Top 5 Frequently Asked Questions About Output Management

Output management solutions spiked in popularity during the COVID pandemic, and they’re becoming increasingly common. By 2032, the market for output management software will likely hit USD $9.9 billion. If you haven’t jumped on board yet and still need clarity, we’re here to give you a foundational understanding of output management by answering the most commonly asked questions about output management software. 

 

Output Management FAQs

1. What is output management?

Output management is a type of software that manages the creation, distribution, formatting, storage, security, and archiving of documents. All these functions are managed from a centralized platform. Because output management solutions can handle both physical and digital documents, companies can unify print management and document management systems in a single solution. 

Output management is often confused with print management. While there’s a lot of overlap, there are some critical differences. Print management deals with documents that are physically printed. From sending the print job to the printer and managing printing devices to managing print workflows and tracking printing quotas, print management software is certainly valuable. However, output management does all that and more. In addition to all of the capabilities that print management has, output management software also manages digital documents and offers additional features for security, visibility, workflow simplification, and device-neutral delivery.

 

 

2. What are the benefits of output management? 

Companies reap many benefits from investing in an output management system. One of the most immediate benefits is more efficient workflows. Output management systems automate and streamline document delivery options to digital storage and email. Automation helps reduce document mishandling while optimizing printing processes. Also, when installing output management software, companies can connect processes from legacy applications, which helps streamline workflows and keep projects organized. 

Another benefit of output management is visibility. Dynamic print reports allow companies to track and monitor user-level print activity on both back- and front-end printing. These reports offer visibility into cost-reduction opportunities, user behavior, problems with documents reaching their destination, and delivery methods. When companies understand this data, they can keep documents safe while making them more easily accessible. 

Security is another major advantage of output management software. These systems enforce security policies and protect sensitive information by implementing access controls, encryption, off-network printing, and secure release printing. For companies in heavily regulated industries, output management systems also help keep your company safe with compliance features. Ranging from manufacturing and healthcare regulations like Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), to general data protection such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), output management’s traceability ensures compliance across your organization.

 

 

3. Can an output management system integrate with our existing ERP, CRM, and other business systems?

Yes, absolutely! One of the strengths of output management systems is that they centralize all printing operations. This includes connecting to many other systems, including enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), electronic medical records (EMR), electronic health records (EHR), document management systems (DMS), and more. PrinterLogic’s Output Management integrates well with Epic, Oracle Health, and SAP systems.

 

4. How does the output management system ensure secure and uninterrupted printing, especially in SAP environments?

Output management systems are great for ensuring secure and uninterrupted printing. Output management systems ensure print jobs are received and delivered by using automated failover scenarios to protect critical operations. 

In SAP environments specifically, output management helps ensure smooth and secure printing by integrating with SAP products. When output management systems integrate with SAP products, the two solutions can work together to deliver documents securely in a device-neutral environment. PrinterLogic’s Output Management solution works with SAP to route print jobs, spin up multiple Service Clients to achieve redundancy and high availability, and store and analyze the print job metadata. For more details, read our blog post that goes more in-depth about how PrinterLogic’s Output Management system provides failsafes to make sure your SAP print jobs are secure and uninterrupted.

 

5. Can the output management system provide a unified platform for managing both administrative and clinical printing, especially in specialized industries like healthcare?

Yes, output management systems are perfect for providing a unified platform for managing administrative and clinical printing, especially in industries such as healthcare. Output management systems can manage both administrative and clinical printing because they have both on-premises and cloud-based capabilities. Companies can integrate their output management software with Epic or other healthcare document software to unify all forms of healthcare print management, including Epic clinical and general office printing. This centralized print management approach eliminates the need to deploy drivers and queues to print servers altogether.

 

Want to Learn More About Output Management?

PrinterLogic’s Output Management system is here to help propel your business processes forward. Centralized control, enhanced efficiency, and strengthened security are just a few of the benefits of our Output Management software. To learn more about how PrinterLogic’s Output Management can centralize and protect your documents, schedule a free demo today

Output Management and Print Management: What’s the Difference?

If you’re a bit confused about the difference between print management and output management, it’s ok. There’s some overlap in what they do. They even have some of the same benefits. 

However, output management has a broader scope than print management. It encompasses everything print management does, plus much more—making it an ideal choice for companies that are serious about digital transformation, cutting costs, and automating processes for better efficiency. Here’s how the two solutions compare and what you need to know about each. 

  

What Is Print Management?

As its name implies, print management software manages printed pages. With print management software, you can print from phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and other devices across multiple operating systems. 

Managing printed documents starts with security. Print management software often has authentication features to make sure only authorized users submit print jobs. The software keeps print jobs confidential, manages passwords, keeps track of authorization controls, and ensures only the person who submitted the print job can print and retrieve their print job. 

