PrinterLogic Receives 2023 MSP Today Product of the Year Award

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We are thrilled to announce that PrinterLogic, the leading print management solution from Vasion, has been honored with the prestigious 2023 MSP Today Product of the Year Award! Presented by TMC, a global media company and owner of MSP Today News, this recognition highlights the exceptional innovation and successful deployment of PrinterLogic through the channel.

“Winning the 2023 MSP Today Product of the Year award serves as a testament to Vasion’s mission of empowering MSPs to make digital transformation available to everyone,” remarks Jay Christensen, VP of Channel Sales for Vasion. “We are fully dedicated to making print and digital workflow management easier and more profitable for MSPs, allowing them to thrive in a competitive landscape and exceed client expectations.”

PrinterLogic has revolutionized print management for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), addressing the complexities of managing printers across diverse IT infrastructures and providing a modern solution for the cloud era. With PrinterLogic, MSPs can eliminate print servers, simplify print management processes, and enhance security for their customers’ print environments.

“It gives me great pleasure to honor Vasion as a 2023 recipient of TMC’s MSP Today Product of the Year Award for their innovative solution, PrinterLogic,” said Rich Tehrani, CEO, of TMC. “Our judges were very impressed not only with the features and value of the solution but also with Vasion’s Channel strategy to expand their market share and provide first-class service to their customers.”

The award recognizes PrinterLogic’s outstanding features, value, and channel strategy, contributing to its growing market share and customer satisfaction. With customers worldwide, PrinterLogic has established itself as a leader in the print management space, offering unparalleled reliability, security, and advanced functionality.

Its multi-tenant management platform, combined with cloud-managed direct IP printing, enables MSPs to centralize print management, enhance security, and deliver exceptional print experiences for their customers. With features like Off-Network Printing and Secure Release Printing, MSPs can ensure data security and compliance while providing convenient and user-friendly print solutions.

Vasion is grateful to TMC and MSP Today News for recognizing PrinterLogic’s innovation and impact in the MSP community. This award motivates Vasion to continue delivering cutting-edge solutions and empowering MSPs to thrive in the digital age.

To learn more about PrinterLogic and how it can transform your print management capabilities, visit https://www.printerlogic.com/msp-partner/ and request a demo. Join the growing community of MSPs who have discovered the power of PrinterLogic and experienced the benefits of modern print management.

About MSP Today

MSP Today is the premier online destination for MSPs (Managed Service Providers) and IT service providers worldwide. As the industry’s leading web portal, we are committed to delivering timely and relevant news, cutting-edge product information, and invaluable insights to empower MSPs and IT professionals to thrive in today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape. At MSP Today, we understand the challenges MSPs and IT service providers face in navigating the complexities of the modern business environment. Our dedicated team of expert journalists and industry analysts bring you the latest trends, best practices, and industry thought leadership to help you stay ahead of the curve. Whether you’re seeking in-depth articles on emerging technologies, comprehensive product reviews, or actionable tips to optimize your IT services, MSP Today is your go-to resource for all things MSP-related. Join our vibrant community today and unlock the knowledge, resources, and networking opportunities to propel your MSP business to new heights. Follow MSP Today on Twitter or join our LinkedIn group. Subscribe or visit www.msptoday.com.

 

Modern Multi-tenant Print Management for Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

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Managing printers across multiple customers and diverse IT infrastructures can be one of the most challenging problems modern MSPs face.  Something seemingly as simple as printing can cause countless hours of headaches with endless helpdesk calls and tickets resulting in frustrated customers and wasted time.  Traditional print management solutions have changed little in the last 20 years and provide little solace in the face of modern IT environments.  More organizations than ever are looking to make the move to the cloud and supporting printing is usually the last thing on their mind.  Recent and continuing print spooler vulnerabilities bring to light major security concerns and highlight the weaknesses of traditional print solutions.  PrinterLogic addresses these concerns and more, simultaneously solving problems, providing an opportunity to add to an MSPs existing solutions stack, and even increasing recurring revenue sources.

Supporting movement to the cloud

As customers look to reduce costs and increase reliability by moving to the cloud, few think to ask how it will affect printing.  Oftentimes print servers are the last vestitures of outdated on-prem infrastructure that IT professionals struggle to eliminate.  The obvious alternatives are grim and often result in increased work for technicians who are forced to remote into each device to manually install and configure print queues and drivers or send print jobs across the network to the cloud for processing.  These result in more time spent on print for techs and users than what is reasonable for something that could be simple.

PrinterLogic easily addresses these issues by providing an easy-to-use cloud-managed direct IP Print infrastructure.  The multi-tenant MSP portal allows for central management of all customer instances where printers are easily configured, deployed, and managed from a single pane of glass.  Integrations with other cloud services like Azure, Okta, Google, and many more make supporting a full cloud environment simple and easy.  The direct IP nature of the software ensures a reliable print experience for the end user, less headache for technicians, and a more secure print environment due to decentralized print spooling and other advanced features.

