queue. Instead, print jobs are held at the workstation or the printer and remain on the local network until a user is ready to release it.
In addition to increased security, eliminating legacy infrastructure can save a lot of money. Up-front cost is a common concern when replacing entire systems, but some executives don’t realize that legacy printers require high amounts of electricity and frequently need repairs. Secure printing solutions allow teams to get rid of the expensive, clunky legacy equipment and offer more energy-efficient and long-lasting printing options.
2. They allow remote workers to print securely.
Remote workers need a way to print securely without having to resort to printing on an unmanaged, off-network home printer. Secure printing solutions can give contractors, remote workers, and roaming employees the ability to print to an in-network printer while working on an outside network.
This functionality enables out-of-office end users to print freely and release documents at the office at their convenience, putting a stop to using home office printers (which are a huge security liability and impossible for admins to track). Even with remote employees working all around the globe, secure printing also offers visibility.
Furthermore, secure off-network printing capabilities offer employees a flexible way to deliver confidential documents to someone in the office instead of sending personal or customer information to them via email.
3. They adhere to Zero Trust standards.
Secure printing is a crucial aspect of complying with Zero Trust standards, meaning that anyone who wants to print must provide verification. The additional layer of security keeps confidential information in the hands of those who printed it. That level of authentication is a step in the right direction, but to be considered a Zero Trust-caliber secure printing solution, it also has to integrate with the identity providers (IdPs) used in your environment.
IdPs provide your company with a double layer of security that end users must go through before they can print. IdPs also restrict users to the necessary applications they need to do their job. Adding secure printing functionality on top of that dramatically reduces the risk of identity and document theft, helping you achieve Zero Trust Printing.
4. They give users mobile printing capabilities.
Secure printing capabilities can extend to your end users’ mobile devices. If you’re managing a BYOD environment, leveraging phones, tablets, and laptops to print securely is a great way to cut down on costs and boost productivity simultaneously. Users can send print jobs to a designated printer on the company network and release them later without having to hop on specific company computers just to print a few documents.
However, there’s a caveat to this one.
Not all secure printing solutions offer 100% compatibility with all printer models and operating systems (this one does). So, make sure to choose a solution that checks all the boxes for the devices and printers in your environment.
5. They future-proof your business.
Theft isn’t going away. But it’s possible to mitigate it.
Secure printing solutions set you up for success and reduce the chances of information being exploited for personal gain or a competitive advantage. They’re able to meet the demands of a hybrid workforce and offer a consistent end-user experience that doesn’t hamper productivity. They enable printing from an array of mobile devices and are built around maintaining compliance throughout all industries.
Even better, they take pressure off IT.
With a more modern and free IT team paired with the ability to work with remote and hybrid employees, secure printing solutions pave the way for you to thrive now and in the future.
Secure Printing Solutions on a Single Platform
One problem with most of the secure printing products on the market is that they require a print server, which means that if your print server goes down, everything ceases to work.
PrinterLogic eliminates your print servers and removes the single point of failure while providing a centrally managed direct IP printing platform. On top of that, PrinterLogic is 100% device- and OS-agnostic and integrates with all major IdPs.
PrinterLogic’s version of secure printing, Secure Release Printing, holds print jobs on the user’s workstation and empowers users to release print jobs using one of the following methods:
- Smartphone App/QR Code
- Control Panel
- Web Browser
- Badge reader
Plus, get access to additional secure printing features like Off-Network Printing, Mobile App Release, and Concurrent IdP Support to extend the security reach of your print environment.
See firsthand how PrinterLogic leverages secure printing features in the cloud and gives you the protection you need in today’s print environments. Schedule a demo and see how PrinterLogic can change your printing today.
