How to Optimize Print Management in EMR and EHR Environments

Let’s face it. There’s no perfect way to get a job done. While Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software like Epic, MEDITECH, and Oracle Health EHR are undoubtedly valuable tools for accessing and maintaining medical records, they don’t make print management a walk in the park. Instead, they often turn print management into a nightmare scenario by placing rigorous demands on a print environment’s hardware and workflow. 

The unification of a rock-solid print management solution and EMR software may have seemed unlikely before; however, PrinterLogic makes it a reality by providing an integrated next-generation EMR print management solution that’s uniquely suited to solving the fundamental printing problems with EMR systems.

Let’s examine three fundamental issues of EMR and EHR print architecture and how PrinterLogic solves them. 

 

1. Confusion Caused by Dispersed Print Environments

It’s tough to manage a printer fleet that is spread across multiple locations. This is one of the significant issues that IT professionals face in a fragmented and complex print environment that depends on print servers. Dispersed printing environments make fundamental practices like adding a printer to the network a chore. The prime reasons are that the IT departments have to make sure the printer is compatible with every type of environment and come up with GPO deployment rules.

Not only must the IT department scramble to find solutions to printer problems, but employees are also left scrambling to find the right printer to print to. In a dispersed print environment, convenience is hard to come by, and end users feel powerless. Plus, they constantly rely on the IT helpdesk to fix issues that could be solved with a user-friendly interface and more user empowerment. 


Solution

Eliminating your print servers makes consolidating and simplifying print management possible. Using PrinterLogic’s web-based management portal allows you to administer your entire print environment—no matter how distributed—from a single pane of glass. Any changes you make can be instantly synchronized across any number of EPSs throughout your organization. That saves time and reduces the likelihood of mistakes, as OhioHealth discovered when simplifying its Epic printing environment by deploying PrinterLogic’s print management software.

 

2. Lack of Control Over Front-end and Back-end Printing Due to Limited Visibility

It takes a ton of effort to increase transparency in a conventional healthcare printing environment because most don’t have the monitoring, auditing, and reporting features that are needed to keep up. This is evident in a typical Epic printing environment. Each Epic print server (EPS) requires manual intervention when adding, changing, or removing printers. This means that a single change for, say, one model of printer has to be repeated for every single EPS–and commonly for every single instance of that printer model on that EPS. 

Not only is that style of management incredibly tedious, but it is also short-sighted. It creates disparate systems between locations, teams, and processes, potentially causing duplicative print queue management. It’s a painfully inefficient and potentially problematic approach to EMR print management.


Solution

Output Automation from PrinterLogic allows you to view and manage all front- and back-end print activity from across your entire organization from a single interface. 

With strengthened visibility, admins are able to gather and assess data quickly, giving insight into:

  • Which printers are seeing the most traffic
  • When certain print jobs were carried out
  • Which users account for the most print jobs in a given department
  • Who printed “classified” documents

These features show the holes in your print environment, allowing you to utilize Rules & Routing and better manage the security of your print environment. Most importantly, Output Automation sets you up for future success by providing the full scope of your print environment, leading you to make more informed decisions tailored to your organization’s specific needs and growth. 

 

3. Risk of Exposing Confidential Information

Keeping client information confidential seems like a simple task, but it continues to be a problem even with the technological advances in print management. Maintaining the privacy of sensitive client information is especially difficult in distributed healthcare environments since employees are constantly rotating shifts or moving from department to department. 

In dynamic environments like this, client information gets lost easily through accidentally being picked up over other print jobs or remains a vulnerable piece of paper in a random printer tray waiting to be picked up by anyone around. It’s hard to stay HIPAA compliant in an environment where you can’t manage who sees your clients’ information. 


Solution

PrinterLogic gives end users the power to hold their print jobs in their workstations through Secure Release Printing. Not only does it keep sensitive data in the hands of employees who need it, but it also greatly minimizes cost, keeps your company HIPAA compliant, and requires minimal effort by employees to execute a print job. 

Using PrinterLogic’s Secure Release Printing feature, you simply click “Print” but instead of the job being sent directly to the printer, it is held at your workstation. Once you are ready to print, simply walk over to the nearest printer and authorize the print job by using a badge/card reader, a PIN, or our smartphone app (iOS and Android). For an extra layer of security, badge+PIN or user ID+PIN options are also available. 