Providing better security and advanced functionality

             Traditional print infrastructure has a lot of shortcomings when it comes to security.  Print servers present a single point of failure and attack vector.  Combined with the recent PrintNightmare issues and botched fixes they have become too risky and difficult to manage for them to be worth the cost and effort.  A decentralized direct IP environment solves many of these issues but creates other management problems.  It requires techs frequently remoting into devices to add or adjust printers and drivers which takes too much time and introduces other vulnerabilities as they have to manage multiple remote sessions on a regular basis.

             PrinterLogic is the best of both worlds, combining the benefits of central management like you would get from print servers with the advantages of decentralized spooling and direct IP printing.   Allowing MSPs to not only better secure customer environments but also save time and reduce help desk overhead.  PrinterLogic also offers more advanced functionality to better support compliance and further secure infrastructure with modern techniques like Zero Trust Architecture.  These include features like Off-Network Printing and Secure Release Printing options.  Off-network is the ability to securely send jobs through the cloud so users don’t need a direct IP connection to the printers.  Secure release requires users to be authenticated before a job is released via a badge scan, pin code, or mobile app available on IOs and Android.  All form a program that is designed to not just solve these issues but also provide an additional revenue stream in an MSPs service stack.

A money-making and saving solution

             Licensing for MSPs is based on the number of printers being supported and is designed for easy resell.  Margins are typically 50-100%, depending on the volume discounts that can be taken advantage of.  The additional features are also broken out into optional bundles, so customers only pay for what they need.  Relative to traditional print management, most customers will see a return on investment after the first year, and MSPs will see not only a decrease in time spent managing print but an additional source of monthly recurring revenue.

 

             PrinterLogic is a modern Print Management solution for MSPs.  The multi-tenant management and partner program makes centralizing and standardizing simple and easy.  As more customers move to the cloud, it provides an easy answer to the problems with printing as on-prem infrastructure is deprecated.  It is a more secure way to print and offers feature-rich options to ensure that customer needs are met for compliance and other industry standards.  On top of solving these issues and more, it is also a solution that MSPs can expect to make money with.  If you are interested in learning more, you can request a demo or email msp@printerlogic.com for more information.

Spooler Crashing in Windows 2016

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Originally published on March 8, 2019

None of us truly believe IT fairies exist. But most of will swear that IT goblins are real! IT goblins are those issues that seem sporadic, spontaneous, and almost impossible to pinpoint the root cause. And it feels like print servers are the ideal nesting ground for these IT goblins.

One of the areas that seem to be the most problematic and hardest to troubleshoot is that of print servers and the spooler service. Though the cause may be hard to pinpoint, the symptoms of a print server spooler crash are obvious!

The first sign of a print spooler crash is your help desk phone starts ringing off the hook because everyone’s prints have suddenly stalled out. The second sign is all the front office employees are ready to break down your door because no one can send any new prints. The third sign of a spooler crash is the steam coming out of executives’ heads because business operations have stopped due to the inability to print.

This is one of those areas where the tried and true “have you tried to restart it” is actually solid advice. If you take this nuclear approach to fixing your print server spooler, by rebooting the server you will restart the spooler service and clear all bad print jobs that may have been the causing crash. Yes, it is a down and dirty approach, and yes everyone is going to need to go click reprint again. But at least the steam is no longer coming out of your executives’ heads.

Don’t want to take the old nuclear approach? You can achieve the same results by opening a command prompt with administrative rights and run the command “net stop spooler” then “net start spooler.” If you are one of those new-fangled GUI IT guys/gals, access the list of services under Administrative Tools in Server 2008, then choose the “Restart” option from the contextual menu after locating the Print Spooler process.

If this is a once-in-a-while occurrence, and those IT goblins just need to go, then it may be time to take a more targeted approach. Here are some of the more common areas those IT goblins hide when it comes to print spooler in Server 2016 and how to remedy them.

Sometimes the goblins are hiding in rogue print drivers. Some print drivers can cause memory corruption or are incompatible with other drivers that may be loaded on the print server. If you suspect that a bad driver is ultimately resulting in the print spooler not working, you can try one of three things:

  1. Enable print driver isolation. This is probably the most highly recommended first step when you encounter print spooler crashing, because it keeps print drivers from interfering with basic software printing processes. By isolating them, they inflict less damage when they choke.
  2. Update your print drivers to the latest version. Manufacturers occasionally release new print drivers with tweaks and bug fixes that address compatibility issues. But keep in mind that updating your drivers can occasionally introduce new problems and incompatibilities. If that happens, then…
  3. Downgrade the rogue print driver. If you’ve identified a problematic print driver that is definitely up to date, every now and then rolling back to an earlier version can rectify the situation. You can pinpoint this by checking Windows Event viewer and comparing when the spooler started crashing and what drivers were recently updated.

