With around 20 changes to embedded software and loads of core software enhancements, fixes and updates 11.2 has something for everyone.  The most notable new enhancement released within 11.2 is the ability to now output details of a user’s department and office history.  E.g. If a user switches department midway through a month, print audit reports showing activity by department will now account for their activity in the old department for the first half of the month and the new department for the second half. The biggest change on the embedded side of things is a revamped interface for Sharp OSA devices and you can expect plenty of new features in the upcoming months to take advantage of OSAv4.

Release Notes

11 April 2011 – PaperCut MF 11.2 (Build 13713)

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.

Good news everyone PaperCut 10.6 is now available for download.

This new version has nearly 30 enhancements/fixes to keep PaperCut running smoothly as well as two completely new features a lot of sites will find useful.

The first of the new features is a default shared account may now be configured per-user. This represents the user’s most commonly used account, and can be useful for users who mostly charge to the same account, but occasionally need access to others. The default shared account is automatically selected for the user when they print. This will also save time on the various embedded solutions.

The second feature added to 10.6 is for organizations with more than one user directory (e.g. a new Microsoft Active Directory and a legacy LDAP server with users that have not been migrated) can now synchronize, import and authenticate against both at the same time.

What are you waiting for? Grab the download and update.

Please note:
PaperCut MF users – If you are an existing customer looking to upgrade your current install of PaperCut MF, then please contact us.
Resellers please use the dedicated reseller portal provided.

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!

Prior to its launch, Ricoh submitted the m3i Access Module to the Human Systems Engineering Branch (HSEB) of Georgia Tech to see how it would fare against their Section 508 tests. The software itself achieved a Fully Supports compliant status itself. When added to Ricoh MFDs, it improved the compliant status of Ricoh to Supports with Exceptions. However, HSEB did suggest some areas where it could be made more compatible with certain of the assistive technologies they were using in their testing and we have addressed some of these in the latest version.

The change which will probably have the most effect  going forward is the implementation of ARIA mark-up which will improve compatibility with text-to-speech applications such as Jaws. Other minor enhancements have been made in respect of compatibility with Magic Screen Magnifier, Dragon NaturallySpeaking and Windows High Contast Mode. Greater detail can be found on the developer blog here.

The nice people at officeproductnews wrote an article about our m3i project.

Ricoh Americas Corporation, a leading provider of digital office equipment, today announced the availability of Select Technology’s m3i Access Module to the Ricoh channel through the Ricoh Independent Solutions Vendor Program (RiSVP). Exclusively available to Ricoh, the m3i Access Module is an innovative user interface that allows users to control Ricoh multifunctional products (MFPs) remotely in circumstances when using the MFP’s own touchscreen is either not convenient or not possible. While intended to improve accessibility for all users, the interface has been developed to be of special benefit to people in wheelchairs or those with visual impairments. No dedicated hardware is required, just a browser and a network connection, and no software installation is required on external devices.

Follow the jump for the full article - Read More. 

Be sure to check out m3interconnect.com for everything m3i and don’t forget to have a look at the official Ricoh page on m3i as well.

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?

New features:

•Ricoh ESA: improved version for newer models (models supported ESA SDK v4) with many additional features such as “zero stop” (stop jobs as soon as user runs out of balance), support for card readers and improved copy count detection.
•New manager mode pop-up designed to allow authorized users to perform printing as other users and allocate to accounts. It also allows various cost adjustments to be applied to jobs. A common use for the manager mode popup would be in school/college print rooms where staff print on behalf of other users.
•Allow self-registration of internal users using swipe cards in the pay station / release station.
•Add support for CyberSource payment services in the payment gateway module.
•New reports showing a breakdown of copying vs printing: Shared account print/copy breakdown – summary, Group print/copy breakdown – summary
•Added a new report Shared account security access that lists the shared accounts that each user may access.
•New options for release stations to better support small, high resolution screens and touch screens: option to display links as buttons, option to scale the size of all elements.
•Added more ad-hoc report filters to several reports.
•Added the ability to remove all user balance information (balance history graph, transaction history) from the user web pages. This may be useful in corporate environments where the focus is on account/department tracking.
•Added new filters to the Jobs Pending Release page in the user web interface: document name, workstation name.
•New filter for print log tables: minimum and/or maximum pages.

We are pleased to announce m3i, a new embedded software platform for Ricoh MFDs.

MyUI named “Innovative Product Of The Year” at the Ricoh Solutions Developer Conference.

(Amelia Island Plantation September 18 – 20) Select Technology received the Innovative Product Of The Year award at the Ricoh Solutions Developer Conference 2007 in Florida.

Ricoh Solutions Developer Conference

Check out the press release after the jump. Awards Honor Ricoh Partners for Performance Excellence in 2007