How Schools Can Save Money by Using Enterprise Print Management Systems
Originally published on November 17, 2016
When searching for an effective education printing solution, take a look at enterprise printing solutions. You’d be surprised at how easily they can fit your checklist of requirements. Education printing solutions and enterprise printing solutions require reliability, scalability, security, and ease of use for administrators and end users. They also need all the bells and whistles to integrate with the ever-changing tech industry. For example, mobile devices are used more than ever in today’s classrooms, implying that mobile print solutions are necessary to enable mobile users to print from anywhere in the school.
Overall, print management software for schools needs to combat all the difficulties that administrators and students encounter in their print environment. Here are some of the top printing challenges that educational institutions, specifically K-12 schools, face and how enterprise print management systems solve those problems for both teachers and students.
Printing Challenges that Educational Institutions Face
Challenge #1: Intensive High-Volume Printing
The average school uses roughly 360,000 sheets of office paper per year—and that’s not including textbooks. To handle such high-volume printing, schools need reliable printers, simple-to-use printing software, and print management training to organize print jobs. Teachers may have to print hundreds of pages for tests and worksheets correlative to the number of students in the class. Conversely, students may also print thick stacks of paper for study materials, note-taking, and research.
When attempting high-volume print jobs, not only is your printer under pressure to deliver the goods, but a school’s print server is more likely to fail in this type of print environment. Additionally, high-volume printing greatly reduces print speeds for end users across the board, specifically when students attempt to print large jobs simultaneously.
Solution: Adopt a Serverless Printing Infrastructure
Enterprise print management systems, such as Vasion’s PrinterLogic SaaS, help get rid of your print servers by offering a serverless printing infrastructure that allows you to centrally manage printer objects, profiles, drivers, and settings from a single pane of glass. Additionally, print jobs don’t queue in a spooler, eliminating heavy print traffic and long wait times.
Furthermore, admins have complete oversight of their devices’ status. Through print alerts and SNMP monitoring, IT admins gain immediate insight into everyday errors like empty paper trays or the operational state of every compatible printer in the fleet. All in all, SNMP monitoring assists IT professionals by catching potential issues before they arise.
Challenge #2: Students Are Constantly Moving
Whether they are moving between classrooms or to a different building across campus, one thing is for sure: students are always on the go. That movement presents a printing challenge because students will still need to access a printer with each classroom change.
The homeroom classroom or library isn’t always close enough. Students and teachers need to be able to send print jobs to a nearby printer no matter where they are. Print management solutions for universities and other educational institutions must account for this type of highly mobile, location-shifted printing.
Solution: Self-Installation Portals
PrinterLogic’s Self-Installation Portal empowers end users to be responsible for their own print jobs. Using the portal, students and teachers can locate and install printers with a single click. Admins can also upload customizable floor plan maps for their schools, helping students and teachers locate their nearest printers.
Perhaps one of the biggest returns of this feature is the cost savings. A school’s IT admins can now be more productive in other areas and step away from irritating print-related issues.
Oklahoma City Community College (OCCC) witnessed the benefits of self-service provisioning firsthand when they migrated to PrinterLogic SaaS. Not only did OCCC give users more control, but the IT department also experienced fewer helpdesk calls.
Challenge #3: Lack of Versatility
Some schools take what they can get with the resources they are given. This might mean buying low-cost computers and printers, regardless of brand, which creates a mixed-OS print environment that can be a chore to manage. Many schools utilize a mixed-OS print environment and require a printing solution compatible with all their devices.
This especially rings true for mobile devices and Chromebooks, which are regularly used in schools because they are affordable and accessible. Chromebooks are versatile, too, because they come with the ability to run Android, Linux, the web, and Windows programs. However, they aren’t heralded for their printing prowess.
During the COVID pandemic, Chromebooks surged from a tech novelty to an indispensable classroom tool; however, since Google Print Cloud’s discontinuation at the end of 2020, schools have had to search for an alternative way to print in their Chromebook-centric classrooms.
