Managing information costs and reducing waste are two of the challenges facing printer users today. Most sites soon notice that print costs are escalating out of control. This is where we come in.

Since print management dramatically helps reduce the number of pages printed or copies taken or waste paper that gets thrown into the recycle bin, it can make a huge difference on the amount of paper waste. So you can feel warm inside knowing you are doing your bit to save some trees and cut down on carbon dioxide emissions. Another environment and money saving feature is ‘find-me printing’ which cuts down on the number of printers and MFD’s reducing costs for toner and paper and saving on the electricity bill. So what exactly isn’t there to like about print management?

The money saving aspect of print management should make it easy to convince the people that control the purse strings they are making the right choice. Most sites we talk to (even those running external hardware units) easily make their money back in the first year (some even make a profit!!!).

So now you know it’s good to save money and save the environment at the same time but how are you going to implement this? One of the most effective ways to reduce these print costs and improve the productivity of your network printers is to use PaperCut MF.

PaperCut MF is a solid software solution that allows you to easily manage your print assets, to collect usage data by location and device, to identify any waste and simply implement cost recovery and allocation strategies, to maximise your system productivity and that all-important return on investment.

Below are 10 great reasons to get in touch and get setup with a trial of PaperCut.

1: “FindMe” Release Anywhere Printing (Pull Printing to you and me)

Simply put, documents follow users to their printer of choice. Allow your users print to a PaperCut MF “Virtual Print Queue” and regardless of their location they’ll be able to retrieve their print jobs from a networked printer or MFD. This delivers tremendous flexibility when and where needed.

2: Go Green!

Hundreds of report combinations to view, export as file or deliver via email and real-time statistics on CO2, energy and trees consumed by the printing process. PaperCut MF reporting and print controls empower IT departments to control waste. In particular, CO2 and Carbon emission reporting is available at a glance with a handy optional widget or report. The employment of green initiatives is a growing requirement in today’s world.

3: Easy to Manage

An intuitive interfaces make PaperCut easy to administer and easy to use. Regarded as the simplest system of its type to deploy and manage, PaperCut MF delivers. For instance, System Administrators have full access to advanced administration and configuration options via a familiar, simple web interface. This can be accessed anywhere and anytime on your network. Early in 2011 expect a new layout for the UI giving you all the information you need at a glance. PaperCut MF is up to date in both its looks and its architecture.

4: Site Wide Policy Enforcement

Take control of your paper, MFD and Toner usage. With PaperCut MF you can take charge and control “who” prints, “what” gets printed and to “where”. There are even some simple scripting controls available to ensure your staff automatically adhere to the agreed company print policies. These include “duplex print”, “no colour from web” and “job routed to least cost device” as well as “Free printing during class time” – very handy for exam time at school. If none of the pre-made scripts suit you, then you can of course define your own features with a custom advanced printer script.

5: Centralised Administration

Administer the system straight from your web browser anywhere on the network. PaperCut MF provides administration access from any location on your network via a standard web browser. End-Users also have access to a set of web tools that empower students and staff to track and monitor their own activities in real time as well as various tools and log information.

6: Driverless Printing

A driver-less printing solution for laptops and wireless devices. A simple yet very affective feature called “Web Print” allows printing from net-books and other mobile devices. Perfect for “mobile workers” and students with their own laptops with documents they need to be printed. Simply upload the document, select the device on the floor plan and print. Also (but nothing official just yet) iPhone/iPad printing could be on its way soon. We will update the website as soon as we get confirmation. We know a lot of sites handing out iPads these days will be interested in this feature.

7: Scalability

The modern software design and architecture provides scalability for networks of all sizes. Whether your network consists of a single server with a handful of users to a clustered multi server network with 60,000 plus users, PaperCut MF will scale to meet your needs without any troubles. PaperCut is happy to run on Windows, Mac, Linux, Novell (iPrint) and mixed environments and is just as happy to live in a virtual machine.

8: Easy Deployment

It’s extremely easy to install and configure. Simply click next and follow the prompts. The PaperCut MF install process allows you to setup preferences for Users, User Groups, Devices, Cost and Quota’s. It could not be simpler.