Sometimes the goblins will hide in corrupt print jobs. If you aren’t able to pinpoint a bad driver, it may be the print jobs that cause print spooler crashing in Server 2016. You’ll first want to check the print queue and see if there are “stuck” or “ghost” jobs and purge them. Then use the spooler restart steps above. To further pinpoint the bad job you can monitor the spooler as users submit their prints. Look for any jobs opening on non-standard printing ports, non-standard file types, or jobs that seem unusually large.

Sometimes the goblins are in excessive printer sessions. Let’s face it, print servers and Microsoft printing service has not gotten a lot of love from Redmond. The Windows Print Service since server 2008 has been losing feature after feature, e.g. print server clustering, and has not had any major improvements. Even though the server OS that the print spooler is running maybe 8 years newer, those print servers get overwhelmed pretty easily.

So a good area to check for spooler crashes may be watching how many active printer sessions your print environment is establishing with that server. Too many simultaneous sessions will flood the print queue and cause the print spooler to crash. There are workarounds to accommodate additional sessions, but this can involve editing sensitive registry settings. The typical fix for this is to purchase an additional print server. Too bad Microsoft got rid of print server clustering. 🙁

If you are sick of chasing around those IT goblins, a surefire way to stop them from mucking up your print environment is to just completely eliminate your print servers altogether. PrinterLogic makes that possible through its proven cost-effective, low-footprint enterprise print management solution that provides all the functionality of print servers—and much, much more—with none of the usual drawbacks.

With PrinterLogic, instead of print spooler crashing and long troubleshooting processes, you get features like centralized management, self-service printer installation, print job reporting, seamless integration with virtual solutions and the option to easily add Mobile Printing and Secure Printing across your entire print environment. Download a free 30-day trial today.

Changes to Printing in Windows Server 2019

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Originally published on Feb 22, 2019

Server 2019 is Here!
For those of us who have been operating in the Windows server space for a while now, it may feel odd that a new server version is already being released! Since 2003, IT organizations have had almost 4 years between the stress of server upgrades. But starting with Windows Server 2016, Microsoft has moved from releasing a new server version every few years to a semi-annual release cycle.

Microsoft is targeting Windows Server releases during Spring and Fall about every 18 months. This new release cycle will be consistent with the rest of the major release cycles coming out of Redmond, including Windows 10 and Microsoft Office 365. This new release strategy will bring cutting-edge features to customers much faster, but it may also cause strain on IT departments to keep up with the update cycle and changes in each release.

I wanted to help anyone who is curious about how Server 2019 may impact their print environment, so I put on my scuba suit and did some TechNet diving for you. Here are the most important changes to Server 2019 and printing.

On, Then Off, Then On Again
Most organizations that are taking advantage of Server Core desire a server OS that is lean and stripped of any unnecessary functionality. In Server 2016 Microsoft started enabling print server components by default. However, in 2019 Microsoft has done another 180 and again disabled print server components by default in Server Core.

If you would like to enable the print feature in Server Core 2019, you can do so by running the cmdlet “Install-WindowsFeature Print-Server.”

Removal of Common Type 4 Drivers
Starting in Windows 10’s version 1809 release in October, we saw that Microsoft removed common type 4 drivers that were previously shipped with the OS. Microsoft has removed the built-in type 4 driver repository in order to “reduce the Windows footprint and provide more storage.” This was somewhat burdensome for users who would have to run Windows Update service to load the print drivers they needed for their specific printers.

With the release of Server 2019, we see that Microsoft has taken the same approach by removing the common type 4 drivers that were shipped with Server 2016. This has left many IT departments in a bind when standing up a new Microsoft 2019 Server that will be running as a print server. IT departments now must locate and load the type 4 drivers they need to support their printer fleet. This problem is amplified for an organization that has many different types of printers in their fleet.

Still No Spooler Clustering
One of the implications of Server 2019 and print servers isn’t so much a feature that was added or a feature that was removed, but the rather a feature that is still missing. Starting with Server 2012 Microsoft removed the ability to cluster print server spoolers. This has forced organizations to accept their print servers as a single point of failure. Many organizations were hopeful that print server clustering was going to be reintroduced with Server 2016, but were sadly disappointed. The continued absence of this feature in Server 2019 makes me wonder if Microsoft is paying any attention to their own print server spooling service.

Stay Tuned
With the faster release cycle of Microsoft server versions, we all may ultimately benefit from Microsoft’s ability to react to market demands quickly and release features that benefit enterprise IT environments. Here at PrinterLogic we will keep gladly sifting through and finding the most relevant changes to printing and bubble them to the top for anyone interested. Subscribe to this blog for the latest updates.