 

Make EMR Print Management Easy for All with PrinterLogic

PrinterLogic has simplified healthcare printing environments and, at the same time, eliminated companies’ costs of purchase, operation, and maintenance—not to mention their single points of failure. Here are some of the companies that have benefited from PrinterLogic’s EMR print management solution:

  • Guthrie: PrinterLogic simplified Guthrie’s Epic print environment by enabling mobile employees to print from any office and reducing the time and cost of print-related helpdesk calls.
  • Saber Healthcare Group: PrinterLogic’s centralized Admin Console helped take pressure off a distraught IT team that needed simplified, around-the-clock print capabilities for a growing business. 
  • UW Health: PrinterLogic helped stamp out their WAN chokepoints by leveraging direct IP printing while maintaining centralized management. This greatly increased their overall print speeds and helped avoid headaches associated with high network traffic. 
  • OhioHealth: To keep their goals of a 10-fold expansion to their Epic print environment within reach, PrinterLogic offered OhioHealth a solution for streamlining print server and printer configurations. With one simple click, they can now update all printers and servers automatically. 
  • Princeton Community Hospital: Utilizing a MEDITECH print environment, Princeton Community Hospital realized that MEDITECH’s inability to work well in heterogeneous environments was causing them too much inconvenience. After installing PrinterLogic, they gained unprecedented print availability and uptime, and user-initiated printer installations. 

Along with the ability to integrate with Epic and MEDITECH, PrinterLogic has added Oracle Health EHR to its list of compatible EMR software. 

Implementing PrinterLogic to enhance your printing environment takes the complexity and chaos out of EMR print management—even in distributed organizations with hundreds or thousands of printers. In addition to providing security to client data, PrinterLogic’s advanced reporting capabilities make it simple for admins to track print jobs and how client files are being printed. By saving time, headaches, and ultimately costs through its small footprint and ease of use, healthcare organizations can place focus on delivering superior customer service and stop devoting unnecessary time and effort to delivering basic EMR printing to end users.

How to Eliminate Your School District’s Print Servers

Did you know that the national gross domestic product (GDP) is growing 13.5% faster than public education budgets? It’s one of many reasons schools face continued funding shortages. As budget cuts continue, K-12 schools are desperate to find ways to make more efficient use of their resources. One of the top ways to save money for years to come is to eliminate print servers in your school district. 

Print servers are clunky, expensive, and difficult to maintain. They’re also a headache for IT teams, which means schools have to add and pay additional IT staff members. As more K-12 schools move away from print servers, both teachers and students are finding benefits far beyond improved finances, such as improved data security, faster printing time, and easier scalability. To help your school district move from print servers to a centralized, serverless print management system, here are the three easy steps you need to take. 

  

 

Deploy Chrome OS Client Extension to Chromebooks or Users From Google Admin Console

The PrinterLogic ChromeOS Client extension enables your ChromeOS workstation to communicate with your instance of PrinterLogic. The client installed on your ChromeOS Device communicates with PrinterLogic on a regular basis. To help eliminate print servers in your school district, start by deploying the ChromeOS Client Extension to Chromebooks or specific Google Chrome users from the Google Admin console. The Chrome extension allows users to easily migrate from Google Cloud Print. From there, you can add printers, change print settings, manage printers, see the print queue, view the release portal, and refresh configurations. 

Integration with Chrome is becoming more important than ever. Chromebooks have become an essential part of school culture, with more than 50 million students and teachers using Chromebooks every day. Moving away from print servers wouldn’t be complete without involving Chromebooks. As more school districts upgrade to centralized, serverless print management systems, they’re enjoying the benefit of easier and faster printing—including from tablets and Chromebooks. Chromebook cloud printing is a quick, simple way for students and teachers to print from anywhere in the school. 

 

 

Manage Printers and Deployment Settings in the PrinterLogic Admin Console 

Once you have the Chrome extension installed, the next step is to manage printers and deployment settings in the PrinterLogic Admin Console. PrinterLogic is flexible and offers a variety of settings, so you can tailor the settings to the needs of your individual school or district. With the PrinterLogic Admin Console, you can manage users, devices, drivers, and more all from one centralized location.

Your printing quotas require careful consideration. Serverless print management software allows admins to easily establish printing quotas, which can be different for teachers, students, and other faculty positions. Quotas prevent people from printing in excess and using paper unnecessarily. Sometimes overprinting is a genuine mistake, like when a teacher meant to print a single page but accidentally printed a whole chapter. Other times, overprinting is the result of carelessness. Either way, print quotas prevent the waste of paper, ink, and electricity. Print quotas can also help manage wear and tear on the physical printers and indicate when parts may need to be replaced. 

The settings also have another use: information. The data that serverless printing software gathers from print jobs offers important insights into who is using paper and when. With that data, school admins can make strategic decisions to adjust quotas, better understand teachers’ and students’ needs, and better allocate resources. The data can show trends over time, by demographic, and by location so schools know exactly how resources are used. By moving away from print servers, IT teams gain full visibility into all user scan activity within the Admin Console. That visibility helps IT teams manage security, improve workflows, track cost-savings, protect budgets, and even inform future purchases, such as buying additional scanners for staff. 