In addition to supporting security, print management increases efficiency. Its ability to track print jobs helps ensure document accountability and enforces better printing behavior. Better printing behavior means a reduction in waste, costs, and wear and tear on printing machinery. 

Lastly, print management software helps ensure compatibility among devices, offers bring-your-own-device printing, streamlines workflows, and tracks and gathers data on printing jobs. 

 

What Is Output Management? 

Output management is a way of creating, distributing, and managing documents. Output management encompasses print management’s print documents, but it includes digital documents and document management, too. Its capabilities expand beyond those of print management software to add formatting, processing, and handling of digital information, version control, and archiving documents. For companies in heavily regulated industries—especially healthcare, finance, and manufacturing—output management software’s security features also help ensure compliance with laws and industry specifications. 

Because output management software deals with print and digital documents, it works with a wider variety of formats than print management software. File types such as Word, Excel, PDF, .sav, .spv, XML, HTML, and raw text are all easy to work with in output management and securely stored in a single centralized database. 

A company can connect applications, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software, with output management software to export and print data and reports to any office printers. Output management also enables companies to connect processes from legacy applications to manage all aspects of document distribution, printing, and routing from a centralized platform.

The Benefits of  Output Management

Companies that implement output management solutions see benefits such as:

  • Increased automation and streamlined workflows for heightened productivity and efficiency
  • Faster and more accurate delivery of documents
  • More data, insights into printing behaviors, and tracking abilities across many channels and formats
  • Increased organization and retrievability of stored documents
  • Real-time notifications to speed up project completion and communication, breaking down function silos and bridging the gap between disparate systems
  • Reduced errors and security breaches
  • Compliance with HIPAA, GDPR, GMP, etc.
  • More flexibility, because, unlike print management solutions that require a standardized format, output management systems can handle more formats for faster, easier printing 

Because of its ability to handle multiple types of documents and automate a greater number of processes, output management will benefit your organization more overall when compared to a print management solution. Output management platforms incorporate more processes, assets, and devices, meaning you get better visibility and fewer interruptions as they’re all managed in the same place. Even more, your company will save money because many of your necessary processes are streamlined and automated. 

 

Drive Your Business Processes Forward with PrinterLogic Output Management

For companies investing in digital transformation or simply wanting to cut back on costs to invest in data security, PrinterLogic’s Output Management solution is exactly what you’re looking for. Our centralized, easy-to-use platform is here to unify your print and document management systems. You’ll benefit from our unique Admin Console that allows you to manage both front- and back-end printing from a single place, and your IT team will thank you for the decreased number of manual interventions needed.

To see how PrinterLogic’s Output Management solution can drive your business processes forward, book a free demo today.

Three Ways to Make Printing More Reliable

General office printing requires reliability and availability, so in-office and remote employees can continue their work. A direct IP printing model works well–it relies on a direct connection from the workstation to the printer without using the Internet. Even if an Internet outage occurs, printing continues.

But you’re not only managing general office printing. Your organization integrates many core business processes with electronic record and resource applications that store, manage, and generate documentation. This is especially prevalent in the healthcare industry with electronic health and medical record systems managing all patient information with physicians and nurses needing access to distribute care accurately. 

Your print servers are heavily tied to these vital business processes, intercepting spooled print jobs from the source application and distributing them to the printer or channel they need to go to. 

Consider an output management software.

Output management software either works with your print servers or replaces them entirely. It sits between the source application and your printers to facilitate communication. This software automates, manages, and distributes output from any source application to multiple channels, either physically or digitally. 

Here are three ways we suggest improving the reliability and efficiency of your output processes using output management software: 

1. Confirmed Delivery of Print Jobs

Printers on their own don’t give you all the information you need about the status of your print jobs. Most of the time, it’ll tell you it received the job, then radio silence. If your batch print job of 50 documents made it to page 35 on the first document before stopping, and it’s not a lack of paper or ink, you aren’t sure how to diagnose the issue. Or worse, you’re unaware of any issue until missing invoices, shipping forms, and contract pages grind everything to a halt. 

Output management software often provides bidirectional communication as part of the print job’s journey. It’s extra assurance and confidence that your print jobs and output processes were delivered where they need to go. These updates could also tell you what page the job failed on and what issue occurred, giving you the chance to address the issue immediately without hours of troubleshooting. 

2. Redundant, Low-footprint Infrastructure

Using a Windows, Linux, or Unix print server offers load-balancing and clustering as long as it’s configured and maintained properly, but often operates as a single point of failure if the servers crash from any kind of software or network issue, printing can’t continue, which, of course, is a detrimental interruption to your processes and workflows. 

Output management software doesn’t have to run on a print server. Some use a service client–a low-footprint client that performs similarly to a print server but is much simpler to spin up and maintain redundant instances, eliminating the single points of failure. Print jobs are spooled and received by a service client, load-balanced to the redundant clients, processed, and distributed simultaneously. With significantly less effort and maintenance, your processes can easily scale with your organization’s demands and speed. 

