Good news, everyone! PaperCut have just released version 10.5 for us all to play with.  

I woke up this morning to find lots of emails from excited IT Managers asking me for the download links for 10.5, all this before my morning coffee and toast! 

This is the largest PaperCut release yet and the first for a few months! It’s also one of the most innovative, pushing new ideas and concepts we hope you will find useful. This release contains many requested items from PaperCut admins and users, including:

• Watermarking and job attribution
• Document digital signatures
• Print policy popups
• Multiple personal accounts
• A new desktop widget 

Another handy feature is a new card swipe option for secure print release and find-me printing. This option is called “Fast Release”. and supports popular TCP network card readers to support print release on any printer. It offers a cost-effective way to implement find-me printing for devices that do not support embedded/on-board solutions. Supported network card readers are available just contact sales for more details.

Here’s what Chris from PaperCut has to say about these fancy new features:

Watermarking, Job Attribution and Digital Signatures
Adding text such as a user name to the bottom of a page in a print job was one of our most voted for features through 2009 and 2010. We’ve taken this request and added some of our own innovative ideas to create the new watermarking and job attribution feature. It is now possible to add dynamically constructed text to the bottom of each page (e.g. username), set different font sizes, gray-level and position on page.   

 

We’ve also extended the watermark to include support for digital signatures using a cryptographic HMAC based on SHA1 or MD5. Every document may have a unique signature which can be used to verify the origin and author of any print job. We’ve gathered feedback from a number of our larger corporate and government customers to design this feature and are very excited about the new document tracking possibilities it opens. Our view is that print management software should more than just tracking & reporting and we’re working hard to innovate is all areas.

Watermarking is currently listed as an experimental feature and currently only supports PostScript printers. Peter is working on PCL support and this is targeted for a subsequent release. 

Print Policy
Print scripting now includes a standard corporate print policy recipe. This allows organizations to implement a print policy where:

• users are reminded via a popup to print duplex (and must opt-in to print simplex)
• printing emails is discouraged
• printing web pages in color is discouraged

   

Multiple Personal Accounts
Users can now have more than one personal account. At a simple level, this can be used in education environments to separate free print quotas from cash payments, for example, allowing simpler management and reporting. At a more advanced level, multiple personal accounts can be combined with print scripting to allow different departments to manage their own pot of funds and determine on which devices this pot can be used.
This feature has been developed in conjunction with Cambridge University in the UK with the aim of satisfying their complex inter-college and inter-department environment.  

Multiple Personal Accounts – ideal for higher education

Ad hoc bulk user actions
Ad hoc bulk user actions has been one of the top voted for features for the past few months. Priyanka has done a great job and she’s worked had to get this into this release.A new environmental impact desktop widget
We’ve worked with Do Something, the non-profit organization supporting the Paper-Less Alliance, to bring this innovative desktop widget to PaperCut (see screenshot above). The aim of this widget is to help organizations reduce paper by arming users with information. Users can also benchmark their use against the organization average. The widget is also used a fund-raiser. Organizations looking at deploying this widget are encouraged to make a donation of $0.99 per user with all proceeds going through to Do Something to help implement paper saving and environmental initiatives.

Re-sending data after connection failure
We’ve added new code to handle exceptional cases such as network connections failing between servers – for example when PaperCut is used over a WAN. If the connection temporarily fails, PaperCut can now be configured to locally record transactions and re-send them across when the connection comes back up. Read more here.

All sites are encourage to upgrade. Full changes are listed in the release history of each product, and you can upgrade with a simple install-over-the-top upgrade procedure using the latest downloads.

Good news everyone, PaperCut 10.4 has been released.

This new release is best described as a maintenance release with a focus on bug fixes, documentation and interface clean-up with some extra treats for embedded users.

All sites are encourage to upgrade. Full changes are listed in the release history of each product, and you can upgrade with a simple install-over-the-top upgrade procedure using the latest downloads:

The development team are also hard at work on version 10.5 which will include some significant new features. The plan is to have this out the door in August.

