Enterprise Printing for Chromebooks

For years now, Chromebooks have been the go-to computing choice for the education sector. In their prime, Chromebooks experienced a 180 percent increase in total shipments, which surpassed the shipment totals of other top OS competitors. Known for cloud-based email, built-in security, and storage, Chromebooks quickly became the answer for enterprise organizations trying to speed up the transition to a remote-friendly workplace.

However, despite their upsides, printing has long been a sore spot for IT teams wanting to deliver streamlined Chromebook printing to their end users. 

 

Struggling to Find Answers to Chromebook Printing? You’re Not Alone.

With Chromebook adoption comes Chromebook printing. For what it was, Google Cloud Print didn’t provide reliable print capabilities to Chromebook users. Full compatibility was often limited to printer models and apps deemed Google Cloud Print capable, and admins accustomed to enterprise-grade print management may have found backend features lacking. 

In enterprise print environments, setting up new users can be a complex process, and installing new printers generally requires IT intervention, too, which can offset the otherwise minimal support requirements of Chromebooks. The strings attached to Chromebooks have therefore led to some hesitancy in the enterprise. This is especially true in healthcare environments, where the appeal of Chromebooks’ low cost and ultra-portability is often outweighed by a lack of Chromebook printing support with essential EMR/EHR printing solutions.

To facilitate the adoption of Chromebooks across all industries, what’s needed is a mobile printing solution that offers seamless, feature-rich Chromebook printing, enterprise-grade print management, and print security without the need for Chromebook printing workarounds.

 

Get Power, Simplicity, and Security for Chromebook Printing

PrinterLogic’s next-generation print management solution features highly configurable, easy-to-manage, native mobile printing capabilities, making Chromebooks a much more viable option in the enterprise. With Mobile Printing from PrinterLogic, organizations experience four compelling advantages:

 

Print from any device

Any employee with a Chromebook—or any other mobile device with a browser—can print as needed. In Chrome OS, this is as simple as clicking the “Print” button and making sure the PrinterLogic printer is selected. The user can then visit the web-based release portal to send the job to any authorized network printer.

 

Print to any printer

Any network printer, including legacy devices, can be configured to work with PrinterLogic’s Chromebook printing solution. This means that IT doesn’t have to procure dedicated Chromebook-friendly printers or sacrifice printer functionality for end users to enjoy intuitive, full-featured printing from their Chromebooks.

 

No client or printer software

When printing from a Chromebook or any other mobile device, there’s no need for end users or admins to install any additional client or printer-based software. This saves employees from calling the helpdesk for printer support and enables IT staff to continue focusing on duties other than print management.

 

Add extra security to documents with pull printing

The release step, which transfers the print job from PrinterLogic’s virtual queue to the printer queue, helps to ensure that the job goes to the correct printer—and is released only when the user is ready. 

The effect of this step is actually two-fold. 

First, it cuts down on misdirected and unwanted print jobs, thereby reducing waste. And second, it decreases the likelihood of print jobs being abandoned in the output tray. That keeps sensitive documents concealed from prying eyes and internal theft. Admins can also enable the automatic deletion of unreleased print jobs with the same goals in mind.

 

Make Chromebook Printing Part of Your Print Solution

In addition to providing mobile and BYOD devices with platform- and printer-agnostic printing, PrinterLogic also features robust, enterprise-level print management. For organizations that have found replacement solutions for Google Cloud Print somewhat limiting, PrinterLogic offers a more powerful alternative. Active Directory integration, advanced printer deployment options, and easy configuration of defaults make it easy to control and direct printer access across the enterprise from a centralized management console.

The simplicity of Chromebook printing with PrinterLogic ultimately leads to reductions in time spent on print management—along with corresponding reductions in administrative costs. This combination of simplicity and print security makes PrinterLogic’s Mobile Printing feature ideal for enterprise-scale businesses, educational institutions (even beyond K-12), and dynamic healthcare environments employing a large roaming staff.

Large or distributed organizations may once have expressed reservations about Chromebooks in the enterprise, but PrinterLogic changes that narrative. Now admins can securely manage and control print activity—including mobile printing—across the entire organization from a single pane of glass.

To learn more about how PrinterLogic can help you accelerate and simplify Chromebook adoption in any enterprise environment, download our white paper on Chromebook printing

Or better yet, sign up for a free 30-day trial of PrinterLogic and see for yourself how easy Chromebook printing can be.

Print Mapping: What It Is and How to Use It (Reliably)

**Originally published on December 5, 2018**

Print mapping, as many folks in IT will be able to tell you, is the process by which a user or admin associates a client computer with a network printer to give that client printing capability. 

As a term, print (or printer) mapping tends to be used interchangeably with printer installation—although, if we’re being pedantic, mapping is only one common form of installation.

 

 

The Difficulties of Print Mapping

 

Print mapping is often a multi-step procedure that involves identifying the desired printer beforehand, diving into the correct category in the system settings, adding the printer from a list or manually entering its network information, and finally, selecting the correct print driver.

Despite the ubiquity of technology in every aspect of our lives and the long history of computer-based printing, the average end user is unlikely to know how to map a printer without a step-by-step guide or some hand-holding from technical support. 

Without education and guidance, end user mishaps result in more print-related tasks for IT to handle. 

If the end user misidentifies the printer or its driver, it can cause printing problems such as printing to the wrong printer or an inability to print altogether. Instead, the burden typically falls on IT to perform printer mapping, which means valuable time is wasted on routine print management.

 

Your Roadmap to Successful Printer Installations

 

At PrinterLogic, our philosophy is that the most effective solution is to empower the end user by making print mapping a simple and more intuitive process. If the end user can perform self-service installations without memorizing the detailed steps of mapping a printer, that removes IT from the equation and enables the end user to see quick and satisfying results—lowering print-related helpdesk tickets in the process.