9: Monitoring and Usage Reports

Hundreds of report combinations to view, export as file or deliver via email.  With a vast choice of standard reports finding out who, where and how much is printed has now become whole lot easier and the best bit is, it will let you see who is causing all the trouble by printing 300 pages to a USB desk jet printer instead of a large MFD. PaperCut MF provides the tools to monitor the output of your printer and MFD fleet with real time activity reports that can be deployed silently so that staff gets used to the changes in workflow.

10: Secure Access and Release

Running around to retrieve confidential print jobs will be a thing of the past. No matter where you are, print jobs can be collected conveniently from any supported device with either secure user or card authentication.

We had to stop at 10…….but we could go on all day about:

• Dedicated Print release stations.
• Professional client billing – charge back those printing costs to clients.
• Sync across multiple user directories (e.g. a Microsoft Active Directory and a separate LDAP server).
• Shared accounts – charge printing to accounts/departments that can be shared by multiple users.
• Watermarking – apply text to the bottom of each page.
• A bunch of Public APIs to link into.
• Supports Microsoft SQL Server (32 and 64-bit, and Server Express), Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL out-of-the-box on all platforms.
• Credit card payments and top up cards to add value to accounts.

And best of all – Capture “off the glass” walk-up copying using embedded software for the following platforms:

• Ricoh, via Ricoh Embedded Software Architecture (ESA)
• Sharp, via Sharp Open Systems Architecture (OSA)
• Xerox, via Xerox Network Accounting
• Lexmark, via Lexmark Embedded Solutions Framework (LeSF)
• Konica Minolta, via OpenAPI
• Kyocera Mita, via Kyocera Hybrid Platform for Advanced Solutions (HyPAS)
• HP, via Chai SOE DSE
• Toshiba
• Gestetner
• Lanier
• Nashuatec
• Triumph Adler
• Olivetti
• With more coming soon!

Interested? Then get in touch.

Print quota, accounting, logging and management is now here for Novell Open Enterprise Server (OES) Linux!

PaperCut on Novell OES Linux (iPrint)

PaperCut has long been a cross-platform solution supporting Windows, Mac and Linux/CUPS. Novell iPrint was the one big missing hole in our cross-platform objectives. After a few late nights, a lot of coffee, and some help from Devon and Dean on the iPrint team, we now have PaperCut running on OES Linux.

Latest Update: PaperCut on OES Linux both 32-bit and 64-bit (x64) systems available! Download PaperCut version 9+ or higher for an officially supported production ready release. Work on cluster support is currently under way. Please contact PaperCut support if you with to deploy on a cluster.

IMPORTANT: PaperCut is now about of beta. Most of the information on this page relates to the beta program and is out of date. I’ve kept the information here as some sites/pages still link to this page.

Please read the manual and the FAQ below before installing. 

Is this release beta quality software?

PaperCut has been around for almost 9 years now. The Novell OES Linux release shares around 97% of the same source code as the Windows, Mac and Linux/CUPS versions so the vast majority of the application is production quality code. The iPrint specific code however is new and needs testing and feedback from users on real networks.

Where do I get the version of iPrint compatible with PaperCut (the one with the new hooks)?

The current release of iPrint supplied with OES Linux 2 does not have the APIs we require. On our request the iPrint team has added the APIs and these will be included in the SP1 release. OES 2 SP1 is currently in public beta and can be downloaded at the Novell Beta Program site.

Can I install this on a production system?

Yes and No. You should be aware that this is a beta period. A sensible approach on larger networks might be to set up a separate print server independent of the production server. This can be used for testing with the full confidence that you can flick back to the production server if required.

Smaller sites may choose to install on a production server. The backup plan should something go wrong is to either unbind PaperCut from the queues by removing the “papercut” accounting option from the Print Manager, or just to uninstall.

Tell me about the beta testing program

The Novell community is very active and enthusiastic. We have not done any explicit advertising or even announced our development efforts, but even still the word has spread through the grape vine. We’ve had over 50 organizations contact us expressing eagerness to help us test. The objective of the testing program is to tap into this enthusiasm and gather feedback. Over the next few weeks we’d love to hear your feedback, ideas and opinions about the release. We’re also going to give back in the form of discounts the final version and some free licenses will also be issued to selected sites.

We’re looking for feedback on areas such as:

•Bugs or problems
•Are we doing things the “Novell way”?
•Ideas and potential new features
•How we can promote and make other Novell users aware of the application.
Organizations participating in the testing program who submit feedback will receive:

•A free license allowing you to run the software for two months (if required).
•A 50% discount on final purchase.
Does it support Netware?