10.4 Highlights include:

• Scheduled reports may now be saved to disk as well as sent via email.
• Improved print release (hold/release queue) performance on large networks where there are many jobs in a held state.
• The link displayed on the user client tool can now be conveniently configured via Options -> General
• Improved behaviour when user is set to “Auto charge to single shared account” and that account is deleted. When the user next prints this will be logged and the user’s settings will be reset to charge to automatically charge to their personal account.
• Improved support for Active Directory environments with modified/custom user schemas.
• Improved logging of card self-association performed by users. The card number is now logged in the “App. Log” for both successful and failed attempts.
• Added basic detection for printers using “Ricoh DDST” drivers.

• The account selection screen now displays as a separate post-authentication step and only shows features/accounts relevant for the logged in user.
• PINs are now only requested if they are required.
• Users can now associate cards with their domain login at the device (“card self-association”).
• The email address in the “Scan-to-me” feature is now pre-populated with the user’s email address.
• These enhancements are only available on devices supporting OpenAPI 3.1 or higher.

Looking for PaperCut ChargeBack in the UK? You came to the right place.

So what is ChargeBack? simply put PaperCut ChargeBack can help you charge back printing costs to your clients.

PaperCut ChargeBack’s advanced software empowers users to allocate print jobs to specific accounts, allowing you to recover costs from clients, projects and/or departments. PaperCut ChargeBack builds on PaperCut NG by offering the Advanced Popup Client as standard for all users.

Especially designed for the needs of engineering, graphic design, architectural, and accounting firms, PaperCut ChargeBack is the easiest, most comprehensive way to manage and recover print costs.

Key features for professional businesses at a glance:

• A pop-up window actively prompts users to allocate print jobs to accounts, saving employee time, and reducing human error.
• Save time by searching for accounts with keywords. ‘Recently selected’ and ‘preferred account’ searching also available.
• Have greater control by regulating employee access, and monitoring rates and invoice options at time of print.
• Advanced bill-back system automatically emails detailed account, business and invoice reports to nominated persons.
• Quickly import existing account/client/project structures including nested accounts.
• Self-maintaining system requiring minimal administration.
• Control account code access by user and/or group.
• Suitable for Windows, Mac, Linux and Novell, making PaperCut the most flexible and integrated management solution available.

PaperCut ChargeBack’s niche is in technically focused professional organizations. Unlike solutions aimed at corporate and big accounting firms PaperCut ChargeBack is a cost effective software based solution that allows your employees to get their job done and doesn’t get in their way. Systems to bill back printing to clients don’t need to cost more than your printing budget!

The development team have spent a lot of time optimizing the pop-up client software to save commonly used accounts (favourites), add comments to jobs and change invoicing options all in a few clicks.

Reporting is equally as simple. Business invoice reports can be configured to automatically email the accounts person monthly for easy entry or importing into customer invoices.

Want to monitor and charge for photocopies as well? then have a look at PaperCut MF.

Unsure what you need or just need some more information? We will be happy to discuss your requirements please contact us.

Looking to monitor Prints and Photocopies? Confused where to start?

No worries as the UK master distributor for PaperCut MF we like to think we know what we are talking about and are more than happy to offer help and advice to anyone looking to implement a print and copy control system as it can be a little daunting knowing where to start.

With over 30,000 client sites worldwide and a growing reputation as the product of choice for education and corporate verticals, PaperCut continues to meet the demand through the provision of smart, flexible, low cost print and copy management software.

Featuring the latest web based administration and end user tools, including driverless web printing and enhanced scripting e.g. job routing and “Find Me” (pull) printing by login, account or card ID based authentication methods , business makers, IT administrators and users alike all agree that PaperCut meets their needs at an affordable price.

Feature Highlights

• Simple web based administration
• Cross-platform support – Synchronized releases on Windows, Linux, Novell and Mac on both server and workstation
• Track printing on any device
• Track off-the-glass copy, fax and scan via embedded application on the MFP
• Integration into major directory services – Active Directory, Open Directory, eDirectory, LDAP, Samba, PAM
• Login or ID Card – authenticate users via proximity card at the MFP
• Find-me printing, secure printing and conditional job routing
• Web Print – a 100% driverless printing solution for wireless netbook and laptop users
• Policy Scripting – Write scripts to enforce functions like duplex. Dozens of pre-built scripts supplied
• Over 50 in-built one-click reports
• Payment Gateways – connection with dozens of leading payment services such as PayPal.
• Pre-Paid Top-Up Cards – a free method for schools and colleges to create value cards.
• Scalability to 350,000 users – via server clustering
• Interface available in 20 languages (including full Unicode support for Chinese and Japanese)
• Open source code and documented public API
• A friendly and approachable support / development team

Any questions? get in touch.