We achieve this end user empowerment through a unique Self-Service Printer Installation Portal, which enables users of almost any technical skill level to identify and install nearby printers with a single click. Printer mapping becomes as simple as visiting a webpage and clicking on a printer icon.

 

Navigating the Self-Service Installation Portal

 

The PrinterLogic Self-Service Printer Installation Portal is easy for anyone—even brand-new employees—to access, navigate, and understand. 

On Windows, for example, the user begins by simply left-clicking on the PrinterLogic client icon in the system tray. This brings up an internal webpage (which is also accessible directly by URL) in the default web browser that shows a location tree in a left-hand pane as well as a floor plan map in the main window. 

In large organizations, the self-service portal can be configured to open automatically to a user’s exact location. Using the tree, the user can then quickly drill down to their specific floor to view a map of their actual floor with physical printers denoted by corresponding color or monochrome icons. Clicking on an icon will install both the printer and print driver. 

It’s about as close as you can get to GPS for print mapping.

print map

Figure 1: End users can see the layout of their location and easily install printers using a floor plan map or tree view via the PrinterLogic self-service portal.  

In addition to the straightforward icons, the portal also shows a list of available printers with descriptive names. The names of the printer drivers, if any, are indicated alongside the names of the printers. 

And if IT hasn’t uploaded or updated the custom floor plan maps for a particular location, that’s okay. The list of available printers will still appear, and users can click on these list items to install their desired printer and the associated print driver.

Later, if the user needs to carry out print mapping again for a new or different printer, they can access the self-service portal again using any of the methods described above. This is especially useful for mobile employees who hop from location to location and need instant access to printers wherever they go. It also benefits the helpdesk, as they no longer have to field urgent printer installation requests.

 

 

Reliable Print Mapping and Tracking

 

This convenient and consistent printer-mapping experience is managed through PrinterLogic’s centralized Administrative Console, where admins can manage profiles and oversee print tracking across the organization. There, they can upload or change floor plan maps, specify which printers can print in color, associate printers with the correct print drivers for automatic installs, and customize incidental but important portal settings like branding with the company logo.

As with PrinterLogic’s print management solution, a little setup goes a long way. 

Uploading current floor plan maps, indicating color printers through the respective icons, and pairing printers with the right default printer drivers from the administrative backend all but eliminates the potential for the kinds of time-consuming, hard-to-troubleshoot mistakes that end users invariably make when print mapping in traditional print environments. When the complicated process of mapping a printer is simplified to a single click, IT and end users benefit.

 

Conclusion

 

PrinterLogic’s self-service portal streamlines the printer-mapping experience for everyone in the organization. The proven result is a time- and cost-saving reduction in calls to the helpdesk, as organizations like Georgia System Operations Corporation and New Pig Corporation discovered. Those small but cumulative boosts to productivity are what help make PrinterLogic such a cost-effective print management solution.

Sign up for a free 30-day demo today to test PrinterLogic’s streamlined printer-mapping experience and powerful print-tracking features in your organization. How to map a printer will no longer be a question that causes your end users and helpdesk staff to want to throw in the towel.

 

The Elephant in the Room…Your Print Server

As an IT professional, you wear a lot of hats in your organization. 

Your influence on company success may as well dub you The President of Productivity and Processes.

You’re responsible for analyzing technical problems, solving issues with innovative IT solutions, and evaluating user needs based on feedback. You have a hand in everything and are expected to be efficient when fixing hardware and software.

However, to do your job effectively and keep up with workplace demands, you need modern solutions that adapt and grow with you. That’s why it’s time to start talking about the elephant in the room that cuts into your daily work life and slows down end user productivity.

Your print server. 

 

Why Print Servers Slow You Down

For forward-thinking IT professionals like yourself, archaic hardware like print servers just can’t keep up with modern solutions designed to streamline work processes. They don’t integrate with innovative solutions that are necessary to compete with other leaders in your industry. 

Besides, when was the last time you remember saying, “Print servers speed up my work,” or “Print servers make my job easy”?

Probably not lately. 

Or ever. 

Below are a few other reasons print servers are the major “elephant in the room.” And why it might be time to face the fact that print servers aren’t the de facto print solution anymore. 

 

Server Crashes Cause Printer Downtime

When a centralized print server is a key cog in your print infrastructure, it cripples your organization if it crashes. Productivity slows down, and you’re on the hook to take care of it so business can continue as usual. 

More often than not, crashes occur due to heavy print traffic. This pushes management to get another server to disperse print traffic. As your organization grows, you start acquiring so many servers that they become harder to manage without more resources and manpower. 

You’d think more servers would enhance your print environment. Although setting up additional print servers frees up print job traffic and eliminates the single point of failure, the cost to operate, maintain, and license them increases. Plus, you lose centralized control, making it harder to track print jobs and deploy printers accurately. 

But employing more print servers doesn’t mean server crashes completely disappear. 

 

Their Security Is Dependent on You

You get out of print servers what you put into them. That’s what the hope is, at least. 

If you stay current on updates and patches, you put yourself in a position to succeed and keep your environment secure. However, print spooler vulnerabilities started to put things into perspective and spotlighted print servers as vulnerable pieces of legacy hardware. 

Security patches became more frequent, admins had to disable the spooler service altogether, users needed admin rights just to print, and just when admins thought PrintNightmare was over…BAM! More patches, more headaches, and more Reddit investigations just to get through the torment. 

Spooler vulnerabilities aside, it’s tough manually securing your print servers by using data encryption for communication, adding security extensions, and asking end users to use stronger passwords to avoid data breaches.

No matter what, you’re taking on a lot of responsibility just to secure your print environment. 

We feel for you. 