Skip the Server and Print Directly to the Network Printers

After completing the first two steps, you’re free to send print jobs directly to network printers from your ChromeOS device. PrinterLogic is OS-agnostic, so you can print from nearly any device. 

Because the print jobs go directly to network printers instead of to a server, the printing time is faster. Students and teachers will be able to retrieve their print jobs before the bell rings. 

The district IT team will breathe a sigh of relief with network printers, too, because there are no more drivers to install, no more print queue problems, and fewer clunky hardware issues to fix. Without print servers, your school also has a lower risk of data breaches, which your IT team will be happy about. 

Print management solutions and cloudless servers mean your IT team can focus on more meaningful initiatives. According to TechnologyLab, some of the top priorities for forward-looking IT teams in K-12 schools are:

  • Implementing AI-driven adaptive learning platforms to cater to individual student needs.
  • Using AI-powered analytics to assess student performance and tailor teaching strategies accordingly.
  • Integrating virtual assistants and chatbots to enhance student support services.

 

When IT teams don’t have to spend their time fixing outdated print servers, those are the priorities they can invest their efforts in. IT teams can shift their focus to implementing cutting-edge solutions that offer students more opportunities to learn. 

To learn more about how PrinterLogic solution can help your school district move from time- and money-draining print servers to fast, centralized print management networks, schedule a free demo with us today.

Printing Management Software: Do You Need It?

Originally published July 5, 2023. 

According to printing giant Xerox, 61% of organizations have experienced data losses due to unsecure printing practices. Internal document theft is up. The financial damage caused by data breaches is getting harder to swallow. And companies are taking note.  

These are staggering threats from something as simple as printing a document. The good news is that secure printing solutions can protect your organization, as well as offer some cost-saving benefits.  

So, what are secure printing solutions, and why do you need them? 


What is secure printing?

Secure printing is the process of releasing a print job at a designated printer using one of several authentication methods. Documents are held in a queue until the user is physically present at the printer. Authentication methods vary—from entering an employee PIN to scanning an ID badge or using a mobile application—and can be released only when the user is physically at the printer. 

Secure printing is slightly different than pull printing. Pull printing allows jobs to be released at any pull printing-enabled network printer. Regardless, secure printing and pull printing offer an additional layer of security that protects confidential documents. However, secure printing solutions provide benefits that extend to the remote workforce and help future-proof your print environment. 


How can secure printing solutions benefit you?

1. They help you reduce legacy infrastructure.

Secure printing solutions aren’t exactly “secure” if you can’t reduce legacy infrastructure. In this case, we’re talking about print servers. 

After the PrintNightmare fiasco in 2021, it became clear that print servers needed to be wiped from the picture. Secure printing solutions remove print servers from the equation and don’t hold print jobs in a spooler queue. Instead, print jobs are held at the workstation or the printer and remain on the local network until a user is ready to release it.

In addition to increased security, eliminating legacy infrastructure can save a lot of money. Up-front cost is a common concern when replacing entire systems, but some executives don’t realize that legacy printers require high amounts of electricity and frequently need repairs. Secure printing solutions allow teams to get rid of the expensive, clunky legacy equipment and offer more energy-efficient and long-lasting printing options. 


2. They allow remote workers to print securely.

Remote workers need a way to print securely without having to resort to printing on an unmanaged, off-network home printer. Secure printing solutions can give contractors, remote workers, and roaming employees the ability to print to an in-network printer while working on an outside network. 

This functionality enables out-of-office end users to print freely and release documents at the office at their convenience, putting a stop to using home office printers (which are a huge security liability and impossible for admins to track). Even with remote employees working all around the globe, secure printing also offers visibility.

Furthermore, secure off-network printing capabilities offer employees a flexible way to deliver confidential documents to someone in the office instead of sending personal or customer information to them via email.  


3. They adhere to Zero Trust standards.

Secure printing is a crucial aspect of complying with Zero Trust standards, meaning that anyone who wants to print must provide verification. The additional layer of security keeps confidential information in the hands of those who printed it. That level of authentication is a step in the right direction, but to be considered a Zero Trust-caliber secure printing solution, it also has to integrate with the identity providers (IdPs) used in your environment. 

IdPs provide your company with a double layer of security that end users must go through before they can print. IdPs also restrict users to the necessary applications they need to do their job. Adding secure printing functionality on top of that dramatically reduces the risk of identity and document theft, helping you achieve Zero Trust Printing

 

4. They give users mobile printing capabilities.

Secure printing capabilities can extend to your end users’ mobile devices. If you’re managing a BYOD environment, leveraging phones, tablets, and laptops to print securely is a great way to cut down on costs and boost productivity simultaneously. Users can send print jobs to a designated printer on the company network and release them later without having to hop on specific company computers just to print a few documents.  