If you want to keep your server core as “lean” as possible, why not completely remove the print server role? Or if you are stressing about building out a type 4 driver repository, or want to completely eliminate print servers and the single point of failure, let PrinterLogic show you how to modernize your print environment and eliminate the need for print servers. Download a free 30-day trial today.

PrinterLogic Secure Release Printing Now Works with Kyocera Multifunction Printers

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PrinterLogic is pleased to announce the release of an all-new Control Panel Application (CPA) for select FS, TASKalfa, and ECOSYS series multifunction printers from Kyocera. The introduction brings to 10 the total number of MFP brands supported by our SaaS and Virtual Appliance platforms for secure printing.

The Kyocera CPA follows our recent announcement of the PrinterLogic Fuji Xerox CPA and will come as equally welcome news to customers in the European and Asia-Pacific regions, where Kyocera is especially popular.

The PrinterLogic app installs directly on the printer and provides a flexible secure-printing experience for IT administrators and end users alike. PrinterLogic’s Kyocera CPA will work with any printer running Java VM version 1.4 subset and above—including models such as the FS C8525MFP, TASKalfa 6052ci, and ECOSYS M3540idn. 

You can view the full list of supported models here.

The PrinterLogic Kyocera CPA is built entirely on our second-generation CPA platform, which leverages the rich capabilities of our cloud-native SaaS printing solution to provide a more seamless and more secure experience across multiple printer models and brands. Kyocera vetted and approved the CPA prior to release.

New Advanced Security Bundle supports 90+ percent of the commercial MFP market

With this addition, PrinterLogic’s SaaS and Virtual Appliance platforms now support ten major network printer brands, representing well over 90 percent of the commercial multifunction printer market. Secure Release Printing is available as part of the PrinterLogic Advanced Security Bundle, introduced in January.

Secure Release Printing—also known as pull printing or “follow me” printing—ensures that the user who initiates the print job is physically standing at the printer before the output appears in the tray. This approach helps protect confidential information and reduces waste caused by redundant or abandoned print jobs.

New app uses PrinterLogic’s latest SSO and IdP support technology

The new CPA employs core PrinterLogic technology that supports Single Sign-On (SSO) protocols. Users authenticate one time to access any app or function on that printer. Once the user authenticates on the printer, PrinterLogic’s app employs a “listener” mode and allows them to release held documents without signing in again.  

The new app features an intuitive touchscreen interface that gives users four choices for proving their identity. These include badge swipe, smartphone release with QR code support, UserID/PIN, and conventional Username/Password login credentials. PrinterLogic supports Microsoft Active Directory and leading cloud-based Identity Providers (IdPs) such as Okta, Azure AD, Google Identity, Ping, and more.

How it works: Secure Release Printing workflow for users

Once network printers are configured for either pull printing or secure printing, the user workflow proceeds as follows:

  • First, a user prints from their workstation as usual, and the print job is held securely on the workstation until the user goes to the printer to retrieve it. 
  • At the printer, the user swipes their badge or authenticates using any of the available methods. All held print jobs appear on the printer’s screen. Users simply pick the job or jobs they want to print. Or, users can delete jobs they no longer care about.
  • With the pull-printing option, a universal driver is used. That means users can decide which printer they want to use after initiating the print job.

Secure printing ensures that confidential documents get into the right hands and aren’t left sitting on a printer tray to tempt prying eyes. In addition, these methods do away with abandoned print jobs and wasted consumables. For more details, see our Secure Release Printing feature page.

In addition to secure printing, PrinterLogic offers many other security features:

  • PrinterLogic eliminates print servers, each of which is a repository for thousands of confidential documents and is vulnerable to an attack.
  • PrinterLogic has passed the AWS Well-Architected Review and inherits all of the benefits of AWS Cloud Security.
  • PrinterLogic uses centrally-managed direct IP printing to keep jobs local. Printing continues even if your internet connection goes down.
  • PrinterLogic automatically logs document name, print source, print destination, and authenticated username for audit tracking and data-loss prevention.
  • PrinterLogic’s architecture complies with strict U.S. government standards (FIPS 140-2, with 140-3 compliance pending).
  • PrinterLogic supports multifactor authentication, including CAC/PIV-enabled release printing on any network printer.

A true SaaS solution that eliminates all print-related infrastructure

Unlike some “cloud-optimized” print management software, PrinterLogic is a true, multi-tenant SaaS offering. It’s not a cloud-hosted shortcut that leaves you stuck with server licensing, configuration, and maintenance. Automatic updates ensure you have the most current and reliable solution possible—backed by a guaranteed service-level agreement.

Oracle Health Printing Just Got Better: Introducing PrinterLogic’s new LPD Service

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PrinterLogic’s healthcare customers value our serverless printing solution for the secure, unified print management that it provides. We help tame the complexity of conducting general office printing alongside EHR/EMR solutions, which almost always come with their own print infrastructure and framework.