 

They Restrict Your End Users

We live in an age where flexibility is a must for employees. They move from floor to floor, between buildings, go on business trips to other countries, and work from anywhere. Traditional print environments haven’t developed fast enough to keep up with new workforce trends, making printing flexibility non-existent. 

Many hybrid employees use their mobile devices (tablets, laptops, etc.) to access company documents and critical information. What they are unable to do is print off-network securely—where and when they need to. They’re burdened with waiting until they arrive at a remote worksite to print all their documents.

These limitations put a damper on productivity and also put pressure on you to deploy printers every time a user walks into an office building. 

 

You’re Always Reactive Instead of Proactive

Server and printer issues are inevitable in traditional print environments. When a server crashes, you get a helpdesk ticket. When a printer is out of ink, you get another one. In every situation, you are a sitting duck waiting for a call to fix something print-related. To add fuel to the fire, it stops momentum on other projects or initiatives you’re trying to address to help your company move forward. Being reactive doesn’t allow you to tackle bigger problems and form a long-term strategy to help streamline print management for you and your colleagues. 

It’s not a great position to be in. 

What’s needed is a print solution that supports you and enables you to become proactive by addressing issues before they happen. You need all the tools at your disposal to not only reach your IT team’s long-term goals but solve print-related situations with more accuracy—giving you more free time.

That’s where centralized, direct IP printing comes in.

 

It’s Time to Let Go of Your Print Servers

Centralized, direct IP print management with PrinterLogic eliminates your print servers, keeps print jobs local, and enables you to control your entire environment from a single console. Our SaaS platform cuts out the manual labor associated with traditional print environments by empowering you to automate deployments, print cost reports, and security updates to streamline processes for you and your team. 

No more crashes. 

No more restrictions. 

No more patches. 

So you can finally start being proactive in your print environment.

How to Evaluate Your Company’s Current Print Management Solution in 2023

**Originally published on Oct 4, 2016**

Every so often, it’s important to revisit your current print management solution to see if it’s still working for you. What might have been a welcome improvement five or ten years ago might no longer be effective as your print environment and workplace have continuously evolved. There’s even a chance your print management solution could negatively impact your organization’s morale, efficiency, and bottom line.

To better evaluate any enterprise print management solution, it helps to match its performance against a set of criteria. Below is a short checklist in the form of questions you can ask to see if your current solution is still performing as expected and determine if it meets your organization’s existing and future needs.

How much printing downtime are you experiencing?

Printer downtime might be the most basic metric of any enterprise print management solution. If printing is regularly held up by server crashes, spooler hangs, or rogue drivers—and the difficulty in troubleshooting those instabilities—something needs to change. 

On top of print server maintenance and updates, printers themselves are hard to keep up with. Any multi-function printers in your fleet have several things that can go wrong: scanner not working, paper jams, faulty copier, etc., which often result in you becoming a decorated repairman instead of an innovative IT specialist. Most modern print solutions provide you with instant alerts to help you be more proactive instead of reactive when a printer goes down. 

If SNMP alerts and Advanced Reporting features haven’t been implemented into your print environment yet, you’re missing out on opportunities to resolve issues before they happen and easily identify ways to increase printer uptime in your organization.

Is it secure?

Print security is a term that has received its fair share of headlines amongst print management solutions. It’s a rather broad term, but securing your print environment and the data that flows through it requires many moving parts. 

For example, to protect documents from internal theft, companies are implementing pull printing functionality that allows users to release print jobs at designated network printers via some form of authentication (badge reader, PIN, etc.). 

Another level of security comes with identity provider (IdP) integrations. Print solutions that integrate with major IdPs help thwart external attacks by prompting users to authenticate on their devices and only authorizing them to use the applications they need to do their jobs. Requiring users to sign in via SSO or MFA before they have access to printing keeps external attackers out and helps quickly identify attacks when they do happen. 

We only named a few, but there are plenty of security features you can take advantage of to lock down your print security. One of the most crucial pieces of increased security is reducing legacy systems. In today’s climate, they aren’t compatible with modern print security solutions, lack sufficient audit trails, and are more vulnerable to data breaches.  

Is your print management solution future-proof? 

Traditional print management solutions are still running on a model introduced over two decades ago. Without dozens of supplemental solutions and custom tweaks, this model is inflexible and can’t adapt to the increasing need for mobile printing, secure printing, or enterprise-wide print reporting/auditing in modern workplaces.

Future-proofing your print environment means adopting modern solutions designed to satisfy your organization’s future needs. Think of how your printing infrastructure fits into your company’s five-year plan:

Is your print environment prepared to take on hundreds of new employees? 

Does it have the tools and security in place to embrace Zero Trust Network Architecture? 

How will it integrate with new cutting-edge VDIs and IdPs? 

It’s a lot to consider, but these types of questions should be top of mind for sysadmins and IT managers building toward a future-proof print environment. 

What kind of infrastructure is required? 

All enterprise print management solutions have infrastructure requirements. The more fundamental question is whether that infrastructure is necessary. For example, distributed organizations often place one or more print servers in each remote location, driving up costs associated with maintenance, print management, and hardware. 

What’s more, it feels like adding print servers is the only solvent to evenly disperse print traffic and manage new remote locations when they pop up. Once you have hundreds or thousands of printers on these servers, it’s easy to lose track of how many you have in your fleet and how many are actually being used. In fact, around 90% of companies don’t even know how many printers they have

If you’re struggling to reduce infrastructure, try weeding out under-utilized printers and exploring ways to consolidate your print server management

Is it built to scale?

Several enterprise print management solutions promote themselves as scalable, but accommodating a growing user base by throwing more infrastructure and resources into an existing solution isn’t exactly ideal. Although adding print servers increases performance and offers built-in redundancy, they cause a cascade of problems. 

More print servers equate to less control, higher licensing fees, and more printer definitions to maintain. IT managers also have to add more employees to their team and train them on their policies and maintenance requirements, taking up time and more IT budget. 

