Why We’re Excited About Simplified Scanning. And Why You Should Be Too

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We are excited to announce a new solution: Simplified Scanning! 

We’ve added Scan To Email and Scan To Cloud to the PrinterLogic SaaS Core feature set to help organizations like yours quickly access and collaborate digitally instead of using those pesky paper documents or scanned copies.

As a product manager at Vasion for the past two years, I’ve been able to meet with our customers to discuss their challenges with both printing and scanning, like configuring and managing scanning processes on on-premise MFDs from different manufacturers, maintaining security and visibility to user activity, constantly training users on scanning as the process differs from MFD to MFD—the list goes on.  

We prioritized solving those challenges with this new solution to improve your way of doing things. That’s why I’m excited about Simplified Scanning. I think you will be, too, for these three key reasons.

 

1. Simplified setup, management, and control 

Varying configuration methods and interfaces can be a nightmare. If you have multiple MFDs of different manufacturers—the process gets way more time-consuming than it should be.

That said, pay close attention to the configuration steps below in Figure 1. 

To enable scanning within the Admin Console, you toggle on the feature from your Global Scan Settings, then enable Scan To Email or Cloud in the settings of the devices you want scanning. 

That’s it. Not so complicated, right?

From there, you have complete control within the Admin Console over the default Global Scan Settings for all MFDs and who can see and adjust which settings.

 

 

Figure 1: Configuration for Scan To Email and Cloud is simple within the PrinterLogic Admin Console. 

 

Scan To Email 

SMTP for emails is pre-configured in this initial release of Scan To Email, so you don’t have to configure it on each of your MFDs. Set it once, and you’re good to go. You can also lockdown Scan To Email recipients to specific domains and address book contacts, depending on the level of security and control you want with user scanning permissions. 

 

Scan To Cloud

Configure each cloud storage provider (Google Drive, Box, OneDrive, and SharePoint) within the Admin Console once rather than per user at every printer. You can set up specific groups or users to see and scan to particular cloud storage folders users need, like NDAs, contracts, and more. As long as the user has access to their cloud storage provider account, those folders will display for them at the MFD. 

Employee access maintenance is simple, too. Users are added and removed from cloud storage folders without you needing to re-configure access. If the user is in an IdP group, they get access automatically. 

 

2. Better visibility over your entire environment 

If you’re using the built-in scan function on your MFDs, you probably can’t see who is scanning or where files are sent—unless you’re standing at your MFD all day long, watching everyone who uses it. Scanning can be an inherently vulnerable process, and we put a big emphasis on being able to view and monitor all user scan activity from every MFD, all from a single platform, without standing guard at your scanner. 

Your basic MFD uses an NTLM V1 encryption, but we know you need more coverage than that. All file transfers that happen within PrinterLogic go through HTTPS/TLS 1.2, with all emails encrypted over SSL. With Single Sign-On (SSO) functionality, you can manage user access to MFDs to ensure only those that you have authorized can access printing and scanning functions. All users must authenticate their identity at the CPA via badge swipe or username and PIN credentials before scanning, ensuring that anything they do after login is tracked to their usernames. 

Then, within the Admin Console, you can access a designated scanning report to see activity information like who is scanning and from what workstation, the time of the scan, and additional scan job details to help you manage and maintain document and organizational security. 

 

 

3. Universal and convenient end user experience 

The old-school process for an end user to scan required users to scan a document, track down wherever that file was saved, then manually attach it to an email, or upload it to a cloud storage folder just to share it with others. Doing this with a few documents now and then can work, but it’s not a long-term solution, especially as the organization scales. 

With Simplified Scanning, your end users can log in to the Control Panel Application (CPA) on the printer as they usually would for Secure Release Printing, select a Scan To option (Email or Cloud), define their scan destination and settings, and then scan. The process takes minutes. 

This paperless process is great for you, too. With an intuitive, universal interface for end users to scan with no matter the printer manufacturer, you spend less time on helpdesk tickets for user configuration, logins, and retraining for different manufacturers. 

 

Looking to the future

Big things are happening behind the scenes that we can’t wait for you to see. 

There is more to come with additional scanning capabilities, from scanning to a network from a mobile device to a workflow with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. We’re dedicated to developing products that make your lives easier while benefiting your organization. 