Solution: PrinterLogic’s Chrome OS Client Extension
At the end of 2021, it was estimated that over 40 million students and teachers used Chromebooks in the classroom, signifying that the need to print with these devices is critical moving forward. PrinterLogic’s Chromebook Printing Solution provides schools with a way to harness Chromebook’s true printing capabilities.
Free of charge with PrinterLogic SaaS’s Core Bundle, Chromebooks can now be a part of your mixed-OS printing environment. Along with eliminating the need for print servers, PrinterLogic’s Chrome OS Client Extension doesn’t rely on the internet to execute print jobs and keeps print jobs local and secure.
The extension is easy to deploy since PrinterLogic employs the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) that takes printer settings and automatically configures them for Chromebook users throughout the school. This process allows students and teachers to choose their desired options and send their print jobs directly to the nearest printer.
Even if your school doesn’t use Chromebooks as a primary educational device, PrinterLogic’s enterprise-grade Mobile Printing feature enables students and teachers to print natively from tablets or other mobile devices.
Challenge #4: Excessive Waste and Redundancy
As schools face continued budget cuts, there’s no room for waste. Paper waste stacks up from eager fingers clicking “Print” multiple times when a printer doesn’t immediately spring into action or when a teacher accidentally prints a 300-page book instead of printing a selection of pages.
Without a way to manage each print job, it’s hard to pinpoint which classrooms are going through paper and toner at a higher-than-normal rate.
Solution: PrinterLogic’s Quota Management Feature
Why constantly think about budgeting and print management when there is a feature specifically designed to do all the work for you? By implementing PrinterLogic’s Quota Management feature into your print environment, your IT admin can oversee print jobs based on two key criteria: price and volume.
Once you determine the criteria for print jobs across your school, you can break it down further by limiting the number of print jobs per individual or group. Doing this alone already enhances the economy of your print environment. However, PrinterLogic takes it one step further with a time-delayed printing feature designed to prevent printing the same print job multiple times due to end-user impatience.
Admins can set the time limit between attempted print jobs in the Admin Console. They can also limit users and groups to a predetermined number of pages for each individual print job. Need to raise (or lower) the allotted page count and print spending? Trusted users can adjust quotas midstream to fit their current financial situation.
Challenge #5: Limited Collaboration
Collaboration on physical documents may be limited. For example, teachers and staff may need to physically share lesson plans, permission slips, or other documents. They may also need to send them via email by manually attaching digital files, which becomes cumbersome as more documents need sharing. Additionally, staff and administrators across districts may be limited in their ability to access important documents from remote locations. This issue can make it difficult to collaborate with others, especially when class is remote or teachers are grading from home.
Solution: Enhance Document Shareability
Staff and teachers can quickly scan paper documents in a print management system and send the files to anyone in the school instead of manually attaching files to emails at their desks. Overall, this quick-scan feature saves time typically spent on tedious, manual tasking, and staff members can easily collaborate faster and more often. The best part of enhanced document shareability? Teachers can take advantage of this feature without compromising data security.
Challenge #6: Unorganized Document Management
Classrooms see lots of paper every day, ranging from student work and homework to permission slips, packets, and other learning materials. All these loose documents can be difficult to maintain and organize if educators or staff members don’t stay on top of it all the time. With high teacher turnover and frequent substitute teachers, classrooms need organized documents to make sure students are still staying on track with lesson plans.
The lack of storage space becomes an issue as well, which contributes to the chaos. With limited space and high disorganization, it’s hard for teachers to store and keep track of collected, signed parental permission forms and other documents.
Solution: Transition Away from Physical Documents
Scan paper documents into digital files on a print management system, reducing the need for constant printing, sharing, and storing hard copies while easing the load on physical storage cabinets. Doing this keeps your files organized, too, so teachers can always find lesson plans and assignments on servers without having to hunt for them.
Print management systems can also help teachers collect student and guardian permission forms and registration papers from any device. Print management solutions come with drag-and-drop eForm builders so teachers can quickly customize forms. PDF-to-web form converters make it easy to work with forms in different formats, and the forms are embeddable to any website.