Another necessity of today’s printing solutions is their ability to extend to your hybrid workforce. The remote work model has taken over, but hybrid employees still need printing capabilities with their devices when they visit remote offices. When remote users need access to nearby network printers, they often have no choice but to call the helpdesk and ask for printers to be installed. 

If your current print solution doesn’t cater to your hybrid workers, it not only restricts your ability to scale, it puts more pressure on you to handle print-related helpdesk calls when users visit the office.

How many print-related helpdesk tickets are you getting?

Print-related helpdesk calls are an often overlooked evaluation tool but a largely important one, as printing is an essential function of any workplace. Most helpdesk calls are print related (up to 40%) and can limit your productivity at the office. When users can’t print where and when they need to because of printing downtime or elaborate installation procedures, it can be detrimental to morale, creating an “us vs. them” mindset between users and tech support.

Excessive helpdesk calls come in many shapes and forms. Some can be as basic as a vague, “My printer won’t print.” Others may result from failed deployments and require additional troubleshooting on your end before it gets resolved. And as mentioned earlier, your hybrid users may need to install printers in a remote office they are visiting for the first time.

If you’re dedicating a few hours daily to addressing printer issues, it’s probably time to start wiping out your biggest instigator: print servers

Check All The Boxes for Optimized Print Management

This print management checklist is by no means exhaustive and should be adapted to fit your organization’s unique conditions and priorities. But it should help you identify key performance aspects of your enterprise print management solution and determine whether or not it’s time to migrate to one that is more stable, scalable, future-proof, and cost-effective.

Get your free 30-day trial of PrinterLogic’s serverless printing solution today!

 

 

Print Management Tools for Multi-Location Enterprises

**Originally published on April 26, 2016**

Enterprise print management is tough enough when you have a single location. In distributed environments, print management can be downright overwhelming because it calls for remote administration (a challenge in and of itself, even in this age of cloud computing) and a dedicated IT crew with print management tools and expertise for each site.

Why do enterprises add print servers?

The simple answer is WAN traffic becomes limited with a high number of users and heavy loads of print jobs, but typically organizations deploy additional print servers as a way to cope with print management in multi-location environments. Adding print servers to an environment sounds like a good idea initially. Printing speeds might increase and the single point of failure is gone since you have other servers to lean on in case of emergencies. 

However, the more servers you add, the more resources you need to control them. Not only are you spending money on server licensing and maintenance, but you’re also stuck footing the bill for the resources and manpower to manage them. 

Another issue is their inherent lack of robustness makes them high-maintenance solutions—a far cry from the reliable “set it and forget it” solution that multi-location environments demand.

So, after you’ve done all the work to build a server metropolis, how do you start reining them in? 

How To Enhance Print Management in Multi-Location Environments

Eliminate Your Print Servers

It sounds harder than it really is. You’ve spent so much money and time on these servers, getting rid of them feels like a waste. However, by eliminating print servers you minimize risks to the availability of your enterprise print services. You greatly reduce your chances of a print-related breach. You don’t have to worry about draining resources on servicing or replacing your server fleet. Even in the event of a WAN outage or a host server failure, local sites can continue printing as usual.


Get Centralized Management 

A single web-based console offers access to a consistent, intuitive interface from which you can manage every printer and driver within the organization. Make individual profile changes or schedule automatic mass deployments with a few clicks—all without having to get bogged down in group policy objects (GPOs) or scripts. This is an indispensable print management tool for multi-location enterprises.


Optimize Your WAN

Many enterprise print management solutions will send print jobs across the WAN, consuming precious bandwidth and causing network congestion. By moving to direct IP printing, print jobs are sent directly from endpoint devices to printers, accelerating print times and overall network performance.


Use Self-Service Printing

Although it may seem like tensions are always high, end users are not your enemies. In fact, when it comes to print management, they can become your comrades. Empower them with Self-Service Printing that enables them to perform one-click printer installations—no matter where they happen to be. It’s a must-have for traveling employees that move between offices. This saves end users from having to call the service desk, while saving your support staff countless hours of walkthroughs and troubleshooting.


Expand Your Printing Functionality

Features like Mobile Printing, Secure Release Printing, and Advanced Reporting provide you with additional print management tools that are becoming essential for enterprise productivity. With them, you can easily accommodate your mobile/BYOD users with full-featured printing capabilities, comprehensively monitor consumables usage to target printing costs across the enterprise, and implement secure printing methods that are so straightforward, employees will have no issues utilizing them.  


Utilize Automatic Deployments for Mobile Employees

Employees are constantly on the go. Whether users are moving from floor to floor within an office or moving to various offices around the globe, they need access to printers. Usually, this requires a quick call to the service desk to get resolved and results in tedious manual labor for admins. Automatic deployments allow you to determine who has access to which printers and those printers are installed instantly on users’ workstations based on their IP addresses. This greatly decreases the number of deployment-related helpdesk calls and enhances the printing experience for the end user. 

 

Start Simplifying Multi-Location Print Management 

PrinterLogic is an enterprise print management solution that gives you the print management tools you actually need to get a handle on print environments that span multiple locations. Unlike print servers, it was designed from the ground up to meet the needs of modern enterprise print environments and seamlessly bridge the physical distance between sites. 

It increases the transparency of print management enterprise-wide, streamlines overall administration, squashes the common driver and deployment conflicts that bring print servers to their knees, empowers end users to lighten the burden on IT, and reduces the amount of oversight required to keep large-scale print environments cost-efficient and running smoothly.

Multi-location print environments can pose all kinds of hurdles that aren’t easily overcome with traditional print management solutions. PrinterLogic is different. It unifies distributed organizations and gives you complete control of your print environment from a single user interface, bringing power and simplicity to enterprise print management.