3. Rules-based Automation 

With the advancements in machine learning and robotic process automation in recent years, automation should be introduced in some form for your document processes. Automation can save employees three hours a day, roughly 30 hours a month, eliminating manual touchpoints such as converting individual files to PDFs for printing or reprinting if print jobs fail.

Setting rules that automatically perform specific actions when certain triggers and conditions are met significantly reduces, if not totally eliminates, manual tasking. One popular case is if a print job fails due to an unavailable printer, it automatically redirects to an available backup printer to complete the job successfully. Compounding with the hundreds of documents and outputs processed daily, this simple redirect rule significantly extends your environment’s value and reliability. 


Vasion’s Output Management solution has the reliability you’re looking for. 

Replace your Windows, Linux, or Unix print servers in your environment with a much more reliable and highly available Output Management solution that ensures any output makes it from your source applications where it needs to go, in the format it needs to be in, and when it needs to be there. The solution is backed by a robust feature set that ensures reliability at every stage:

 

If your organization manages multiple 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. 

Schedule a demo today.

Supercharge Your Output Management With Confirmed Delivery: Your Questions Answered

Has this happened to you? You sent a print job to a printer and walked across the office just to be met with an empty tray with no indication of what went wrong. Output Management’s newest solution, Confirmed Delivery, can prevent the frustrating walkback. Using widely supported printer commands, we can get confirmation from the printer itself that direct IP print jobs were successful, preventing the troubleshooting headache.


Why Confirmed Delivery?

Confirmed Delivery gives you real-time status updates of your direct IP print jobs from the printer itself. This gives you better insight into what’s happening with your print jobs without getting up and checking the printer manually. In addition to being notified about any problems the printer has while completing the job, Confirmed Delivery also makes job status reporting with ERPs (like SAP) and print stats with PrinterLogic much more accurate. 

You probably have additional questions, and we’ve got answers. Let’s dive in. 


How do I receive print job status updates?

Many modern printers support the command language, Print Job Language (PJL) developed by HP. Output Management today uses PJL commands to communicate job parameters such as Copies, Paper Tray, and Duplex to the printer. 

When the Output Management Service Client sends a direct IP print job to a printer with Confirmed Delivery enabled, it sends PJL USTATUS headers to the printer. These headers request the printer to reply to the Output Management Service Client with various updates about the job as they happen. These updates include printer status, tray status, printed pages, running out of paper, job cancellation, and print success. 

Output Management will then wait a configurable amount of time for a response from the printer. If you don’t receive a response within that window of time, it could be due to a couple of reasons:

  1. A printer issue that requires user intervention (i.e. the printer ran out of paper). In this case, you’re given a configurable window of time to fix the printer’s issue so the job may automatically resume.
  2. PJL USTATUS is not supported on your printer. In this case, the print job is treated as a regular Output Management job. You’ll receive the standard confirmation that the printer received the job. 


How does this benefit me?

Seamless print redirection

With more accurate job failure reporting, if the printer reports a job failure, that trigger can hook directly into Rules & Routing for quick job redirection to another printer. This helps ensure that business-critical printing isn’t stopped by one printer mishap.

Accurate print stats

If a job is canceled or fails part way through, the printer can report how many pages it has already printed. This greatly improves the accuracy of your print stats, especially if your past-canceled jobs would have otherwise been marked as complete successes.

Better print debugging

With trace or debug level logging enabled on the Output Management Service Client, you can get useful information from your printer about how it’s handling a given job and see the exact response from the printer in the logs.


Now, how do I enable it?

At the time of writing, Confirmed Delivery is enabled similarly to Off-Network Printing.

There are three components to enabling confirmed delivery:

  1. The global toggle that enables the feature
  2. The behavior that printers follow by default
  3. The printer-specific behavior

Confirmed Delivery can be turned on and off at any point at the global level (within the Admin Console). This keeps you in control of your job’s progress and ignores all other settings. By default, every printer follows the global behavior of having Confirmed Delivery enabled or disabled. This is useful when creating new printers and controlling which printers already use Confirmed Delivery.

Additionally, each printer can optionally override the default behavior and use its specific Confirmed Delivery behavior. For example, you could have Confirmed Delivery set to disabled by default but enable it for a specific printer.

The first two components are global settings inside of PrinterLogic. Once logged in, navigate to Tools > Settings > General > Confirmed Delivery. The printer-specific settings are located on the printer’s Port tab.

 


Where can I find out more?

With Output Management Confirmed Delivery, you can rest easy knowing that your output makes it where it needs to be, in the format it needs to be in, and when it needs to be there. Most importantly, you won’t have to walk over to an empty printer tray. If you have additional questions, refer to our FAQ

Schedule a demo today and let’s have a conversation about improving your output processes.