However, there’s a caveat to this one. 

Not all secure printing solutions offer 100% compatibility with all printer models and operating systems (this one does). So, make sure to choose a solution that checks all the boxes for the devices and printers in your environment. 

 

5. They future-proof your business.

Theft isn’t going away. But it’s possible to mitigate it. 

Secure printing solutions set you up for success and reduce the chances of information being exploited for personal gain or a competitive advantage. They’re able to meet the demands of a hybrid workforce and offer a consistent end-user experience that doesn’t hamper productivity. They enable printing from an array of mobile devices and are built around maintaining compliance throughout all industries. 

Even better, they take pressure off IT.

With a more modern and free IT team paired with the ability to work with remote and hybrid employees, secure printing solutions pave the way for you to thrive now and in the future. 


Secure Printing Solutions on a Single Platform

One problem with most of the secure printing products on the market is that they require a print server, which means that if your print server goes down, everything ceases to work. 

PrinterLogic eliminates your print servers and removes the single point of failure while providing a centrally managed direct IP printing platform. On top of that, PrinterLogic is 100% device- and OS-agnostic and integrates with all major IdPs. 

PrinterLogic’s version of secure printing, Secure Release Printing, holds print jobs on the user’s workstation and empowers users to release print jobs using one of the following methods:

  • Smartphone App/QR Code
  • Control Panel
  • Web Browser
  • Badge reader

Plus, get access to additional secure printing features like Off-Network Printing, Mobile App Release, and Concurrent IdP Support to extend the security reach of your print environment. 


See firsthand how PrinterLogic leverages secure printing features in the cloud and gives you the protection you need in today’s print environments.
Schedule a demo and see how PrinterLogic can change your printing today.

What Is Pull Printing?

Sprinting to the printer to pick up a confidential document can get anyone’s heart pounding. Sure, it’s great exercise. But have you ever thought, “There has to be a better way to do this?”

There is. And it’s called pull printing. 

You may have heard of pull printing before or one of its thousands of other monikers like follow-me printing, secure printing, or tap and print—to name a few. 

But what exactly is pull printing? And is it the right fit for you? 

 

Defining Pull Printing

Pull printing is a two-step verification for your print jobs. In the first step, a user initiates the job from a workstation or a mobile device in the same way as they ordinarily would. In the second, that same user permits the destination printer to execute the job.

However, when we place so much emphasis on streamlining the printing process, what’s the point of adding an extra step?

In a word: security

Pull printing ensures that classified documents, or those not intended for wider circulation, aren’t left sitting next to the printer for anyone to see by making the initiation and the release of the job two deliberate actions. This is especially handy when a user wants to print a job at a printer located on another floor or in a completely different building—say, before a meeting or a presentation.

 

Reasons to Implement Pull Printing

We just mentioned security as the number one reason to use pull printing. But, the benefits of pull printing stretch far beyond that. Below are a few key reasons to implement pull printing for your organization:

 

Sustainability

Even the most polished writers make typos, let alone end users. The problem is, once a user clicks Print, it’s impossible to go back in time and redo the print job—and that paper goes straight to the bin. The same applies to accidentally printing duplicates. Pull printing holds print jobs in the queue until users are ready to release them, making it easier to cancel unwanted jobs before they fall into the print tray. 

 

Fewer Helpdesk Calls

When IT is worrying less about printing, that’s a good thing. Equipping your printers with pull printing capabilities allows users to walk to another printer to release their print job when their go-to printer is down. This keeps users productive and doesn’t cause printing to come to a complete stop. Yes, IT will have to address the printer problem eventually, but you won’t get the same call four or five times about the same printer.

 

Simplicity

Printing should be a mindless process. Pull printing keeps printing simple for end users despite the added step. Gone are the days of running to the printer or panicking that someone will swipe your document. Think of it this way: When the user clicks print, the print job is placed in their back pocket until they are ready to release it. On top of that, users can pick up their print jobs in bulk and choose any pull-printing compatible printer they’d like to release their jobs. It’s simple, it’s efficient, and users hardly notice the extra step. 

 

Cut Costs

Print costs pile up in a variety of ways. But none hurt your bottom line more than paper and ink waste. One study estimates that 30% of print jobs never leave the print tray. That’s 30% that companies could save on consumables by holding print jobs in a queue before releasing them. Electricity consumption also drops because your printers are less active.