As part of our efforts to make that day-to-day experience even better for clinicians, nurses, doctors, and receptionists while reducing the load on IT admins, we’ve been developing functionality that will better manage back-end Oracle Health electronic health record (EHR) printing and output.

The newest addition to that functionality is our LPD Service. It’s a modest name with big impacts on convenience and ease of use—especially in healthcare settings that use Oracle Health EHR software.

 

What Is LPD and How Does It Work?

The line printer daemon (LPD) is part of a standard software protocol that allows networked computers to submit print jobs to printers on the same network. You might have even seen it as an option when you’re installing a conventional printer on your home PC. The LPD is the middleman responsible for relaying print jobs to the network printer.

In PrinterLogic, our LPD Service works by identifying a service client computer in the network that’s already running the standard PrinterLogic client agent. The LPD Service runs in the background and listens for compatible print jobs.

Once the LPD Service has been enabled by an admin, it can receive LPD print traffic and extract information from the print job’s bundled metadata. That info reveals who printed the job, which printer it’s targeting as well as details like finishing options (e.g., duplex, B/W, output tray) and secure release settings. Based on that metadata, the print job will be routed to the correct printer, including off-network printers, and held for release if requested.

The same metadata is also used for PrinterLogic’s reporting functionality. Details like the initiating user, destination printer, timestamp, and filename are collected and uploaded to the PrinterLogic Admin Console.

PrinterLogic prepares the file for printing and will send it to the printer without a driver, either via RAW or LPR, as configured by the administrator.

Cerner EHR Printing

 

The Benefits of LPD in Oracle Health Environments

Oracle Health provides one of the world’s leading EHR solutions. It’s used throughout the healthcare industry to access and securely maintain vast stores of confidential patient medical information. By design, it becomes the central fixture of an organization’s print environment. Pretty much every document passes through Oracle Health EHR before it’s printed to paper.

Unfortunately, this can cause issues with general office printing and back-end applications, not least because Oracle Health has its own server-based print infrastructure. Device incompatibilities, downtime, and routine printing errors can be common occurrences, and they multiply in IT environments with diverse printer fleets.

PrinterLogic’s new LPD Service leverages the universal line print remote (LPR) printing standard—the same one that Oracle Health’s own EHR system uses—to make everyday printing more efficient and reliable. It enables users to print from backend applications without the need for legacy print servers, which neatly sidesteps all the problems inherent to those print servers.

Best of all, PrinterLogic’s LPD Service can do this while still tapping into PrinterLogic’s advanced features:

  • Comprehensive reporting: See who printed what, when, where, and why.
  • Pull printing: Jobs are held until the user is ready to retrieve them. This keeps protected health information (PHI) from sitting unclaimed in output trays.
  • Off-Network Printing: Conveniently allow devices to print while still maintaining strict Zero Trust policies.

These features complement the strict security of EHR systems and enable organizations to maintain compliance with HIPAA and other industry regulations.

The LPD Service also helps with print resiliency to avoid downtime. Multiple PrinterLogic LPD Service clients can be used to create redundancy. These can be set up behind a load balancer or configured to communicate among themselves for failover scenarios.

 

A Complete Printing and Print-Management Solution

The LPD Service is a big deal for Oracle Health users, but it’s just one benefit among many that PrinterLogic offers to healthcare organizations. With our serverless printing solution, you can:

  • Lower costs: Fragmented solutions and all their support infrastructure can lead to mounting costs. By minimizing the hardware footprint and eliminating deep-rooted print inefficiencies, PrinterLogic keeps costs down.
  • Simplify print management: It can be difficult to bridge the different systems for EMR and general office printing. PrinterLogic helps to unify the print environment and provides a single window for IT to oversee it.
  • Harden security: Thanks to its pull printing and Off-network Printing functionality, PrinterLogic augments the security of Oracle Health and similar EMR/EHR solutions without sacrificing ease of use.
  • Leverage reporting: In addition to capturing extensive metadata for every print job, PrinterLogic offers a convenient way to view, filter, and sort that information. IT can easily monitor print activity across the organization.

PrinterLogic’s LPD Service is part of our Output Management solution, designed to give organizations granular control over everything they print, including features like:

  • Rules & Routing
  • Confirmed Delivery 
  • Batch Printing

If your organization manages many critical output processes for the business to function efficiently and successfully and is trying to do it over various disparate systems, or if you’re just looking for more reliability overall, chat with us about your goals, and we’ll discuss where we can help.