Challenge #7: No Printing Oversight
Administration often can’t see who is printing what, when, and how often until the printer runs out of paper and ink or throws up errors. Without oversight, teachers and students are also free to print as much as they’d like. There aren’t any restrictions in place to help protect against excessive printing.
Without proper printing oversight, schools are also at risk of data breaches. Around 27% of IT security incidents are related to paper documents. To limit hacking and data breaches from unattended printed paper, oversight is vital.
Solution: Access Printing Insights
Not only does accessing printing insights help increase security and decrease the risk of data breaches, but oversight can also help improve efficiency. Get full visibility into all user scan activity within a print management system’s admin console to manage security and improve workflows to track cost-savings, project budgets, and even inform future purchases, like additional scanners for staff.
Printing oversight offers insights into efficiency, too, identifying which printers are used most, who is hitting their quotas fastest, what kinds of documents are printed most frequently, and how to find ways to reduce printed paper. In print management systems, those with oversight access can create quotas. Quotas can be assigned by modes, encouraging users to use color, collated, or other specialty printing scrupulously.
Challenge #8: Printer Overload
When too many users print from the same printer, print queues can get lengthy, ink and toner replacements proliferate, and technical issues are more common. These issues get costly—not to mention the general wear and tear on the printer itself (which can be expensive when it’s time to repair or replace the hardware).
Solution: Be Kind to Your Printer
Print management solutions pace print jobs and materials so the printers don’t get overwhelmed. This software can also monitor ink levels, paper levels, paper jams, and technical problems to help fix issues before they happen. Predictive maintenance is another feature that helps school districts save money before repairs become expensive.
Give Your Print Environment an A+
Despite the numerous challenges listed above, schools have options for tackling printing challenges. Enterprise print management systems, especially Vasion’s PrinterLogic solution, can help solve printing problems. Thanks to its versatility, stability, ease of management, and convenient security features, PrinterLogic is the one print management solution that lives up to these unique demands placed on educational print environments. Delivering all the cost benefits and efficiencies you would expect from enterprise printing solutions makes PrinterLogic one of the best print management solutions for K-12 schools.
Serverless Pull Printing: Secure Printing Without a Print Server
Pull printing has emerged as one of the most useful ways for organizations of all sizes to implement a secure printing protocol among their workforce—and for good reason. Sixty-one percent of organizations have experienced data loss due to unsecured printing.
Not surprisingly, though, many organizations balk at the idea of having to deploy even more physical infrastructure to gain one piece of extra functionality. That’s why demand for serverless pull printing has increased.
Before we explore serverless pull printing in more detail, let’s pause briefly to look at what exactly secure pull printing is and why it’s beneficial.
What Is Secure Pull Printing?
Pull printing—sometimes referred to as secure pull printing or Secure Release Printing—turns the act of printing into an intentional two-step process. Broken down, it looks like this:
- The user initiates the print job– This is no different from how computer users have been printing for decades—they simply click “Print,” as usual. The job is then sent to the destination printer, where it’s held in the queue instead of being carried out immediately.
- The user allows the printer to execute the job– Once at the printer, the user engages an authentication mechanism, such as a badge or card reader. That authorizes the printer to start the associated pending job. The user then retrieves the job from the output tray once it’s finished.
It may be perceived that an extra step in the printing process would burden end users. However, adding the “release” step enables users to release print jobs in bulk and maintain document privacy which is sought after in high-confidentiality industries like healthcare, banking, and government.
What Does Secure Pull Printing Help Organizations Achieve?
There are several benefits of secure pull printing that make an immediate impact on your organization.
Strengthened Security
By ensuring that the user is physically present before a job can begin, documents aren’t left sitting in the output tray for anyone to see—or steal. According to a report by the Ponemon Institute, 60% of organizations stated “accessing sensitive data not associated with role or function” as the reason for insider threats. This advantage of secure pull printing should be apparent to anyone in the healthcare or high-tech industries, where confidentiality is at a premium.