4 Ways Unified Print Management Helps Minimize Production Disruptions in Manufacturing

Time is money, especially in the dynamic, evolving world of manufacturing. The COVID-19 pandemic only heightened the importance of efficiency: unplanned downtime costs at least 50% more now than it did in 2019. Since the average manufacturer has 800 hours of unexpected disruptions yearly, these costs add up quickly. For example, unexpected downtime cost manufacturers 11% of their annual revenue in 2023. 

Luckily, manufacturing organizations can drastically minimize disruptions with a streamlined print management solution. By optimizing printer uptime in four key areas, manufacturers save time, money, and stress. Here, we’ll explain the importance of these four print management features and how manufacturers can implement them today.


1.
Serverless Printing

Serverless printing is the quickest path to reducing operational downtime. Today’s print servers cost up to $20,000 each. When you consider maintenance and print materials, the annual costs become astronomical. 

Fortunately, serverless printing solves the problem by replacing front-end print servers with centralized SaaS print management. This streamlined, unified system helps manufacturers overcome interruptions caused by slow print speeds, failed driver deployments, and helpdesk tickets. 

Instead, manufacturers can deploy printers to users without scripts and GPS. They can improve process efficiencies, optimize document flow, and ensure the right information reaches the right people at the right time. IT teams gain greater visibility into all printer tasks so they can spend less time with on-site maintenance, and users enjoy the convenience of continuous uptime.


2. SAP Connector

SAP printing and document management are expensive and complex to manage. When unforeseen circumstances and disruptions arise, they completely halt the creation of shipping labels, invoices, printer orders, and more. Many IT teams are overwhelmed with the task of manually intervening to create workarounds any time a printer malfunctions. 

Manufacturers can easily overcome this challenge with an SAP Connector—a feature that connects SAP environments to maximize visibility into print tasks across all mission-critical production processes. With a SAP Connector, organizations can streamline printing between SAP systems and offices, warehouses, and production line printers to manage all print queues and devices from a single console.

 

3. Output Management

Production failures and downtime can cause massive build-ups and a detrimental loss of productivity in manufacturing. Many organizations use disparate systems to generate, store, and send supply chain and quality control documentation, which only complicates the issue when failures arise. If a manufacturer has multiple locations, the problem becomes exponentially worse.

Output Management is the clear solution to these pain points, helping improve operational efficiency, visibility, and scalability. With Output Management, manufacturers can ensure every document reaches the intended destination while also gaining creator control over document access and output costs. By mitigating any printing failures and downtime, manufacturing organizations save thousands of dollars in potential losses. 

Administrators also enhance security and compliance with features like Secure Release and Off-Network printing, which restrict the ability to print specific documents. Ultimately, Output Management acts as the bridge to each printer, enhancing the management of print queues, flow, and more.


4. Rules-based Automation

Single points of failure can be devastating for any manufacturer. If the organization relies on one printer for labels or other critical elements, a system error could completely wipe out productivity and lead to revenue loss—even if it’s only down for a short time. (Case in point: one manufacturer lost $260,000 in just one hour when a production line printer went down.)

Rules-based automation helps manufacturers avoid this pitfall by eliminating any single points of failure. Instead, it reroutes print jobs to another printer if the main system fails. This arrangement eliminates the downtime that comes with print failures, so organizations can maintain productivity and avoid negative financial impacts.

Administrators can also set rules to automatically reformat and resize documents into required formats for printing, email, and cloud storage folders, limiting the need for manual intervention. Users are empowered to handle print jobs independently, and manufacturers can spend less time and fewer resources on helpdesk tickets.

 

Future-proofing Manufacturing with Unified Print Management Systems

In a world where even just a few minutes of downtime can cost thousands of dollars, manufacturers need their business-critical production processes to keep working—no matter what. A unified print management system makes this possible by mitigating network interruptions and device failure. It optimizes efficiency at a high volume, connecting previously siloed systems to create a consolidated, continuous, and secure system.

Avoid expensive process disruptions and maximize uptime today with Vasion Print (Formerly PrinterLogic) for manufacturing. By managing front- and back-end printing from a single platform, Vasion Print gives you the tools you need to ensure printers and document processes never hurt your bottom line. Book a demo now to learn more.

Want to Increase Sustainability in Manufacturing? Output Management Can Help

Sustainability is now a driving force in the manufacturing industry, with nearly 70% of executives implementing extensive sustainability initiatives. Moreover, 90% of manufacturing leaders agree that the industry has a “special responsibility to society” to create a more sustainable future for our planet.

Such sustainability efforts don’t just benefit the environment—they help reduce costs and promote growth, too. In fact, sustainable products grow nearly three times faster than non-sustainable products, and 84% of consumers say poor environmental practices make them less likely to purchase from a brand.