 

How It Works: PrinterLogic’s New Quota Management Feature

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I’ve been focusing on PrinterLogic K-12 education solutions for five years, and the number one request I’ve heard from prospective customers is the ability to set limits on how much a user can print. This stems from scenarios like these:

  • A student clicks “Print” but doesn’t immediately hear the printer start whirring. In their impatience, they click “Print” fifteen more times.
  • Instead of printing a selection of pages from a large eBook, a teacher accidentally prints all 200 pages of the document.
  • Faculty prints dozens of originals on a high-quality printer instead of the more affordable option of printing one master document and photocopying it.
  • For reasons no one can pinpoint, some classrooms are tearing through paper and toner at a disproportionate rate.
  • A small group of users is constantly printing in color when monochrome will suffice.

Every single one of these scenarios takes a toll on the limited print budget. If only IT could easily put hard caps on how many pages users could print during a given timeframe!

We heard those requests loud and clear. That’s why we’re pleased to roll out Quota Management as the newest feature in PrinterLogic’s native-SaaS serverless printing platform. This post will provide you with a quick overview of the highlights and functionality of Quota Management as it’s implemented in PrinterLogic.

What Is Quota Management?

Quota management is the process of creating fixed limits on print volume, typically within a certain period: User A can’t print more than 200 pages per month. Or User B is allocated a maximum of $100 in printing costs each quarter. Establishing these not-to-exceed thresholds can have several benefits—from controlling runaway print costs to reducing your organization’s environmental footprint.

There are a few different ways to implement a quota management system in your print environment. Most come in the form of add-ons or separate solutions that you deploy and manage on top of your existing print-management software. Unfortunately, the solutions themselves can become another universal pain point. They’re expensive, they rarely integrate well, and they occasionally create so much extra work that IT resorts to raising the quota to the point of ineffectiveness.

Quota Management in PrinterLogic

The key criteria for PrinterLogic’s Quota Management are price and volume. Admins can choose whether to limit printing based on either of these variables. They’re defined by currency amount or by page count using the provided fields in our Admin Console.

PrinterLogic further breaks things out by users and groups. A user will be an individual, such as a student or a teacher. A group can be anything you’ve configured in your identity provider (IdP)—a classroom, a grade, a school, or even an entire district. When you assign a quota to a group, all users in that group likewise inherit that limit. So, for example, every student (user) in 7th grade (group) will automatically be assigned the quota you’ve set for that group.

Groups are also cumulative. A user who is in group X and group Y will inherit the quotas of X+Y. As a practical illustration, imagine a teacher who teaches some classes at the middle school and some at the high school. If the middle-school faculty has a group quota of $100 and the high-school faculty has a group quota of $100, that teacher will have a quota of $200 total print spend. Of course, you can also modify user quotas separately to remove the cumulative effect.

Each of these quotas applies for a certain time period. Once again, that period is highly customizable: days, weeks, months, or a full academic year. If that period has not been marked as recurring, print volumes become unrestricted after the period expires.

Additional Customization Options

After configuring basic print quota criteria and user organization, many organizations will be up and running. But PrinterLogic offers even more parameters for enforcing print limits.

  • Limiting job size. One option is to limit users to a predetermined number of pages for each individual print job. Keeping print jobs to a reasonable 10 or 15 pages helps curb the tendency to print huge documents like entire eBooks or websites, whether intentionally or accidentally.
  • User and group quotas are adjustable midstream. If a user or group hits their quota before a period expires, IT or a trusted user (more detail on role-based access control below) can easily raise the allotted page count or total print spend in the Admin Console. That also works in the opposite direction: Quotas for groups or individual users can be lowered in the middle of a period as well.
  • Incentives to favor economy. Another option is to input differential price information for the four typical printer modes: B/W, color, B/W duplex, and color duplex. Admins can enter their own per-page costs and change them as necessary. If the school really wants to discourage, say, color printing, this value can be artificially inflated to encourage users to think twice before printing 100 worksheets with a single blue icon.
  • Mitigating redundancy and waste. Time-delayed printing was a feature requested by our K-6 customers. This is because young students are tempted to initiate a print job over and over when they don’t see a printer immediately spring into action. By instituting a waiting period of, for instance, 15 seconds before the same print job can be reinitiated, schools can mitigate the worst effects of itchy mouse fingers.

Coupled with all these features is the ability to control printing by mode or by device. PrinterLogic makes it possible for IT to confine student printing to a dedicated classroom printer or enforce black-and-white printing by default.

How Quotas Are Calculated

When a user prints, the number (or cost) of each successfully printed page counts against their quota—successfully being the operative word. Print jobs that take place through PrinterLogic’s secure release pull printing don’t count against the quota until the end user releases them.

Single-sided print jobs are calculated as one page. Duplex jobs are counted as two pages. In line with the features I’ve already noted above, IT can base quotas on price and set custom amounts for per-page duplex costs if it’s important to encourage users to prioritize that mode.