Get your free 30-day trial with PrinterLogic today.

Solving Common Printer Installation Issues

**Originally published on Aug 12, 2016**

Printer installations are about as routine as it gets in print management. That being said, you’d think the glaring kinks would have been worked out by now.

One can always dream, right?

While many printer installations tend to go relatively smoothly, printer installation problems aren’t uncommon. On an enterprise scale, that can lead to wasted time (and consequently money) on troubleshooting network printer installation issues that could be easily avoided.

Common Printer Installation Issues

Here are printer installation woes you may have regularly encountered:

Wrong Default Printer

One of the most common printer installation problems is sending print jobs to the wrong printer following installation. Some operating systems seem to have a mind of their own in this regard resulting in the incorrect printer being selected by default—and, oddly, it’s not always the previously installed printer. 

To fix this, it’s usually just a matter of selecting the printer and using the menu options to set it as default again. But when dealing with print servers as your print management solution, it’s not unheard of for this setting to revert to the unwanted default when the user logs in again.

Inability to Print Altogether

Of course, incorrect default printer selection seems tame in light of the total loss of printing. More than a few printer installations result in the user being unable to print. There are a hundred potential causes for printer installation problems like this, with the usual suspects being driver issues. 

It could be that the selected driver isn’t compatible with the hardware or the OS on the client machine—for example, a 64-bit driver with a 32-bit system—or that the driver itself is unavailable to that particular machine because the driver wasn’t deployed initially. There might also be a residual print job in the queue preventing the new jobs from printing.

PrintNightmare Errors

These were all too common in mid-2021 after installing too many PrintNightmare patches to count. Deploying printers post-PrintNightmare was a huge hassle. For users to install printers, they needed admin privileges which ruffled the feathers of all admins alike. Printer drivers were triggered to be reinstalled despite already being on the system. Admins had to monitor and limit traffic to print servers to lessen their chances of being exploited. There was a whole laundry list of things to do just to get users their printers.

Even at the end of 2022, vulnerabilities haven’t completely disappeared. Vulnerabilities such as CVE-2022-41073 and CVE-2022-38028 showed that print spooler issues continue to be a problem. And no IT professional wants to relive that terrible dream again. 

Mobile/Cloud Printing Difficulties

Although the symptoms of mobile or cloud printer installation problems resemble their hardwired counterparts, the root causes can vary. This is because mobile and cloud printing solutions involve a lot more behind-the-scenes steps to achieve the same results. So, after a printer installation, this might result in being unable to “see” the desired device among the available destination printers, incorrect default printer selection, failed print jobs, or corrupted printer output.

 

How to Avoid Printer Installation Issues

Through its powerful combination of features, PrinterLogic’s enterprise print management solution enables you to avoid the printer installation problems mentioned above. Here are some steps you can take to minimize issues in your print environment. 

Step 1: Eliminate Your Print Servers

Print spooler vulnerabilities have been the culprit of far too many printer installation headaches. Why not get rid of your print servers completely? By moving to a cloud-native, direct IP printing platform, you get the control and insight you need to ensure pesky printing issues don’t leave your print environment paralyzed.

No more PrintNightmare, no more unpredictable chaos, and no more print server maintenance.  

Step 2: Get Centralized Print Management

Using PrinterLogic’s Admin Console, you can select the default printer for any machine by clicking a checkbox. It’s that easy. You can set the default printer for the first installation each time the user logs on or by the user’s current location. No scripting or GPOs required!

Step 3: Set Up Automated Deployments

Through the same intuitive Admin Console, it’s possible to automatically deploy drivers to end users, ensuring that the correct driver for the right printer always gets to the right user. You can even maintain a central driver repository so all client devices have access to the same pool of drivers, making printer installation a far more reliable process. Don’t want to deal with individual manufacturers anymore? We’ve got a universal driver for that. 

Step 4: Implement Mobile/BYOD Printing

PrinterLogic offers a dedicated Mobile Printing solution that bypasses the frequent causes of printer installation problems for mobile and BYOD users. Users get instant printing from any mobile device to any authorized printer—all without the need for client-side software.

Step 5: Empower Your End Users

The best print environments take pressure off admins and give end users a simplified experience. PrinterLogic’s Self-Service Installation Portal empowers users to install their own printers via a list or floor plan map. When users change their location within your company network, the portal automatically detects which printers are nearest to them.

 

Want to Get Started with Stress-Free Print Management?

Migrating to a serverless print environment is as effortless as bingewatching a full season of a Netflix series. Just ask Snider Fleet Solutions. They were able to migrate 20 of their locations in a week. Better yet, your end users will hardly notice a transition during the process.

Regardless of how many servers, users, or hardware you have, PrinterLogic provides you with a hassle-free print management experience that reduces IT workload and boosts overall productivity. 

Want to see for yourself? Click here to try PrinterLogic free for 30 days. 

What Your Print Solution Says About You

Between the anticipation when Punxatawney Phil sees his shadow (or doesn’t) and the colorful festivities of Mardi Gras, February has a lot going on. However, nothing takes the cake quite like Valentine’s Day. It has it all: love, flowers, chocolate, and reserving a table at a restaurant where you can’t pronounce the names of the food—try ordering some vichyssoise next time you go to a French restaurant. The National Retail Federation says that we spend an average of $161 a year on showering our loved ones with gifts and surprises. I hope you’ve got your wallets ready. 

You may wonder, “What does this have to do with printing?” 

A lot. But without the chocolates, flowers, and fancy restaurants. 

 

Your Relationship With Your Print Solution

If you’re an IT professional, you’ve most likely spent a lot of time dealing with your organization’s print environment. You’ve formed an everlasting love-hate relationship with it. You’ve spent resources learning how to perfect your craft, making you the excellent IT specialist you are today. 