 

Printer Reduction

Every IT team dreams of having fewer printers, and pull printing allows you to minimize your printer fleet by removing individual desktop printers. Instead, end users can utilize shared printers to release their print jobs at their discretion without the risk of their documents being seen by wandering eyes. Removing local printers doesn’t sacrifice security, either. Pull printing helps companies maintain compliance standards and decreases attack surfaces by helping you reduce print infrastructure. 

 

Pull Printing with PrinterLogic

With PrinterLogic’s pull printing functionality, known as Secure Release Printing, users can print and issue the “pull” command to release the print job using one of four secure methods:

 

Touchless printing (QR code release): Using the QR code reader within the PrinterLogic Print Release App, simply scan the QR code on the printer directly from the default camera on the device. Users can then select the print job they want to release within the app.  

Web browser: Any device capable of running a browser—PC, Mac, Chromebook, or any mobile device—can release print jobs securely using PrinterLogic’s web-based app. For example, you can put an iPad or an affordable netbook near an active printer group and use it as a pull printing release station.

Badge/card reader: An external badge reader is placed at the printer, or a device already integrated into the printer itself is used. The reader integrates with your existing badge system to release the pulled print jobs at the authorized printer. It’s also compatible with CAC/PIV card certificates. 

Control panel application: With this method, the PrinterLogic app is installed directly onto a supported printer, allowing users to log in and release their print jobs directly from the device’s built-in display. Like QR Code Release, this method doesn’t require additional hardware.

 

PrinterLogic’s serverless printing solution allows you to leverage Secure Release Printing and implement modern secure print solutions to help drive your business forward and keep your data and documents safe. 

Want to try Secure Release Printing for yourself? Request a demo and get a 30-day free trial of PrinterLogic’s Advanced Security features. 

 

Print Management in a Hybrid Environment

Hybrid print environments can take many forms. 

For instance, one hybrid environment might comprise a mix of new and legacy printing devices. Another might be a combination of mobile and desktop users. Yet another hybrid environment might piecemeal together printing software or print management services to serve the unique requirements of different user pools. It’s not uncommon for some hybrid environments to include a little bit of all of the above.

But the burning question is: How do you simplify print management in hybrid environments?

We’ll answer that. But first, let’s delve into the difficulties IT teams are facing.

 

The Problems With Print Management in Hybrid Environments

As workplaces move away from traditional desk-based models and become more varied, hybrid environments are increasingly the rule rather than the exception. That inevitably creates problems for IT, where standardization is typically the most efficient and reliable way to administer the organization’s hardware and software infrastructure.

However, standardizing your print management services can be difficult when your managed print environment is a kaleidoscope of printer makes and models interfacing with different operating systems, client devices, and users.

One of the biggest challenges to pain-free print management is user acceptance. Adopting a uniform printing software solution might be welcomed by the IT staff, but if it means your end users have to compromise functionality or jump through extra hoops, that solution can quickly turn counterproductive. Users who are frustrated or confused (or both) by printing will inevitably call the helpdesk. Instead of proactively handling the organization’s managed print environment, admins and support staff are stuck reacting to printer issues and support tickets.

 

Creating the Ideal Hybrid-Managed Print Environment

A hybrid-managed print solution should be easy to administer, transparent to the end user, and improve the print workflow—irrespective of front-of-house variables like OS, department, client type, or printer model. Ideally, it should do these four things:

  1. Allow an organization to streamline infrastructure without sacrificing functionality and security. 
  2. Enable admins to oversee and maintain their managed print environments from a single pane of glass. 
  3. Provide powerful print management services and advanced functionality without resulting in a lumbering Frankenstein of add-ons and third-party software.
  4. Extend printing capabilities to hybrid employees by offering an easy way to print to network printers instead of relying on vulnerable home office printers (nearly 66% of companies are worried that home office printers pose a risk to their security). 

Simply put, the perfect print management solution for today’s hybrid workforce unifies and streamlines the print environment while providing infinite scalability, incredible user-friendliness for admins and end users, and next-generation features like mobile and off-network printing.

 

The Solution: Serverless Print Management

Serverless print management software allows organizations to eliminate print servers from their managed print environments, removing the need to deploy, operate, maintain, and upgrade remote print infrastructure. At the same time, it integrates seamlessly with any existing printer fleet and many print management services, even in complex Citrix and VMware virtual environments, which allows for quick, smooth initial migrations followed by effortless administration from that point on.

All of this is possible with PrinterLogic.

PrinterLogic’s SaaS print management solution combines next-gen, centralized management with the proven reliability of direct IP printing. 