Sustainable Printing
Sustainability isn’t just a buzzword anymore. According to Quocirca, 70% of organizations say it is important their print supplier provides a range of sustainable products and services. Secure pull printing addresses eco-friendly initiatives by cutting down on consumable usage and preventing jobs from being abandoned. If a user spots a typo just after clicking “Print,” the previous job can easily be canceled before the final authorization step. In addition, admins can set unreleased print jobs to be deleted from a user’s virtual print queue after 24 hours.
Flexibility
Let’s say you want to print a meeting agenda on a distant conference room printer, but the room is currently in use. With secure pull printing, you can print your job at a different printer without disturbing the current meeting. Simply authenticate and execute the job at the nearest convenient printer.
Cost Reduction
Along with avoiding expensive insider document theft and data threats (which cost around $179K to contain), printing overall becomes a more intentional practice for users, ensuring they don’t print accidental duplicates of the same print job. Not to mention, these secure practices extend your printer life by minimizing accidental, high-volume print jobs.
There is one glaring negative about secure pull printing worth noting: many pull printing solutions require additional hardware, such as a dedicated print server that’s used exclusively to provide secure pull printing functionality. This is far from desirable, particularly in organizations that are trying to reduce infrastructure and costs by migrating to serverless printing.
Add Flexibility and Security to Your Print Environment
PrinterLogic’s next-generation print management solution was designed to provide serverless printing to any organization, and that naturally applies to its powerful but easy-to-implement Secure Release Printing as well. You can deploy it throughout your entire print environment—including those with legacy printers—without the need for any additional infrastructure.
As a matter of fact, PrinterLogic enables you to eliminate print servers across the board to attain truly serverless printing that’s cost-effective, enterprise-ready, and cloud-native—even in VMware, Citrix, and IGEL environments.
You and your users gain flexibility too. Our Secure Release Printing feature gives you the choice of the following four release methods:
Mobile QR-Code Release: Scan a QR code at the printer using your mobile device to release a print job. This eliminates the need for additional infrastructure like badge readers.
Secure Badge Release: Utilize a tethered or network-enabled badge or card reader that integrates with your existing ID system.
Control Panel Application: Leverage PrinterLogic’s embedded control panel app for supported printers.
Web Browser: Release jobs from any device with a browser, such as a PC, mobile phone, or a nearby tablet in kiosk mode.
And in each case, it bears repeating that no print server is needed.
There’s a lot to like about this secure printing feature, but there’s even more to like when it’s serverless, seamless, and intuitive. Book a demo and get a free 30-day trial today.
PrinterLogic Virtual Appliance or SaaS? Analyzing Your Options After Web Stack End-of-Life
It’s been a minute since PrinterLogic Web Stack reached its end-of-life.
Since February 28, 2023, to be exact.
And if you’ve been holding onto the product for dear life, we understand—it’s a great product. However, we have alternatives that simplify print management and keep jobs on the local network while still giving you the control Web Stack provided.
Below, we’ll cover our on-premise and cloud-native solutions, how they enhance security, and the benefits of upgrading to our next-gen software.
What are your upgrade choices after Web Stack?
PrinterLogic offers two ways to manage print after migrating from Web Stack: PrinterLogic SaaS and the PrinterLogic Virtual Appliance (VA).
PrinterLogic SaaS is easy to manage, eliminates legacy infrastructure, scales on demand, and rolls out automatic updates to keep your data secure. Our SaaS platform is ISO 27001:2013- and SOC 2 Type 2-certified, which encompasses the protection of your confidential data and enables us to better satisfy your unique business requirements.
The PrinterLogic Virtual Appliance is our latest on-premise, self-contained solution for customers who want the latest functionality but who need to host the solution in their data center or private cloud. It’s a complete, unitized solution that’s ready to install, including a server OS, web services, network environment, and the PrinterLogic application.