Relationships take work and commitment, but in the relationship between you and your print solution, you’re usually the one footing the bill. 

Today, we’re going to cover the four printing architectures, discuss what each one says about your personality, and the possible dynamics of your relationship with your print environment.

 

Print Servers (Centralized)

Must-have traits: patience, risk-taker, resilience 

Your spirit animal: Bear (Calm and strong during the toughest times.)

A little more about you: You’re even-keel in the face of a crisis. You’ll eat the gas station sushi without considering the consequences. You’re often tackling issues but always come back better than before. 

What does your relationship with a centralized print server look like?

Every printer in your organization relies on a single print server. Not only do your end users and printers rely on it…so do you. It’s the breadwinner of your print environment. When your print server fails, company-wide printing does too. Productivity comes to a complete halt and everyone looks to you for answers. Your print server is high maintenance and requires regular upkeep to ensure print goes smoothly. But you’re willing to take the risk because at least you can see what is going on in your print environment. 

Most of the calls to the helpdesk are because of slow print jobs and failed printer installations. Scripts and GPOs are a headache, and you’re probably still reeling after the whole PrintNightmare scare. Despite all the hardships, you always remain patient with your print server and end users. 

In the back of your mind, you know there is a better solution out there but you’re finding it hard to break up with something you’ve spent so many years with. 

 

Print Servers (Decentralized)

Must-have traits: high-roller, over-achiever, workaholic 

Your spirit animal: Lion (Always in attack mode and striving to stay courageous in times of turmoil.)

A little more about you: You aren’t scared of the future and are worried about how you can get it done now. When people ask you to run a mile, you run a marathon instead. Work is your life, and you have the answer to all IT problems (or are expected to, at least). 

What does your relationship with decentralized print servers look like?

Decentralized print server architecture means you have multiple servers to cover printing for all your organization’s remote locations. If your company has 100 offices, you’ve probably got close to 100 print servers to manage. Print servers aren’t cheap to license and maintain, but that doesn’t stop you. You’re not scared to fork over money on new hardware to maintain your print environment. 

Every time a new print server gets added to your environment, your workload increases, and you’re stuck putting out fires for different locations every time WAN traffic gets congested. It’s hard to keep up with all the deployments necessary to allow your users to install printers. Plus, for every office your company adds, you have to get print servers up and running for new users —usually on a short timeline. 

It’s not an easy job. But, with a lion as your spirit animal, you’re more than capable of overcoming stressful GPO deployments and frequent off-site visits to address printing issues. However, you realize that more print servers mean more problems and you’re considering shutting the relationship down.  

 

Unmanaged Direct IP

Must-have traits: adventurous, alert, helpful

Your spirit animal: Wolf (React based on instinct and thrive with their communication skills.)

A little more about you: You don’t like staying still and are always looking for something to do. When issues arise, you pride yourself on being able to be there before things go south. You love educating others, especially when discussing a topic you’re interested in. 

What does your relationship with unmanaged direct IP printing look like?

When something is unmanaged, you can expect to live adventurously every day you go to work. Whether it is another printer installation (and there are a lot of those) or a “my printer’s out of ink” request, you’re always on the move answering helpdesk calls and lending a helping hand to your end users. You love educating end users on how to install printers, but you don’t like that most of your helpdesk calls involve installing printers for new hires or hybrid employees. 

Here’s where things get a bit murky for you. 

You want to help your company save money and identify areas of improvement, but you’re unable to track print activity and have almost no idea how much is being spent on printing. To ensure huge problems don’t occur, you have to regularly walk around and check the status of your printers and rely on your instincts or end users to tell you something needs to be fixed—leading to high amounts of stress. 

All you want is more control and insight. But at what cost?

 

Centralized Direct IP

Must-have traits: innovative, adept, precise

Your spirit animal: Horse (Willing to explore new areas and seek places where they can roam freely.)

A little more about you: You often create new recipes instead of eating the same thing twice. You master new things with ease. You always want the exact answer and like to avoid beating around the bush. 

What does your relationship with centralized direct IP printing look like?

In this relationship, the communication between you and your print environment is rock-solid. In a centralized direct IP setting, you’re alerted before issues happen, and you can easily track print jobs and accurately calculate the cost of printing in your organization. Deployments are easier without GPOs and scripts. You feel secure and safe from all the cyber attackers trying to steal your data. 

Any time new users join your network, you just tick a box and users receive access to any authorized network printers. You’re able to adopt new security standards and have set your print environment up for future success—free from security vulnerabilities. 

Most of all, your end users become your best friends since they can self-install their own printers without asking you for help. 

Everything is consistent—just the way you like it. 

 

Looking to fall in love all over again?

No relationship is perfect. Breaking up with your current printing infrastructure is hard and we know it. But when you’re giving to your print environment and not getting anything in return, it might be time to cut ties.

PrinterLogic is available and prepared to help you move on. 

Our centralized, direct IP printing platform will help you renew the love you lost with print servers and unmanaged, direct IP print environments. Here’s how we do it: 

  1. Eliminate your print servers (You never liked them anyway.)
  2. Remove scripts and GPOs (It’ll be like they never existed.) 
  3. Move you to our cloud-native platform (Seriously. You’ll be on cloud nine.)

Ready for your first date with PrinterLogic? 

Click here for a free 30-day trial!

Why You Should Start Using Print Analytics

**Originally published on January 7, 2019**

We live in the age of Big Data. Massive upticks in the amount of information organizations are tasked with collecting and analyzing can no longer be conceptualized using run-of-the-mill, traditional methods. 

Though, with the right tools, you can gain unprecedented insight into activity, costs, and trends that were invisible before. You can then use that insight as the basis for everything from small-scale behavioral changes to sweeping efficiency initiatives, which can streamline operations and save money over the long term. 

Enterprise printing analytics is a perfect case in point.