If a print job would put a user over their limit, the print job will not execute. Let’s say that a student initiates a 12-page print job with only 10 pages remaining on their quota. That print job will not be relayed to the printer. Instead, the user is informed that it would exceed their quota. The rationale for avoiding partial print jobs is that the user is likely to print the entire document again once print capabilities are restored.

Role-Based Access Control and IdPs

When developing Quota Management, we sought to make everything as user-friendly and transparent as possible. It has the same ease of use as our end-to-end serverless printing solution, so IT can configure custom quotas in a few clicks within the same Admin Console they’re already using for printer and driver deployment.

That ease of use extends to our use of role-based access control (RBAC), which provides IT with a way of safely delegating tasks to trusted users. In the case of Quota Management, this person might be a secretary or a power user. That trusted user would then have the ability to adjust quotas in real-time via the Admin Console in response to individual requests. However, they wouldn’t have the ability to make any higher-level changes to the print environment. RBAC empowers users to solve their issues quickly on the ground rather than having to submit piecemeal IT support requests.

Because PrinterLogic is a true SaaS solution with native support for 10 leading cloud-based IdPs, user provisioning and single sign-on authentication can be handled through your existing IdP data stores. That makes RBAC and group assignment in Quota Management both convenient and secure.

Metadata and Reporting

PrinterLogic’s Quota Management doesn’t just keep user printing under control. It also works in tandem with PrinterLogic’s reporting capabilities to provide more visibility into printing habits and specific print activities.

Each time a user prints, PrinterLogic captures the metadata of their print job—info like username, device, page count, document filename, mode, and destination printer. This information comes in handy when IT is trying to account for large departmental print volumes and make data-driven decisions on how best to guide printing habits.

Reports are accessible right from the PrinterLogic Admin Console. They can be searched and filtered by any metadata variable, which makes it easy to zero in on the information you’re looking for.

Availability

Quota Management comes as part of our new Cost Management bundle, which is focused on helping organizations get a better fix on all the factors that impact their print budget. The Cost Management bundle includes Quota Management today, with two additional features coming soon:

  • Quota Management
  • Client Cost Management*
  • Rules, Routing & Policies*

Because Quota Management extends the functionality of our core platform, it integrates seamlessly with PrinterLogic and ties into all the amazing features you’ve come to expect: direct-IP printing, self-service printer installs, effortless driver management, and much, much more.

Quota Management is available for PrinterLogic SaaS and the PrinterLogic Virtual Appliance (VA). It supports endpoints running Windows, Chrome OS, macOS, Linux, and iOS. Support for Android phones and tablets will be added later in 2022.

Future Roadmap

For now, we’re concentrating on the functionality our K-12 customers need most. But we’ve got a lot of exciting enhancements planned as well. Down the line, we’re working on features like:

  • The ability to count copies made on multifunction printers in quotas.
  • Cost accounting that empowers users to increase their printing allowance on their own.

We’ll have more news on timing and capabilities as development continues.

A Complete Printing and Print-Management Solution

Quota Management is just one powerful facet of PrinterLogic’s serverless printing solution. Along with cost-saving print quotas, your K-12 environment will benefit from:

  • Serverless (direct-IP) printing
  • System-wide identity provider (IdP) integration
  • Centralized management
  • Self-service printer installation
  • Driver and profile management
  • Reporting and auditing

All of this functionality is delivered through PrinterLogic’s native-SaaS platform, so it comes with all the advantages you expect from SaaS solutions, such as ease of deployment, ongoing updates, and incredible scalability.

*Available late 2022.

PrinterLogic Feature Updates – April 2022

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We’re excited to announce some feature updates that are now available with PrinterLogic. Check out what’s new in serverless printing: 

Secure Release Printing Updates

  • New Ricoh and Fuji Xerox printer support. We recently launched new CPAs for Ricoh and Fuji. The Gen 2 CPA for Ricoh means SaaS now supports the manufacturer’s MP-series printers. In addition, we now support the ApeosPort series of Fuji Xerox printers (more than 60 models). 
  • New Control Panel Application (CPA) Manager. SaaS and the Virtual Appliance now include a new CPA Manager tool that’s found on your Service Client object on the Printer Apps tab. The CPA Manager is a quick way to get status or help troubleshoot all CPA installations in your environment. It allows up to 250 printer app installations or reconfigurations in batch mode. More information can be found in the CPA Manager topic in our documentation.

Identity (IdP) Update

Concurrent IdP support now in production. As part of our new Advanced Security Bundle, multiple IdPs can be configured and enabled simultaneously. This is especially helpful when bringing a new acquisition into the organization. New workgroups can be merged into the organization’s print environment even if the new acquisition uses a different IdP.