So, how can manufacturing brands accelerate sustainability across their organizations? Output Management is one of the best places to start. Here, we’ll explain how Output Management is helping more manufacturers reduce waste and go green in 2024.

What is Output Management for Manufacturing?

Output Management allows manufacturers to operate at the highest level by centralizing control of print jobs within a single, easy-to-use platform. It connects distributed systems and applications to increase visibility into all print activity and document distribution. As a result, manufacturers can increase efficiency, reduce costs, and minimize waste.

Failures in document management, such as an error in printing barcodes or faulty ERP documents, could lead to a disruption in the manufacturing process. Output Management minimizes these failures while also saving time and money by optimizing business efficiency. 

How Does Output Management Work?

The average manufacturer experiences 800 hours of unplanned downtime annually, which adds up to an overall revenue loss of 11% every year. Printer Output Management reduces these losses and increases efficiency by controlling and optimizing printing processes. Here’s how it works:

  • Serverless printing: With Output Management, manufacturers replace costly front-end print servers with centralized SaaS print management systems. This process minimizes interruptions caused by slow print speeds and reduces unnecessary print jobs that create waste.
  • SAP Connector: With a SAP connector, manufacturers can connect their SAP environment to maximize visibility into the printing of shipping labels, invoices, printing orders, and more.
  • Rules-based automation: Rules and Routing help manufacturers avoid expensive printer failures and minimize redundant printing by automatically rerouting print jobs to specific printers.
  • Document conversions: Output Management streamlines document conversions in manufacturing by allowing users to automatically convert documents to post-script before printing. 

6 Ways Output Management Helps Increase Manufacturing Sustainability

Print delays disrupt manufacturing processes, increase expenses, and create unnecessary paper waste that harms the environment. With Output Management, manufacturing organizations can quickly reduce waste, increase energy efficiency, and promote eco-friendly practices.

Here are just a few of the many ways Output Management increases manufacturing sustainability:

  1. Reduced paper waste: By implementing print job prioritization, double-sided printing defaults, and enforcing print preview practices, Output Management systems encourage more reasonable, efficient use of printers. This implementation reduces paper waste and overall paper usage, which conserves natural resources and reduces deforestation.
  2. Energy efficiency: Output Management systems can schedule print jobs during off-peak hours or employ energy-saving settings. They can also consolidate print jobs into fewer, larger print runs, which helps optimize printer usage and decreases a manufacturer’s overall energy footprint.
  3. Optimized printer fleet: Since Output Management helps manufacturers have greater visibility into printing activity, it allows them to analyze usage patterns and identify opportunities for further consolidation and optimization. IT teams can use insights to eliminate underused printers, helping decrease the cost that comes from maintaining excess hardware.
  4. Reduced need for printer materials: About 1.3 billion inkjet cartridges are used every year, and under 30% of those cartridges are recycled. Output Management can reduce this harmful waste by creating default settings for grayscale printing and draft quality, thereby extending the lifespan of print materials and reducing the frequency of replacement.
  5. Reduced helpdesk tickets: Output Management drastically reduces IT helpdesk tickets by centralizing control, reducing interruptions, and increasing visibility into print jobs. With remote management and diagnostic tools, IT teams can reduce transportation emissions and packaging waste that come from on-site visits.
  6. Sustainable practices: Output Management reporting and feedback systems foster greater conversation about sustainability throughout manufacturing organizations. Leaders can make more informed decisions about printer performance, print material consumption, and printing practices. Likewise, users can adopt more sustainable printing habits, such as using digital signatures and draft-quality print jobs.

Go Green with PrinterLogic Output Management for Manufacturing

Today’s manufacturers must adopt more efficient, sustainable practices to stay competitive and relevant with modern consumers. Output Management is one of the most effective ways to get started, helping to improve security and enhance performance at the same time. 

If your manufacturing organization is ready to create a more sustainable workplace, Vasion can help. Get in touch today to learn more about PrinterLogic for manufacturers—an Output Management system that maximizes device uptime and operational efficiency across your organization. Book a demo today.

How to Adopt Zero Trust Printing

If someone were to tell you you should be scared of your printers, you’d likely laugh in their face. While clunky, they aren’t exactly an intimidating adversary. What everyone doesn’t know is that printers pose a huge, costly threat to your organization.

Printers connected to your corporate network are a wide attack vector for hackers. Along with being an entryway into your business’s network, hackers are able to attack other applications and launch ransomware through a compromised printer, wreaking havoc on your organization. 

According to this print security report by Quocirca, over two-thirds (68%) of organizations have experienced data losses due to unsecured printing practices in the past 12 months, leading to an average of $770,000 per data breach.

Since the need for printers remains high in the workplace, companies must pivot from traditional security measures towards Zero Trust printing in order to protect company data. 

