Just what all you worry warts have been waiting for an xx.1 release! We know some of you like to wait for the first minor release before making the jump to a major version and let everyone else do the release testing for you. Well you don’t have to wait any longer PaperCut 11.1 is now available for download – As with any minor update you can find a bunch of new features, enhancements, improved printer support and as always a host of embedded changes…

Some of the more interesting additions to v11.1 are:

• Xerox (Secure Access): Improved compatibility with a wider variety of Xerox devices.
• Print job watermarking now supports a wider variety of PCL6 printers and drivers.
• Various improvements to the end-user web interface to improve accessibility
• Lexmark now has added support for additional card readers including Elatec readers (contact us for prices)

As always full release notes are available below.

We can offer a 40-day trial of PaperCut just get in touch to discuss your requirements or reseller opportunities. Any existing releasers please update via the reseller pages (soon to be re-born into a full-fledged portal).

PaperCut Version 11.1 Released – 16 February 2011 – PaperCut MF 11.1 (Build 13151) Release Notes

Enhancements:

• Print job watermarking now supports a wider variety of PCL6 printers and drivers.
• Various improvements to the end-user web interface to improve accessibility (e.g. for user with screen readers).
• Added a new printer script recipe which asks the user if a job should be held in a hold/release queue or not. This allows the user to select secure release for only sensitive documents and use direct printing for other documents.
• Display information about the licensed devices and payment gateways in the About page.
• Updated the “User printing – summary” report to show a breakdown of color and grayscale pages. Added office and department fields to the Excel/CSV report.
• Added a new filter to all the print logs reports to only show Web Print jobs.
• Added a new username filter the user list and user configuration reports.
• Added a new server-command and web services API to renaming shared accounts.
• Emailed system notifications sent via SMTP can now be encrypted if the mail server supports TLS.
• Automatically enable printer error detection if printer scripting is enabled. This ensures that the scripts using error check call will work as expected without needing to enable printer error notifications.
• Novell OES Linux: The installer now checks the iPrint version and will warn if the version is known to cause problems.
• Various documentation improvements including SSL certificate installation.
• Various translation updates for Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

Fixes:

• Removed the “mixed content” warning message that may appear when administrators connect to the admin web interface via HTTPS using Microsoft Internet Explorer.
• Fixed a problem that may cause find-me print jobs on Windows to fail if the Print Provider service was restarted while the jobs were awaiting release.
• Fixed problem with dashboard “pages printed” graph that would show data offset by one day in some time zones.
• Fixed the column headers in the printer attributes Excel/CSV report.
• Fixed issue that may have prevented detection of printer toner levels when PaperCut was installed on a non-English edition of Windows.
• Fixed issue in client popup authentication under specific configurations where the logged in username was not correctly displayed.
• Fixed an error that could occur when using a “Quick Find” search if a screen had been left idle for more than 5 minutes.
• Fixed a problem that can stop watermarks from appearing if using the %user_id%, %user_full_name% or %user_email% watermark replacements when the user’s email address was blank.
• Fixed a problem with watermarks with custom position 0mm from top. They were previously printed at the bottom of the page.
• Fixed problems displaying Chinese characters in the Dashboard “What’s Next” widget.
• Fixed an error that may occur if an invalid regular expression was entered in the print document name filter. Improved validation to disallow invalid filters.
• Fixed issues that may prevent admin interface navigation while using an older Firefox 2 browser.
• Fixed issue with web services API and server-command that would allow creation of duplicate shared accounts. Additionally, new shared account security settings are now inherited from the template account.
• Fixed a problem in reports where a date range filter may not have applied if combined with a shared account filter containing two or more accounts.
• Do not allow the batch internal user import to run if the “Internal User” feature is not enabled. This stops users from accidentally running the wrong import type.
• Fix a problem with admin rights where a user would be denied access from the “Devices” tab if they were restricted to only access a subset of printers.
• Windows: Removed rare “file locked” message that may appear when conducting install-over-the-top upgrades.
• Mac OS: Fixed a problem with the OS X widget that could make the configuration settings not display correctly.
• Linux: Improved installer to save about 80MB of server disk space.

Printer compatibility improvements:

Copier / Device Integration:

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.

 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:  

A few weeks ago one of our PaperCut reseller buddies came to us with a problem and (insert sound of own trumpet being blown) we delivered a solution.

Problem?

A few of the schools this reseller provides services to wished to monitor prints and copies on Ricoh machines. They wanted staff and students to be issued with wireless contact cards and for users to walk up to the copiers “swipe” the card and be presented with two options: 1) release any prints sent to the device by the user; 2) start photocopying and have everything be charged to a central store.

PaperCut MF and Ricoh Embedded were chosen and everything should have worked fine apart from one small issue. The cards they had issued staff/students with were “Paxton cards” from the Net2 Access system.

Answer?

The first task was to find a reader that could read something unique off each card.
Second task was to get this mystery reader working with a photocopier (something of a black art)

I will skip all the boring bits but after a few weeks of hard work, tweaking, cursing and generally finding the rest of the world useless we now have a system in place for this to work perfectly. At the same time we learned a lot about card readers on the Ricoh platform and we are fairly confident we can now get any card reader working.

So if you are using Paxton HiTag2 class cards and want to start using PaperCut MF give us a call and we will make your day.

Clever stuff, huh?