That means:

  • Admins escape the hassle of establishing every client–printer connection. And, unlike common alternatives to direct IP, PrinterLogic’s serverless platform eliminates print servers and removes their single points of failure.
  • Admins and authorized support staff can deploy printers and drivers according to criteria like Active Directory (AD), IP address range, and MAC addresses—without relying on GPOs or scripts
  • End users can install printers themselves through PrinterLogic’s Self-Service Installation Portal. Instead of choosing from long lists of printers, which increases the risk of incorrect installs, they can identify nearby printers using the optional floor plan maps and install them with just one click. This feature has reduced helpdesk calls by up to 95% for some organizations.

But how does serverless printing benefit IT teams and hybrid employees?

If your environment requires constant mobility and security, PrinterLogic offers various features that enhance the printing experience for hybrid employees, including:

Off-Network Printing: Empower hybrid employees to print to any network printer from the comfort of their home office, a cafe, or a hotel for later pick-up. Your print data doesn’t remain at rest in the cloud and stays encrypted until it is behind your organization’s firewall. This feature removes infrastructure costs like VPNs, hosting services, and external access portals. 

Mobile Printing: Enable users with any mobile device, regardless of OS, to print to authorized printers. There’s no client-side software to install, and it works with any new or legacy network printer. Mobile, BYOD, and guest users can print quickly, reliably, and easily to on-location printers no matter where they happen to be.

Secure Release Printing: Boost security with a two-step print-and-release workflow to ensure that end users are physically present to claim their jobs. Release options include CAC/PIV, badge or card readers, web browser, and ID/PIN entry at the control panel. In addition, PrinterLogic’s QR code release method allows for a secure, convenient pull printing release mechanism without investing in any dedicated print release infrastructure.

 

Get Stress-Free Print Management Free for 30 Days

Despite the nuances and complexities of hybrid environments, PrinterLogic removes the barriers that make it difficult for managed print environments to adapt. While realizing time and cost savings through their ability to eliminate print servers, our print software solutions empower end users, increase organizations’ flexibility, and equip them with a robust print management platform built for enterprises of all sizes.

To see firsthand how PrinterLogic can unify and enhance your hybrid print environment, request a demo for a free 30-day trial today.

How to Easily Migrate Printers from Print Servers with Automated Migration

With Windows 7 now officially past its end of life, OS upgrades and migration are on everyone’s minds. For IT departments and providers of managed print services, that’s not always a good thing.

 

Migrations cause migraines

Sure, the process has gotten a little easier over the years, but it’s almost impossible not to run into some hiccups. Even when moving from one Windows version to another.

With traditional printing solutions like print servers, migration takes on a whole new level of complexity. You’ve got to bring over drivers and profiles, many of which are incompatible with the new server version. You’ve got to reconnect workstations and cross your fingers that the client OS will play well with the new printing software. If you’re using group policy or scripts, you’ve got triple-check all the associations.

And then, of course, you’ve got to deal with all the end users who call the next day because they can’t print.

At least, that’s what migration looks like if you’re not using PrinterLogic.

Our serverless print infrastructure features an automated migration tool that makes life dramatically easier for IT and managed print services. With PrinterLogic, your organization can migrate away from legacy printing solutions once and for all.

 

What automated migration looks like with PrinterLogic

PrinterLogic’s built-in migration tool fully automates the transfer of printer objects from your existing print server to our next-generation printing solution. It’s a simple and straightforward process:

  1. First, the migration tool copies printer objects and drivers from the print servers you’ve selected into PrinterLogic’s centralized Admin Console.
  2. Next, the CSV uploader bulk imports any unmanaged direct IP printers you might have.
  3. Then, the PrinterLogic workstation client silently converts Windows shared printers into managed direct IP printers.
  4. Finally, the workstation client assumes control of all authorized printer objects.
  5. There is no step five. Your end users are now enjoying robust serverless printing, and you’re enjoying enterprise-wide print management from a single pane of glass.

We know that most admins can’t wait to say goodbye to their print servers. At the same time, they also don’t want to force downtime on their end users.

That’s why PrinterLogic’s migration tool makes things quick and seamless. RC Willey Home Furnishings transitioned several hundred printers—and 1,500 users—to PrinterLogic in under two hours (read the case study here).

And they’re not the only ones.

More than one IT professional has told us that their end users didn’t even know that a large print migration had taken place.

We also know that first impressions count. That’s why we designed our migration tool to be a stunningly smooth experience for large, distributed enterprise environments as well as managed print services providers who oversee multiple clients. And, yes, it’s just as straightforward with tricky Citrix printing environments.

 

The benefits of automated migration with PrinterLogic

Seamlessness, simplicity and ease of use are rare among printing solutions and therefore big pluses in any migration. But PrinterLogic’s migration tool also gives IT professionals granular control over which print servers they choose to migrate.