 

No Print Control, No Savings

Sure, “guesstimating” how much your print environment costs you seems more convenient than delving into specifics. However, overlooking specifics such as the volume of color print jobs or simplex vs. duplex could be costing you more than you can fathom. 

Gartner estimates that an organization’s total print costs account for anywhere from 1–3% of its overall revenue. This is a significant amount of money. A company with annual revenue of $10 million can expect to spend up to $300,000 on print management. However, with more control, companies can start saving. One study even points out that maintaining better control over office printing can reduce print spending by as much as 30%.

Even if you were to apply ballpark figures, using the stats above to compare your organization’s actual print spending with potential savings highlights how much money could be recouped with the right enterprise printing solution.

Nevertheless, ballpark figures aren’t good enough when developing a strategic plan to tighten print control and reduce print spending. You need to hone in on specifics, and that’s not always possible with most enterprise printing solutions out of the box. 

To truly understand your print environment and make cost-saving improvements, it’s essential to have full awareness of detailed print costs and to be able to tie those costs to real-world activity at the macro and micro levels.

 

What You Gain From Increased Print Control and Oversight

Although the organization’s bottom line sees the most benefit, the usefulness of print analytics goes beyond a simple dollar value. It helps you identify areas you can improve to ease your workload and enhance the experience for end users.

For example, with a clear view into your entire print environment, regardless of its scale, you can start seeing how the number and size of print jobs vary across your network. 

Are there remote locations that are generating high levels of print traffic?

Are there specific printers that are being over or underutilized?

Are these the possible causes of print-related support tickets? 

In-depth print-auditing capabilities can help answer those questions. The same goes for streamlining processes. 

Sound enterprise printing analytics can help identify print activity that leads to errors or inefficient protocols. If one ordinary user prints a disproportionate amount of color documents, it’s clear the default driver profile settings (or after-hours printing) need to be updated. Or, if the vast majority of users in a department are printing to a single device while another nearby printer is seeing very little use, then it’s time to start examining how their printers are installed.

And let’s not forget an overlooked advantage of increased print control: security

With a complete digital trail for secure documents, admins can quickly identify and review suspicious print activity or provide the information that e-forensics teams need for investigations. This magnified insight into your print environment is a must-have in Zero Trust Network Architecture

Yet, few enterprise printing solutions offer comprehensive enterprise printing analytics worthy of the name. What’s needed is a next-generation solution capable of providing a full suite of advanced reporting and auditing features.

 

Analyze Every Aspect of Printing

From the moment of implementation, PrinterLogic puts powerful enterprise printing analytics at your fingertips. Examine your print environment through the lens of advanced data points (e.g., print job date/time, document name, color vs. grayscale) and quickly determine which network printers see the heaviest utilization over a specific time period. 

You can even link the usage data to the actual cost of printing. This means you can easily break down print-related cost by those all-important specifics that are so elusive when using other enterprise printing solutions.

PrinterLogic’s print auditing features also allow you to pinpoint your top users by print volume and be alerted when classified documents are printed. This information is incredibly useful in those rare—but sadly, not rare enough—cases when a departing employee is printing out privileged client lists or other confidential documents. 

This highlights further how in-depth print analytics can feed into strengthening print security.

Want to keep higher-ups in the loop about how much money was spent on printing? PrinterLogic has a built-in reporting function that can automatically email print activity to department heads and decision-makers at scheduled intervals. AAA Carolinas benefited greatly from this feature and saved “a pretty good stack of dollars” simply by identifying unnecessary color printing and exerting better print control over monochrome defaults.

Implementing these enterprise printing analytics in your print environment is just a click away.

Provide your organization with print analytics that equates to more control, more oversight, and more cost-saving opportunities than ever before.

Sign up today for a free 30-day trial of PrinterLogic’s serverless print management solution. 

3 Key Benefits of Enterprise Mobile Printing with PrinterLogic

**Originally Published May 12, 2020**

There’s no question that the pandemic played a huge role in making enterprise mobile printing the new “cool kid” at the lunch table. But, it hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park to implement. The reason for this is simple. When the mobile revolution meets enterprise printing, it can feel more like a head-on collision than a synergy. You’ve got users with all different kinds of smartphones and tablets who want to print to all different kinds of printers.

According to a 2022 Future of BYOD report, 87% of businesses now rely on their employees to access applications through their own mobile devices. They count on workers to use their mobile devices outside of work to increase productivity and convenience. This signifies how a solution like mobile printing can further increase productivity in the workplace by giving mobile users a way to print on the go. 

For admins leaning toward becoming a mobile printing powerhouse, we’re here to tell you it’s not as difficult as you may think. 

Take the Uncertainty Out of Mobile Printing

It’s easy to get hung up on the unknowns of mobile printing, but if you understand what you’re trying to accomplish, it can simplify things. Here are some questions that need answers before you commit to a mobile printing solution:

  • Is it possible for your print environment to support a mix of software and hardware? 
  • How do you monitor and control authorizations? 
  • What kind of resources will you have to expend to manage it all?

To overcome potential obstacles, a mobile printing solution should offer organizations these three key benefits to make life easier for IT and their end users:

  1. It caters to dynamic environments: BYOD users, guests, and even employees visiting from remote offices can count on being able to print without calling on IT to install printers for them. 
  2. It’s compatible with any device: Every employee using mobile devices should be included right out of the gate. Mobile printing solutions must support all major smartphone and tablet brands and all major mobile operating systems.
  3. It’s compatible with any printer: You shouldn’t have to replace your printers just so you can have mobile printing capabilities. This saves you money on hardware and ensures every end user can print to any authorized network printer. 

PrinterLogic’s Mobile Printing solution offers enterprises these benefits and then some. On top of our ability to eliminate print servers, our centrally managed platform makes it effortless for employees to print from mobile devices—even in the most dynamic workplaces. 