No. We’ve decided to focus our development effort on OES Linux to ensure that it’s future proof. We also have a lot of experience with Linux development and this approach allowed us to leverage a lot of existing code.

We are a business and I’d like to run PaperCut ChargeBack (not NG)?

No problems. Please contact us. PaperCut ChargeBack will also be released soon for Novell OES Linux. We are fully committed to the iPrint platform and will offer all features as we do for all other platforms.

What is the required OS version?

Officially Novell OES 2 SP1 – yet to be released. OES2 SP1 is currently in Public Beta and is expected to be final soon.

How to I track changes/updates made during the testing program?

Chris and Tom will be maintaining a list of changes and discussion topics in the developer blog.

I am a long-time Novell user and have a suggestion?

You’re just the person we’re looking for! Please email your ideas through to the development team via the support email.

Are there any known issues with the current release?

During our internal testing we found two problem areas.

1.The API has a bug and is not returning the IP address of the machine that submitted the print job. The iPrint team are looking into this. In the meantime we’ve implemented a quick hack where we look up the MAC address in the system’s ARP table. This may however not work on all networks so some sites may have issues when users can log on multiple systems at the same time.
2.Automatic refunding of cancelled/errored jobs is currently being looked at.
How do I install?

The first place to start is the install instructions for Novell. Please have a quick read before installing.

Is the Novell version a second class citizen when measured against the Windows version?

The Novell OES Linux version is fully featured and will always be on equal footing with other operating systems. It is not a port. The Mac, Linux and Windows versions share around 97% of the same source code and all versions are developed in parallel. The code base is modern (major re-write in 2005) and from the inception of the first line of code, supporting all platforms equally has been a design objective. Novell users can expect the same level of functionality and support and releases will track all other platforms.

Is PaperCut NG open source?

PaperCut NG is a commercial application with commercial support. It’s not open source in relation to it being licensed under the GPL or equivalent. We do however provide our customers with access to the source code and our development process is very open. Check out our release history and blog to get a feel for this.

What does/will it cost?

This has been a hotly debated topic. Novell is not as popular as other platforms such as those starting with “W” and the cost to deliver a solution with the same feature set is equal, so one could argue that a Novell version should cost more. We have however stuck to our guns and lived up to our promise to support all platforms equally. Just like in terms of features, the price will be the same as that offered to Windows, Mac and Linux users. We hope the Novell community are encouraged by this policy and support it by supporting us.

Does it have an uninstaller?

Yes. The script titled “uninstall” will fully uninstall the application.

What was it like developing the iPrint version of PaperCut?

Personally (and hoping that the Mac and Windows guys never read this page) I think iPrint on OES Linux is the best platform for print queue hosting. Windows has some great stuff in Windows-only networks but on a modern cross-platform network it’s quite a fight. Mac Server is quite a long way off all the platforms. CUPS is great and very configurable but unfortunately the options exposed on Mac OS X Server are very limited and this hampers administrators. iPrint is a heavy solution but IMHO is the benchmark in the enterprise space.

How long did the iPrint integration for PaperCut take to develop?

We first started looking at integrating with Novell iPrint queues on OES Linux (the first release) back in mid-2007. At this stage we were in discussions with the iPrint team about the best methods to support 3rd party print accounting applications, and the kind of functionality that would be required to make it possible. Unfortunately the layoffs at Novell it late 2007 delayed the project, and things didn’t really get started again until mid-2008.

Once we got our hands on the required APIs the development was quite an easy task. PaperCut is developed with a modular service oriented architecture, so the portion of code that needed to be ported for adding iPrint support was a small portion of the overall code base.

How does PaperCut interface with the printers?

PaperCut hooks into the iPrint Print Manager via the new APIs provided by the iPrint Dev Team. This hook is configured at a queue level.

Does PaperCut support eDirectory?

Yes. PaperCut NG has full support for LDAP over SSL and understands standard eDirectory schema. We’ve also added OES Specific auto detection code so in most cases PaperCut will automatically determine your LDAP configurations.

What about NDPS?

PaperCut is a new application on the Novell platforms. Hence we’ve decided to only target current technology and will not be targeting NDPS. iPrint is our focus.