 

Understanding Zero Trust

Before jumping off the deep end, it’s important to understand the basics. A Zero Trust Network Architecture (ZTNA) is a completely new approach to traditional network models. The structure as a whole is based on one principle: Never trust, always verify.

Traditional Network: This model inherently trusts anyone inside their network’s perimeter and is protected through a single verification point (typically a basic password based on an employee’s pet). 

Zero Trust Network: A security model in which no device is trusted by default, and users must be continually authenticated, authorized, and validated before being allowed access to applications and data, whether they are inside or outside the organization’s network.

Traditional networks are no longer safe because once any endpoint inside the network is compromised, attackers can move laterally and gain access to anything else on that network. Within a  Zero Trust network, access is limited, which is one of the most critical pieces of an effective Zero Trust strategy since most cyberattacks are internal and, more often than not, accidental.

 

Strengthening Your Network Security

Remote work is here to stay. While employees enjoy the conveniences of not commuting to an office, IT departments are flailing to put in place the robust back-end infrastructures needed to protect organizations’ data amid the transition. 

As employees use their own home printers for company printing, this poses two potential attack surfaces for hackers:

  1. An unsecured machine connected to a company computer. Connecting a company computer to an unsecured home printer provides a gateway past any VPN or security. Once a hacker moves from the printer to the company drive, they can gain access to the company’s primary network.

  2. Information is stored on the printer’s hard drive. Printer hard drives store previously queued print jobs for a varying degree of time. Hackers are able to break into these hard drives using a back door to view sensitive company information by accessing the employee’s home Wi-Fi.

Organization’s using a traditional network model don’t stand a chance against these threats. However, shifting to a Zero Trust approach means avoiding these types of vulnerabilities altogether by eliminating outdated infrastructure, like print servers, and going serverless. This reduces attack surfaces, strengthens security for remote workers, provides threat detection and prevention, and allows companies more visibility into print activity overall. 

 

Investing in Print Security 

Now that you understand the time to transition to a Zero Trust printing architecture is now, it’s important to select the right print management solution for your organization. The best possible solution will check these four critical boxes:

✔ Access and identity management

✔ Authentication for all connections and endpoints

✔ Segmentation of data to limit harm from breaches

✔ Simple, secure management features

PrinterLogic inherently checks off every box and possesses the necessary tools for your Zero Trust Printing environment. You can finally address your organization’s needs with a scalable solution that offers round-the-clock network protection and unlocks the true potential of your document and print management processes. 

 


Ready to see what Zero Trust Printing from PrinterLogic can do for you? Schedule a demo today. 

How to Achieve the Printing Efficiency You Need with Rule-Based Automation

Output Management Rules & Routing

Your electronic medical record system, enterprise resource planning, and other large-scale applications your organization relies on form critical parts of business processes. It’s crucial the output from those systems ends up in the right place, in the correct format, and on time.

With Vasion’s introduction of Output Management comes higher reliability, speed of delivery, and unification of management for both office and back-end application print management when printing from these systems, but still leaves the opportunity to further increase the efficiency, accuracy, and reliability of print and workflow tasks. 

 

Our customers stress that better efficiency is necessary for their output processes.

One of the concerns commonly brought up by customers I’ve spoken to has been ensuring uptime for critical printing with their printers themselves. If the printer designated for shipping labels or customer invoices breaks, it can put a serious dent in productivity while it’s down, and it’s not always easy to redirect traffic to a new printer within a customer’s application, resulting in unacceptable downtime.

Additionally, these environments often bring processes requiring manual intervention. A healthcare organization we worked with hoped to reduce costs by printing the majority of their documents in black and white, with only after-visit summaries printed in color to maintain a positive patient experience. Now, a manual touchpoint is introduced into the printing process, and it’s up to the individual clinician to remember to select the correct setting for just that type of job every time. 

 

These, and many other examples, drove Rules & Routing, a rule-based automation feature, as part of our Output Management Bundle. 

I challenge you to look deeper into your printing processes–you’ll notice those manual touchpoints often arise in your print environment, like manually converting documents to print-ready PDFs, paper notes taped to the printer reminding employees to print only in black and white, and attaching digital files to emails after scanning. These can all be automated as rules that trigger specific actions based on a set of behaviors. 


The three main components of Rules & Routing: 

  • Triggers are used to watch for specific events that should prompt the Rules & Routing service to decide which course of action to take.
  • Conditions provide the qualifying attributes that decide whether or not an action should be performed.
  • Actions are the actual behavior applied when conditions are met. 

These automated rules reduce or even eliminate any manual intervention, alter print data, increase document security, ensure proper delivery of documents, and more. In addition, document delivery goes beyond printers, including delivery direct to storage folders or through email, eliminating the manual touchpoint for your coworkers. 