Using the tool, you can browse to your existing print servers through your Active Directory tree or the Windows network. Or you can target your print servers by IP address. That makes it easy to pinpoint the print servers you want to migrate and ultimately eliminate with PrinterLogic’s serverless print infrastructure.

Citrix printing sometimes falls into a class by itself, but PrinterLogic has been verified as Citrix Ready and offers the same level of control when migrating (and eliminating) Citrix print servers.

After migration, regardless of the prior print environment, you’ll have more reliable, cost-effective and less resource-intensive printing with PrinterLogic. And that’s true whether you’ve chosen to migrate to our cloud solution, PrinterLogic SaaS, or our on-prem version, PrinterLogic Virtual Appliance.

You don’t have to make a full-scale print migration based on faith alone. As a proof of concept, sign up for a free 30-day PrinterLogic trial today. You’ll see how easy it is to move from your current printing solution—no matter if it’s print servers, Citrix printing, or unmanaged direct IP—to PrinterLogic’s serverless print infrastructure.

Best Strategies for Deploying Print Servers

So, your organization has reached a point where it’s time to deploy another—or maybe your first ever—print server. Just like every other hardware, there’s a good way and a not-so-good way to deploy them. And there are alternatives to print servers that you might not have considered yet. 

Before you start down any path, you’ll want to think about your preferred topology. 

Will you have a single centralized network print server or will you have localized print servers distributed across your organization?

Let’s explore the pros and cons of each one. 

 

The Good and Bad of Centralized Print Servers

A centralized print server consolidates your print management infrastructure in one place. That makes print management more convenient, but it also introduces two potentially serious problems. The first is WAN vulnerability, as the WAN connection will be the only link between the network print server and remote locations. Should the WAN be interrupted, so will print activity for the affected location. 

The second issue is that a centralized print server creates a single point of failure. To guard against this, expensive redundancy measures are needed, although this will also create additional work for the print management team.

 

The Good and Bad of Localized Print Servers

Localized print servers allow you to keep the number of clients per server low. Because print server performance can suffer as the number of connected clients increases, fewer clients on more print servers sounds like a wise idea. 

However, increasing the number of print servers also complicates print management because the printer drivers, print queues, software, and user pool need to be maintained across each of them which drives up costs. When you upgrade, you’ll usually need to rely on a print server migration tool (provided a suitable one is available) to bring every single print server up to date.

 

Tips for Choosing the Best Print Server Model

Understanding the strengths and drawbacks of those two basic topologies will help you determine how to best structure your current print server deployment to build a solid foundation for future upgrades and deployments. Because print servers in any configuration have limits to their scalability, whichever architecture you choose will have an impact on how your IT environment expands and evolves in the coming years.

Starting as you mean to go on is an equally good mantra when setting up your organization’s network print server. Here are a few friendly pieces of advice to consider:

  • Clutter is the enemy, and less is more (or at least more manageable). 
  • Keep drivers to an absolute minimum, as too many drivers can be resource-intensive and cause print spooler problems. 
  • Test initial drivers thoroughly before deploying them. Rogue drivers are notorious for crashing print spoolers. 
  • Enable driver isolation and use up-to-date (v4) drivers to minimize the possibility of spooler crashes.

Lastly, you’ll need to look at your current as well as your future IT environment with a wide-angle lens. Does your organization have a mix of clients running different operating systems? Are you planning to transition to mobile or Chromebook-type clients? Is secure printing important to your organization? 

Your answers to those questions will determine what shape your print server deployment takes and whether or not you’ll need to augment that infrastructure with additional third-party solutions.

 

Do you really need a print server to print?

With all that in mind, perhaps the most fundamental step in print server deployment is asking yourself whether you really need one at all. PrinterLogic’s next-generation print management solution does everything you demand of print servers—but without the WAN vulnerabilities, the expanding infrastructure, the limits to scalability, and the susceptibility to PrintNightmare.

PrinterLogic’s SaaS solution allows you to manage your entire print environment, no matter how distributed, from a single pane of glass. Better still, you can deliver printers to users without relying on GPOs or scripts and easily implement advanced functionality like Mobile Printing. You can even empower end users to install printers themselves in the Self-Service Printer Installation Portal

 

Already using print servers?

So, what if you’ve deployed a print server (or several) in your organization? 

PrinterLogic makes the transition to powerful, centrally managed direct IP printing quick and easy. It features a handy print server migration tool that imports all your printers, drivers, and profiles, so you can seamlessly manage your entire print environment from a centralized location and eliminate your print servers—and all their attendant costs and hassle—in record time.

Even when done properly, print server deployment is no small task. It takes a lot of time and planning, but even if you make all the right moves, your organization is still stuck with their inherent limitations and security vulnerabilities. 