Solutions like Simplified Scanning that automate manual processes and digitize document management are just the start of our Vasion unified platform—bringing print, workflow, and document management together. Stay tuned, and get excited. 

If you want to try Simplified Scanning in your organization, schedule a demo or contact your Customer Success Representative. 

Consolidate Your Network Printers With PrinterLogic SaaS

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Simplify things. Minimize infrastructure. Do more with less.

You’ve probably heard these a time or two. And when you’ve already accumulated a ton of hardware, it’s hard to decide how and where to start. 

Printing is often an afterthought, but consolidating your network printers under one solution can prove to be one of the quickest ways to downsize your print hardware. This blog covers the ways you can reduce unnecessary hardware with PrinterLogic’s SaaS print management solution to cut costs, improve visibility, and remove the single point of failure.  

 

Start with eliminating your print servers

Though it might seem daunting to organizations married to a traditional print infrastructure, print server elimination is the most efficient way to consolidate and downsize your print environment. Thanks to next-generation solutions like PrinterLogic SaaS, eliminating print servers is as easy as rolling out our solution (which, as it happens, is really easy and very quick). PrinterLogic automatically migrates your printers and drivers to our centralized Admin Console so you can see your complete fleet from a single pane of glass. 

Migration is simple, but what truly separates PrinterLogic from other solutions is the speed of the migration compared to other solutions.

The trouble for other solutions on the market is that effective network printer consolidation requires extensive, real-time information on individual printers as well as the larger print environment. Most solutions have enough trouble making network printer configuration as effortless as PrinterLogic does, deprioritizing print auditing and the detailed insight you need to carry out infrastructure consolidation as a result.

 

Get advanced reporting and insights into print activity

In addition to making network printer configuration and oversight easier than ever, PrinterLogic SaaS provides advanced management features like print auditing and reporting already built-in. These are the same powerful, comprehensive print auditing capabilities that have given our on-premise customers macro- and micro-level visibility into their print environments, enabling them to carry out cost-saving infrastructure reduction and network printer consolidation. 

In fact, a TechValidate study (TVID: 77B-13B-830) showed that 79% of verified PrinterLogic customers reduced their infrastructure by 30% or more simply by implementing PrinterLogic. And PrinterLogic SaaS delivers those same benefits in a convenient, cost-effective cloud solution.

With PrinterLogic SaaS’s print auditing and reporting capabilities, you can easily determine things like:

  • Which network printers see the heaviest and lightest use
  • How many pages are being printed by user and department on each printer
  • Who is printing the most in different departments 
  • When certain documents are printed, including those that meet certain search criteria
  • What the real-time costs of printing are

This degree of visibility is hard to obtain, even from specialized auditing solutions, as they don’t have the deep-seated, system-level integration that PrinterLogic SaaS does. Not only do you get a window into data related to network printer configuration, such as grayscale, duplexing, and users that initiated print jobs. You’ll even get specific guidance on network printer consolidation from PrinterLogic SaaS.

 

Reduce print hardware and maintenance costs

Because PrinterLogic SaaS is a cloud-based solution, the only local physical print infrastructure you need is your printers. PrinterLogic’s already minimal hardware standards result in an impressive reduction in print-related hardware above and beyond network printer consolidation. That equates to less hardware to purchase, less to operate and maintain, and less to upgrade over the long term. Combined with the time saved through PrinterLogic SaaS’s intuitive network printer configuration, which allows you to easily adjust default settings and deploy printers dynamically without Group Policy Objects (GPOs) or scripts, the potential ROI should be clear.

Factor in a reduction in print-related calls to the service desk, greater flexibility of user access, feature extensibility, and higher print availability, and you’ll see how PrinterLogic offers far more cost savings than network printer consolidation alone.

Curious how much you could save? Try our free print savings calculator. 

 

Ready to try serverless printing?

Long-term projects like infrastructure reduction call for long-term solutions that future-proof your organization. PrinterLogic is just that. We provide a platform that equips you with all the tools you need to scale effectively, including:

  • Pull printing (Secure Release)
  • Off-Network Printing
  • Print Quota Management
  • Multiple IdP Support

All of these features are available in our free 30-day trial so you can get the complete, serverless experience. Learn more about PrinterLogic here. 

Or sign-up for your free 30-day trial today.