 

Let’s look back at the example above from our customer needing to ensure continuous uptime for their printing processes. 

To solve this issue, I would create a rule that automatically reroutes my print data to a backup printer in the event we detect print failures on the primary printer to avoid long periods of downtime by following these steps:

  1. Create a rule with the trigger “Print Job Failed”
  2. Choose a condition selecting the primary printer(s) you are watching for failures
  3. And the “Redirect print job” action, where you’d select the backup printer
  4. Optionally, you could also add an additional action to email the originating user to alert them their job is located on a new printer

 

We’re very excited about the new Rules & Routing feature and its benefit to our Output Management customers’ complex environments. Visit our website and schedule a demo today. Our Output Management team is available to discuss your organization’s needs, goals, and automation initiatives.

Your Guide to Secure, Uninterrupted Printing with SAP

This blog is part of a three-part Output Management series about the Oracle Health EHR, Epic, and SAP connectors. Read the other installments on Epic and Oracle Health EHR

SAP is the world’s leading ERP solution that processes operational data and manages complex business processes in enterprise organizations. Organizations, like manufacturing and distribution that require continuous delivery of printed orders and invoices to keep their systems running, rely on highly available printing methods. 

 

Print Servers and High Availability

The typical method of printing from SAP is through a print server—often Windows print servers. On the back end, SAPWIN hands an initiated job to a print server running SAPSprint, which then processes and delivers to a standalone SAP print queue to finally be printed. 

Windows print servers may do the job of managing the high volumes of printing from your SAP environment, but what happens when hardware fails and halts printing? Microsoft deprecated print spooler clustering in Windows Server 2012 and instead, to maintain redundancy, put their print servers behind a load balancer to split print traffic. Unfortunately, when a print job has already been received or a print queue has an error, those jobs won’t print and often the load balancer won’t detect the failure. 

Connection interruptions and hardware failures aside, print servers in complex print and output webs require continued maintenance by trained IT professionals which fills up daily schedules. We’ve spoken to admins like you who struggle with the demand of managing complex print server environments. We recommend: 

  • Reducing print server hardware
  • Consolidating front- and back-end printing
  • Adopting Zero Trust values

If you’re asking yourself, “Is this even possible?”, we have the answer, and Vasion Print (formerly PrinterLogic) has the solution you’re looking for.

 

How can I reduce print server hardware while maintaining redundancy?

The end-to-end process without a print server is simple when you have Vasion Print facilitating your back-end printing from SAP. Here’s what that process looks like: 

All of your existing print queues are migrated into Vasion Print using our built-in migration utility. From there, you can deploy those queues to your end users automatically. If you’re an existing Vasion Print customer, you have likely already done this and are one step ahead!

Your print job originates from your SAP environment and is sent over TCP 515 to a designated Service Client, a lightweight desktop LPD Service that intercepts your jobs from SAP and routes them to your printers. These can run anywhere you want, but we recommend hosting them on an existing utility server used for other (non-printing related) tasks. You can spin up multiple Service Clients to achieve redundancy and high availability that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to do with your old print servers. Your print job data and metadata are received and analyzed by the LPD Service to determine where and how it will be printed.

A copy of the job persists in your own configured storage solution until the job is printed; either via direct IP printing or held securely until manual release with no threat of interruptions from connectivity loss. That’s it! All without the need for print server clustering. 

 

What is meant by front- and back-end printing consolidation? 

There is generally a disconnect between SAP back-end printing, print server management, and general office printing. With Vasion Print’s cloud-based Administrative Console, administrators can have control over all back-end configuration and redundancy and the entire printing lifecycle, while still maintaining visibility to front-end printers and print activity. No more managing a web of print servers and output locations when the entire process can be consolidated on a unified platform from a single pane of glass. 

 

How can I adopt Zero Trust on top of all of this?

We understand that managing network security in a complex net of print servers is time-consuming and stressful (that’s why we got rid of our print servers). Zero Trust levels the playing field for all employees by demanding verification from everyone. There are a few print methods that follow this principle: 

  • Off-Network Printing allows your guest or contracted users to print without you giving them access to the local network. Off-network jobs pass through a load-balanced gateway on your instance, then release via authentication at the printer.
  • Secure Release Printing holds print jobs on the queue until identity authentication at the printer to ensure all proprietary information gets into the right hands. Vasion Print offers these features and more in our add-on Advanced Security Bundle. 

In addition to secure print methods that help you adopt a Zero Trust environment, there are new features currently in progress with our development teams, which will offer even more output and print management capabilities. 

 

Why Vasion Print?

It just works! Vasion Print gives you centralized administration control to ease your security management burden while maintaining high availability in every print job. We think you’ll be pleased with what you see. 