It stands to reason that the best way to deploy print servers is not deploying them…ever.

Go serverless. 

How Print Management Services Can Reduce Printing Costs

You’ve asked users to print less, stop printing in color, and use duplex for every print job. As a result, your users have risen up in rebellion and continue to make costly printing mistakes—printing in simplex, using color ink for every print job, and leaving jobs in the print tray. 

We’re kidding, of course. 

But when you’re trying reduce print costs in traditional print environments, it is a constant struggle. Print management services can help combat habits that make printing expensive. 

 

The reasons you’re overspending on printing. 

Printing and print servers have a closer relationship to your organization’s bottom line than you may think. Here are a few overlooked expenses in traditional print environments:

  • Print consumable waste (e.g., toner, paper)
  • Purchasing, deploying, and maintaining servers and endpoint devices
  • Time spent on print-related helpdesk calls—for users as well as IT staff
  • Lost productivity due to printer downtime and print service interruptions
  • Excessive time and resources devoted to deployments and driver management

And those are only the major ones. 

Add them up in dollars and it will likely amount to a shockingly high figure—which is money that your organization could be saving or allocating to other areas. The problem is, conventional print management services don’t address these issues in a systematic way. These preventable costs have become an accepted part of the status quo.

It doesn’t have to be like that. Forward-thinking print management services can reduce printing costs dramatically.

 

How do print management services save you money?

Think of print management services as the ultimate tune-up of your print environment. You’ll no longer be stuck performing tedious server maintenance, deployments are more precise, and you get access to features designed to cut costs without sacrificing efficiency. 

 

1. They eliminate print servers (and printers) from your environment

The costs of maintaining, licensing, upgrading, and powering print servers stacks up over time. You’re not only dealing with expenses here, either. Countless hours are devoted to print servers just to keep printing afloat in organizations. Print server crashes lead to hours of damage control and employees are less productive when printing services are down. 

Print management services enable IT teams to remove print servers from their environment and consolidate management to a single platform. With a bird’s-eye-view of your print environment, you can identify which printers aren’t being utilized in your environment and remove them from your printer fleet. 

The removal of legacy infrastructure doesn’t just cut down your company’s electric bill. You experience long-term saving by removing tedious server maintenance and increasing end user productivity. 

 

2. They allow you to track costs

Users print every day. With hundreds, if not thousands, of users to manage you can imagine how tracking print jobs seems like a daunting task. And it is. Especially in decentralized print environments. 

Print management services allow you to determine the cost of each print job (color and greyscale), allowing you to calculate the precise dollar amount of paper and consumable usage. You can narrow your search down to users, devices, and groups to see where printing is being used the most (or the least) and determine which areas to develop stricter printing policies to cut costs.

Who knows? You may find that a few users don’t need printers anymore, allowing you to minimize your printer fleet even further. 

 

3. They promote sustainability (and security)

You’re probably calling our bluff on this one. But sustainability and security go hand-in-hand in modern print environments. By authenticating end users at the printer before they can receive their print jobs, you can cut down on paper waste, cancel accidental print jobs, and make sure print jobs aren’t left in the print tray. 

And users aren’t inconvenienced by the extra step, either. 

You and your team can choose the authentication method that works best for your end users. Print management services offer a few of the following release methods like badge release, entering a PIN at the control panel, web browser release, and QR code scanning. 

Most solutions don’t offer the full lineup of authentication methods mentioned above. For more info on Secure Release Printing (pull printing) click here

 

4. They enable you to limit print volumes

Some IT teams have a tighter budget to work with. Having the ability to limit print volumes by setting quotas for users or groups is critical to maintaining healthy print costs. 

A few ways Print Quota Management can help organizations on a budget:

  • Admins can set a maximum allowance on print jobs per user/group based on price or volume
  • Limit print jobs to a specific page count (i.e., users can’t print more than 10 pages per print job)
  • Assign print quotas by modes (i.e., color, greyscale, and duplex)
  • Set time delays between print jobs to reduce unintentional print jobs
  • Create recurring quota periods to reset every month, quarterly, or yearly

This feature set enables admins to identify which users and groups are printing the most, helping you determine how to allocate print volumes across your organization. Plus, you stop losing sleep over questionable 100-page color print jobs that have nothing to do with work. 

 

Start saving today with SaaS print management. 

Print management services provide ample ways to reduce the financial burden printing can have on your organization. Yet, few solutions offer a complete SaaS platform that unifies your entire print environment, eliminates your print servers, and promotes sustainability with its feature set like PrinterLogic does. 

What’s more, PrinterLogic is free for your first 30 days.

Schedule a demo today to learn more about serverless print management.