What new features do you get access to?
Since we discontinued engineering support for Web Stack customers in August 2022, new features have been developed that aren’t accessible within Web Stack.
Extend and enhance your printing capabilities by migrating to our VA or SaaS solution:
- Simplified Scanning features that enhance document collaboration in hybrid environments (SaaS only, with Virtual Appliance support upcoming)
- Modernized and automated Output Management tools to ensure efficient document delivery
- Cloud-based Identity Provider support (e.g., Okta, Azure AD, and more)
- Chrome-OS Client Extension to manage Chromebooks like any other OS
- Printer-agnostic, intuitive Control Panel Application (CPA) that supports your print release, copy, and scanning capabilities
- Zero Trust-supported Off-Network Printing solution for hybrid workplaces
- Offline Secure Release Printing for Windows–close your laptop and still receive print jobs
- Native direct IP Mobile Printing on iOS and Android
- Secure Release Printing with touchless QR code using mobile devices, simple badge release, or from the CPA
How secure are the Virtual Appliance and SaaS solutions?
Like any on-prem solution, some facets of security are determined by your organization’s security policies. As a general rule, the Virtual Appliance is considered to be highly secure for several reasons:
- The VA’s low-profile operating environment is less exposed as an attack surface
- The OS and platform elements are updated regularly, reducing vulnerabilities
- VAs offer content verification and integrity checking based on public-key cryptography
There are a couple other security benefits worth mentioning. First, your database and file storage locations are controlled by you, so you can apply your own security policies. Second, the latest PrinterLogic platforms use centrally managed direct IP, so by default, all print job data stays on the local network.
Our SaaS solution is ISO 27001:2013- and SOC 2 Type 2-compliant and offers the same security features and benefits as our VA offering. All communication between workstation clients and the AWS-hosted PrinterLogic SaaS instance is encrypted over HTTPS and TLS 443 with an OAuth2 security token. PrinterLogic SaaS utilizes the security features of Amazon Web Services and Azure Cloud to ensure that PrinterLogic systems and data are secure.
PrinterLogic SaaS integrates with one or more IdP services to authenticate and authorize users, groups, and computers. Confidential data is also protected through a choice of secure pull-printing capabilities, which are included in the core license.
What is the process for upgrading to PrinterLogic SaaS?
You’ll receive full support from our team to migrate from Web Stack. In five simple steps, you’ll have PrinterLogic SaaS and additional features up and running.
- We’ll ensure you’re using the latest Web Stack software (v19.1.1.13 SP3 and MySQL 8.0 or later)
- After spinning up your SaaS instance, you’ll upload your database to a secure location using a URL we provide
- Transfer settings from your database (e.g., config options, printers, and users) to your SaaS instance
- Build a script that removes, then reinstalls, our current client software on all user endpoints
- Reinstall all Control Panel Applications if you’re using our CPAs
What about upgrading to the Virtual Appliance?
As a starting point, you need to be running Web Stack v19.1 SP3 with MySQL 8.0 or later. The VA includes an upgrade tool that allows you to migrate data into the VA from your Web Stack instance. You can do a migration on your own or reach out to Product Support for assistance.
This upgrade does not overwrite your existing Web Stack install, which allows you to spin up the VA and test it before you cut over to the new solution. We recommend uninstalling your CPAs from Web Stack before doing the migration and then reinstalling the latest CPAs from the VA once it’s up and running.
Interested in upgrading from PrinterLogic Web Stack?
As we complete our transition to a complete SaaS-first company, we invite all of our current Web Stack users to increase security and enjoy all the features and functionality provided by our Virtual Appliance and SaaS print management solutions.
If you’re a current customer and would like to discuss your upgrade options, reach out to your PrinterLogic representative.
For more details about PrinterLogic Web Stack End-of-Life, check out our FAQ.