Previously our experience with Paxton systems has been based around HiTag2 card technology after a meeting with a local college who just had the net2Access system installed. It seems Paxton also issue MIFARE cards. This is good news as MIFARE is a very popular open system.

So if you are looking to get a new Paxton system installed, then we suggest you go down the MIFARE route to make integration with other systems such as PaperCut and m3i easier in the future.

Oh, and we can also get PaperCut embedded up and running with Paxton fobs.

How about this to brighten up your Monday, the talented PaperCut developers have been hard at work since releasing 10.2 in March and now we have PaperCut version 10.3 to play with.

You will find a lot of new features / improvements of existing features / bug fixes / improved printer support and a host of changes to the copier integration options to make some IT staff very happy.

The highlights include:

Advanced print scripting:

• New recipe for copyright sampling. This script demonstrates the use of advanced techniques such as sampling, using functions and multi-step user interaction.
• New recipe to confirm printing of colour emails.
• New recipe for redirecting a job with confirmation.
• New advanced recipe to require that users enter an approval code before printing (e.g. printing must be approved by a teacher).
• New snippets for checking printer group and user group membership.
• Added an option to speed up the process of displaying a sequence of multiple prompts to a user.

Scheduled reports may now be edited, rather than requiring they be re-created.

Fixed problem with the top-up card wizard that could cause British Pound signs to display incorrectly in the generated cards. This fix requires re-installing the card wizard.

Added support for new RISO drivers such as the RISO ComColor 9050.

Added a new embedded/onboard copy, fax and scan tracking solution for HP devices via the Chai SOE DSE platform. For more information and supported devices see the HP MFD Integration tour page.

Added a new embedded/onboard copy, fax and scan tracking solution for Toshiba devices. For more information and supported devices see the Toshiba MFD Integration tour page.

Ricoh and Sharp embedded users can now associate cards with their login at the device (“card self-association”).

The full release notes and download links are available on the download page for each product:

PaperCut MF
PaperCut NG
PaperCut ChargeBack

Happy upgrading!

Unsure what print and copy monitoring solution to go for? then have a look at these comments from some of the users of Edugeek.net who have installed PaperCut.

 jamiesev I would highly recommend Papercut. We have been using it here for 4 years now and it’s never let us down 

RTFM Papercut is immense. The teachers moan for a while but they’ll get used to it. 

RTFM I can second Papercut, its very good and will do everything you want it to do and a lot more 

We have it so people cannot print more than 4 pages to any network printer except photocopiers, they cannot print an untitled document, they cannot print more than 3 copies of the same thing etc etc. Basically made it very difficult for them to spend a fortune using small desktop laser printers. 

maniac Papercut is, in my opinion, the best value and possibly one of the most reliable print management products out there. 

Soulfish brilliant piece of software that’s constantly being updated . The latest version that was released this week added some very nice scripting capabilities that I’ve just started playing with 

jack0w  Using it here very successfully, setup with photocopiers and proximity cards too 

jack0w Also worth mentioning that we trialled Pcounter and Equitrack but found Papercut to be best for our needs. 

Boon72 we use papercut to report all the printing activities (they were spending £10K-£12K on toner before we started this practise)  

Jamman960 We’ve also implimented print accounting via papercut, it immediatly helped us to spot the few teachers that were hammering our printers(paid for by the IT Dept at the time!) We plan in future to start billing departments based on figures from Papercut 

diggory We are using papercut MF – for copiers and printers. 

Very stable and easy to deploy.
Works with AD groups nicely.
Has loads of reporting options and printing filters.
Running it on a windows 2003 server.
Very happy with it. 