This is how our serverless printing infrastructure enabled a prominent international law firm, Hunton & Williams LLP, to eliminate its print servers completely while also introducing seamless enterprise printing support for its iOS devices. 

Mobile Printing Doesn’t Mean Sacrificing Security

While PrinterLogic’s mobile printing is easy for IT to manage and easy for employees to use, there’s no compromise when it comes to security.

  • Secure by design: PrinterLogic’s serverless printing reduces risks by eliminating print servers. Its mobile printing capabilities build on that strong foundation and give IT the tools to specify who can print to which printers.
  • Built for the hybrid workforce: Who says remote printing can’t be secure? BYOD users and contractors operating on a 5G mobile network can access the printers they need—wherever they choose to work with Off-Network Printing
  • Retain control: Granular options allow admins to set quotas for how much guests can print as well as the permitted file types. They can even limit printing to black and white only.
  • Printer-specific release: Authorized users can choose their preferred destination printer when printing from their mobile device. Android and iOS users can take advantage of PrinterLogic’s Mobile App Print Release feature to securely and conveniently release their print jobs.

Clearly, the time is now for your mobile/BYOD users in enterprise printing. PrinterLogic is what makes that possible, and its serverless printing infrastructure can fully eliminate your print servers (and their vulnerabilities) in the process.

Generate ROI by Eliminating Print Servers Within Your Company

Many organizations still view print servers as the unavoidable cost of corporate printing. According to Quocirca’s Cloud Print Services Study, the cost of acquiring and provisioning a print server hovers around $2300. They also require ongoing running costs of close to $1700 per year—not exactly chump change. 

And the cost of replacing them? 

That’s a road nobody wants to go down. 

Now that print servers are about as obsolete as dial-up internet, it might be time to start re-evaluating your print infrastructure to streamline processes and save money. 

We landed a rover on Mars. 

We’re currently training AI to do tasks for us. 

Why can’t humankind make printing cost-efficient and consistent?

There are proven ways to start saving money in your print environment. But first, let’s talk about why print servers are so costly. 

 

Why do print servers cost so much money?

The up-front costs of print servers aren’t a secret. But hidden costs in the form of time and resources spent resolving issues caused by print servers are hard to identify. More often than not, print server issues result in a trickle-down effect that usually ends in a call to the helpdesk when users have finally had enough. 

Take printer deployments, for example. IT may struggle to find the correct drivers, deliver the wrong printer to a user, or even make a script typo—and we all know how complicated scripts can get. All these scenarios waste a lot of time and force organizations to spend money in an area they shouldn’t have to. 

And then there’s security. 

Spooler vulnerabilities have only exacerbated printing issues that used to be routine fixes. Deployments are tricker and take longer to troubleshoot because admins don’t want to open up their organization to security risks. With a global average of $4.3 million per data breach, it’s definitely not a risk worth taking. 

 

The Advantages of Going Serverless

When you eliminate your print servers, you’re not just taking non-essential hardware and software out of circulation. You’re also removing three major sources of IT burden:

Hardware updates and migration: New OS releases and mergers/acquisitions are two events that trigger a print server upgrade. Moving to new print servers is labor-intensive and diverts IT resources from other essential tasks.

Helpdesk calls: When users can’t print because of print server problems or downtime, they flood the helpdesk with calls. While those users wait, IT has to waste time troubleshooting and tracking down the cause of basic printing errors.

Maintenance and management: Print servers are rarely “set it and forget it” hardware. They need regular supervision and intervention. Even something as simple as updating or rolling back print drivers can be time-consuming. And don’t forget those frequent patch installations. 

It’s one thing to kick print servers to the curb and remove that constant source of headaches. But being able to replace your legacy infrastructure with a cloud-native, scalable solution sets you up for current and future success as your company expands. 

That’s what makes PrinterLogic’s print management solution different. 

Through its centrally managed, direct IP printing model, PrinterLogic allows for efficient management of the entire print environment—all from a single pane of glass.

You can only imagine how this translates to optimized print management for distributed organizations like retail, healthcare, and banking. No print servers mean fewer visits to off-site locations. The single UI enables admins to address issues with just a few clicks. And adding and subtracting printers becomes a cakewalk. 

Serverless printing solutions like PrinterLogic have enabled enterprises and managed print service providers to completely eliminate print servers from even the most complex print environments. Distributed retail organization? Cerner/VMware VDI environment? Highly secure government entity? There’s no enterprise printing scenario that PrinterLogic’s serverless printing infrastructure can’t handle, improve, or protect.

 

Choose a Print Management Solution That Pays for Itself

Reducing print infrastructure, streamlining print management, and minimizing printer downtime all contribute to PrinterLogic’s ROI out of the gate.

Children’s Bureau, Inc., a nonprofit social-service agency, saw all those results after going serverless. Even without running dedicated ROI calculations, they identified cost savings through the dramatic reduction in support tickets and smoother print management. 

One independent survey found that 87% of PrinterLogic customers had seen at least a 100% ROI. Almost half reported an ROI of more than 200%.

And what’s more, those results were quick. Seventy-five percent of PrinterLogic customers said they broke even and recouped their investment within one year. More than 90% reported that it was in 18 months or less. 

Some organizations take their savings further by leveraging PrinterLogic’s print auditing and advanced reporting capabilities. Print auditing and advanced reporting features reveal information like:

  • Which departments print the most
  • Money spent on print consumables like toner and paper
  • Detailed print activity down to the printer or user level

That info creates an opportunity for enterprises and managed print service providers to start capitalizing on other areas—yielding them a bigger ROI.

 

Try Our Print Savings Calculator

Interested in learning how much you could save by going serverless? We’ve come up with the perfect formula so you don’t have to crunch the numbers by yourself.

Try our print savings calculator now.