We’d love to hear from you and discuss the Vasion Print Output Management solution further. If you’re interested in interfacing with a member of our team, contact your Vasion Print representative or schedule a demo here.

Managing Your Clinical Printing with Epic from a Unified Platform

This blog is part of a three-part Output Management series about the Oracle Health EHR , Epic, and SAP connectors. Read the other installments on Oracle Health EHR and SAP

Epic Systems Inc. is the leading supplier of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software in the U.S. and is expanding its customer base worldwide. It’s a highly trusted solution for many healthcare organizations. 

Despite Epic’s many strengths, managing printing in this environment is often challenging for IT because Epic queues are handled separately from other forms of (non-clinical) printing. There’s a way to unify the management of both administrative and clinical printing in a single Administrative (Admin) Console, with additional secure print methods—I’ll explain below.

But first, how can Epic host your environment?

Epic has two primary hosting architecture options: an on-premises, customer-hosted model and a cloud-based, Epic-hosted model. Customers may choose either model based on their infrastructure and the amount of control they want to have over their environment.

On-premises

An on-premises, customer-hosted model is a traditional method for Epic installations. It offers IT admins more control but requires more infrastructure and resources. Print management can be labor-intensive. Because printing is mission-critical, IT admins must create and manage multiple identical print servers for load balancing. They monitor their status and keep them synchronized.

Cloud-based

When Epic hosts the solution in the cloud, print servers are no longer controlled by the healthcare client, and administrators can no longer add to, remove from, or make changes to their print queues. Nor can they install software to help them manage their environment. They must contact Epic to open a ticket for every change. The response can be fast, but in some cases, there are delays. Many admins we work with want a more straightforward solution they can control. 

Either model has upsides and downsides. In any case, managing printing can be cumbersome without a solution to reduce the complications of multiple asynchronous servers and limited administrative access.

That’s where PrinterLogic comes in. 

PrinterLogic gives IT full control and allows healthcare organizations to manage all of their printing from one Admin Console—both for the clinical Epic environment and business-management office printing.

There are two ways PrinterLogic manages printing for Epic customers. One involves keeping the traditional Epic print servers but providing a powerful Admin Console for managing drivers and print settings across the Epic infrastructure. The other method is available by installing the PrinterLogic Epic Connector. Our Epic Connector eliminates the need to deploy drivers and queues to print servers altogether, unifying all forms of healthcare print management—including clinical and general office printing—from a single pane of glass. I’ll explain how it works. 

How does the PrinterLogic Epic Connector work?

The PrinterLogic Epic Connector reroutes print jobs so that, rather than flowing through a web of disconnected servers and drivers, it’s directed through PrinterLogic to the destination printers. The PrinterLogic Admin Console then becomes “mission control,” enabling you to manage the various servers, drivers, and queues across both Epic and clinical printing without the need for third-party equipment or services. 

Here’s how it works in 4 steps:

  1. The Epic Connector utilizes Epic’s Output Management API to receive documents to be printed directly from Epic, sent via HTTPS.
  2. These documents are sent with an XML file specifying the destination printer, print settings, the user who sent the job, and additional metadata. 
  3. The Epic Connector processes the job without a driver, eliminating the need to spool and render the job as with a traditional driver.
  4. Once printed, the Connector will use the included metadata to properly report user-level printing records and respond back to Epic that the job was successfully printed. This service includes automatic redundancy to protect against failures ensuring business-critical Epic printing is not interrupted. 

 

 

This architecture can be used with either on-premises or cloud-hosted instances of Epic on version 2018 or later.

This solution allows end users to securely hold their print jobs, which requires the user to authenticate their identity at the printer with an employee badge swipe, QR code scan from a mobile device, pin or password, and other release mechanisms, for the job to print. Secure Release can reduce print volume by up to 20 percent and prevent PHI or PII from being exposed to unintended viewers. 

Off-Network Printing is another method—allowing any traveling or contracted providers working in a hospital or clinic temporarily to still access networked printers and print, while not having official network access. When a job is printed via an off-network print queue, the job travels through the cloud, is received by an Internal Routing Service on the network, then pulled to the destination printer. 

How is the Epic Connector set up with an existing environment?

Setting up centralized management of printer drivers and settings for all Epic print servers is very straightforward. It only requires one simple step: The administrator installs the PrinterLogic agent on each server and allows the agent to import all existing print queues and their settings. 

Once imported, the administrator can work completely from PrinterLogic’s web-based Admin Console to update drivers, change settings, add or remove queues, and more, to gain more granular control over their environment. 

These changes automatically apply to all appropriate print servers to keep them in sync with one another without the need for manual changes or scripting. This method is only supported with on-premises instances of Epic.

Interested in eliminating all of your print servers?

We deliver a highly available serverless printing infrastructure, all managed from a cloud-based centralized Admin Console. We’d love to show you how. Schedule a demo here to learn more.