About EduGeek.net

EduGeek.net is a community created by Dos_Box and in his words: -Welcome to the only place on the internet intended for and aimed at educational IT support staff. Due to our unique position, usually between a rock, a hard place and a whole mass of untrained and unknowing staff we are the ones regularly faced with problems such as…… 

‘Can you disable internet access to all of the machines in my room, except one, but then only for 15 minutes, and then enable access to all but the one which had access originally. In 5 minutes time. Please?’ 

Share you knowledge, vent your anger and join in what is proving to be an invaluable resource for all hard pressed educational techies. We are a totally independent community and are not tied in with any Govt body or corporate entities. 

The following pages explain a little more:

• The history of EduGeek.net
• EduGeek.net FAQs
• EduGeek.net forum Rules

Good news one and all. PaperCut version 10.2 has been released and you can grab it from our download pages.

This new version comes jam packed with extras such as the frequently requested feature:
Page-level colour detection for PCL6 drivers.
PaperCut’s page-level colour detection performs a detailed analysis of print jobs to determine the usage of colour on a per-page basis. E.g. when a student prints a 20 page assignment with colour on just the front page they will still get the greyscale discount on the other 19 pages. Previously page-level colour detection was available on PostScript, PCL5 and HPGL drivers. Now we have added PCL6 / PCLXL to that list. Together this adds up to page-level colour detection support for the vast majority of printers in use today.

Another notable feature in this release is quotas for shared accounts. This is a useful feature for those wanting to set up department budgets or cost goals. E.g. A regular payment of £100 per month can be made to the Languages department account. When the balance dips below £0 the department is over their budget/cost goal, and the reports will make that stick out like a sore thumb!

We’ve also been getting a lot of positive feedback about the advanced scripting feature introduced in version 10.1. It’s well worth a look if you hadn’t had the chance to try it out yet. Let us know what you think.

The full list of changes can be found on the download pages for PaperCut MF, PaperCut NG and PaperCut ChargeBack.

 Just a month after the release of PaperCut version 10 we now have a new version to play with.

Version 10.1 brings us some great new features including advanced scriptting, custom printer fields, an update to the mac client and new reports.

The biggest news here is the Advanced scripting feature. Your script can do a whole host of things including checking details of the job and influencing what happens to it. Some examples:

• Displaying a pop-up message if a user forgets to select duplex on large jobs.
• Showing statistics on the environmental impact on large jobs via a fancy popup dialog.
• Prompting the user to confirm large jobs before printing.
• Automatically routing large jobs to more efficient high volume printers.

Plus those of you using a Copicode IP can now allow users to associate a new card with their PaperCut account or replace their existing card (I know some of you have been waiting for that)

You can find the newest download links on our product demo pages.

25 February 2010 – PaperCut MF 10.1 (Build 9802) New features:  

Enhancements:  

• CSV reports with date and time representations will now be automatically recognized by popular spreadsheet applications.
• Support for monitoring locally attached printers on Novell networks. Remote queues mapped via IPP are now ignored so only locally attached printers are detected.
• The “Microsoft Office Document Image Writer” virtual printer is ignored by default on secondary server installs.
• Improved documentation on how to set up PaperCut in a Novell cluster.
• Improved the PDF version of the user manual – smaller font, less paper! (But you weren’t going to print it, were you?)
• Improved error message when server-command is attempted to be run with non-elevated privileges under UAC on Windows 2008/Vista.

Fixes:  

• Fixed issue where the user client may in some situations consume excessive CPU if the –minimized option was turned on.
• Fixed a problem in Web Print where PDF files produced by OpenOffice may timeout with unknown error.
• Eliminated the “stale session” error that may have occurred when administrators attempted to log in using Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Printer compatibility improvements:  

Copier / Device Integration:  

Did you know the Copicode IP can be configured as a Print Release only terminal?

The default behaviour then becomes:

• A user sends their job or jobs to the Find Me or any printer set up as a hold release queue.
• The user then authenticates at the Copicode-IP (usually with a swipe reader or proximity card)
• All print jobs are then released and the Copicode-IP display returns to the Logon Screen.

This mode is useful if you only require the print release function and ideally suited to swipe or prox release environments.

Got a Copicode IP and want to test it out? then select mode 6 when installing.

Any questions just ask.