Mobile App Updates

  • Full suite of IdPs now supported.  Our PrinterLogic App for iOS and Android now supports the same IdPs that are available within our SaaS platform. The roster now incorporates 10 providers, including Ping One, Ping Federate, CyberArk (formerly Idaptive), JumpCloud, OneLogin, ForgeRock, Google Identity, and more. 
  • Enhanced Mobile Device Manager (MDM) support. App deployments now include preconfiguring the customer’s PrinterLogic instance URL. This simplifies the sign-in process for the end user and reduces help-desk calls.

Virtual Appliance Updates

  • Security vulnerability fix now available in VA Host update (1.0.742). Recently, an out-of-bounds vulnerability assigned to CVE-2021-44142 was disclosed in Samba versions prior to 4.13.17. This has been remediated. PrinterLogic VA customers with host versions 1.0.735 and earlier should update their VA Host, which includes the latest application release as well. Release notes and associated files can be found here.
  • Just in Time (JIT) provisioning for IdP-managed Badge/PIN and more. We know that for Virtual Appliance customers, JIT provisioning is preferred to SCIM. With that in mind, we just expanded the list of user attributes that can be provisioned, including authPin, authPinUser, badge, manager, department, and job title—if they are configured in the IdP. This means you can take advantage of IdP-managed badge and PIN, a feature that was only available in SCIM apps previously.

Advanced Reporting Update

Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) now available in PrinterLogic SaaS and the VA. The EDW feature facilitates data mining using your own Business Intelligence (BI) tools. The feature lets business analysts create custom reports for resources managed by PrinterLogic, including print jobs in a specific time frame filtered by printer type, region, paper type, black/white vs. color, etc. It supports standard BI tools such as Crystal Reports, Domo, Tableau, and more.

To learn more about these feature updates or our full PrinterLogic feature set, contact our customer support team.

PrinterLogic Announces Concurrent Identity Providers (IdPs) Support

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In 2019, when PrinterLogic first previewed its integration with two leading cloud-based Identity Providers, we were ahead of the pack. At the time, no other enterprise print management solution supported Okta and Azure AD. 

Since then, the roster of IdPs we support has expanded to 10 providers, including Ping One, Ping Federate, CyberArk (formerly Idaptive), JumpCloud, OneLogin, ForgeRock, Google Identity, and more. This list covers all of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant leaders as of October 2021.

Identity Process Diagram

Core benefits of cloud-based IdPs

IdP integration allows customers to loop PrinterLogic into their existing access-management environment, which provides the following benefits:

  • Removes the need to set up separate users and passwords
  • Enables multifactor authentication (MFA) for improved security
  • Reduces help-desk tickets related to forgotten passwords

Until now, PrinterLogic IdP support was limited to one IdP at a time. But that limitation is over. 

Integration of acquired workgroups

With new concurrent IdP support, you can now have multiple IdPs configured and enabled simultaneously. Enterprises can support multiple instances of an IdP (Azure, Okta, Ping, etc.) in a homogenous network with the same SaaS instance of PrinterLogic. 

Likewise, companies can use multiple instances of different IdPs in a heterogeneous network for access to a single PrinterLogic instance. This is especially helpful for IT managers tasked with bringing a new acquisition into the organization. New workgroups can be merged into the organization’s print environment even if the new acquisition uses a different IdP. This can save IT a lot of time.

For example, let’s say a parent organization uses Okta as their IdP, and they just acquired a second company that uses Azure AD. Without PrinterLogic’s concurrent IdP support, the parent company has to create new user records in their existing Okta environment for the new workgroup. This could amount to several days of downtime for the new employees. 

With PrinterLogic’s new concurrent IdP feature, however, the parent company can add the Azure AD group in our Admin Console in about five minutes. Both IdPs are available to PrinterLogic and work in tandem. The newly acquired users are up and running in the new environment with almost zero downtime.  

Managing different user teams within the same enterprise

Another use case for the new feature is when organizations prefer to manage their administrative users and other end users in separate environments. This can be done via two different applications of the same IdP, or via two different IdP providers (e.g., administrative users are managed in PingFederate, and end users managed in Okta). One reason for this approach is to satisfy security policies or better serve existing infrastructure and processes.

PrinterLogic’s integration with more than 10 Identity Provider services—including cloud-based and on-premises IdPs—means we offer easy to manage serverless printing to security-conscious companies who want Zero Trust, MFA, and SSO benefits. We’re one of the few SaaS print management solutions that can do this, making our product ideal for large enterprises, especially those that have grown through acquisition.

For more information about how our IdP integration works, see our white paper, titled “PrinterLogic Integration with Cloud-based Identity Providers”.

A true SaaS solution that eliminates all print-related infrastructure

Unlike some “cloud-optimized” print management software, PrinterLogic is a true, multi-tenant SaaS offering. It’s not a cloud-hosted shortcut that leaves you stuck with server licensing, configuration, and maintenance. Automatic updates ensure you have the most current and reliable solution possible—backed by a guaranteed service-level agreement.