Ever wondered how Web Print works? Stephen explains all.

Web Print is PaperCut’s unique and industry leading solution to manage the growing need for printing from laptops, wireless devices and anonymous users. As a core feature of PaperCut, Web Print enables printing from user-owned devices without the overhead of installing printer drivers and managing server authentication. PaperCut’s Web Print has been deployed across hundreds of education campuses and is an ideal solution for offering print services via student owned laptops and netbooks. 

For more information on Web Print check out the online manual.

Each week we get a few “can PaperCut ….” emails each week, most are simple to answer but some are a little quirky or do not crop up often. Below you will find the pick of the week!

I would like to use SNMP hardware checks but have changed my community string. Can I change the community string PaperCut uses?

Have a look in the print-provider.conf file and uncomment (remove the leading #) for the line of SNMPCommunity and change “public” to your desired string:

#
# Change the SNMP community string that is used at the Print Provider layer when communicating
# to printers via SNMP.
# For example, this setting will be used by Hardware Check Validation to retrieve SNMP printer state data.
# Default: public
#
#SNMPCommunity=public

How well does Doc-Q-Ticket work with PaperCut?

Never used DQT but a reseller of ours said this: “We have gone live with the integration at one customer and it works really well.”

I can’t get web print to work, using Adobe X (10).

You will need to turn off the new enhanced security features for continued operation. This can be done via Edit -> Preferences -> General -> un-check "Enable Protected Mode at Startup". Please note that this is a per-user setting. This change will need to be done as the Web-Print user regardless of Web-Print being configured in simple mode or sandbox mode.

Can I use hyperlinks in my scrip popups?

As of  11.4.14716) you can! Just use regular HTML (“a href”) link syntax

Is it easy to move from NG to MF?

Last of all a link to a YouTube video I created during lunch to show someone how to move between PaperCut NG and MF.

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.

Version 10.0 build 9546

If the client software is started with the --minimized option and the account selection popup is enabled, in some rare situations the client may consume high CPU until the window is focused in the foreground. This issue only affects the Windows operating system. A patch is avaliable if required. The alternate solution is to temporarily remove the start --minimized option.

Web Print users may experience issues when printing PDF files generated in Open Office that have a Title added to the document properties. To work around this issue the author of the PDF can unselect Display document title under File -> Export PDF -> User Interface when creating the PDF document.

PaperCut on Debian Linux (netbase 4.39-4.40)

A change in the above Debian version update breaks networking in many applications. The PaperCut application server may fail to start and/or fail to accept connections (i.e. cannot access the web interface). There is contention over whether the change is a bug or the right thing to do. More information and a workaround (set net.ipv6.bindv6only=0) are available in this Debian bug report:

  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=560238

Web Print is PaperCut’s unique and industry leading solution to manage the growing need for printing from laptops, wireless devices and anonymous users. As a core feature of PaperCut, Web Print enables printing from user-owned devices without the overhead of installing printer drivers and managing server authentication.

Web Print resolves this complexity by allowing users to upload common document formats such as PDF and DOC via a simple web interface, printing the document on a user’s behalf. No client software or drivers are required. Users simply follow an easy three step process:

2. Choosing print options

Next the user selects print options. The administrator may also allow access to shared account charging features, equivalent to the options available to desktop users with the PaperCut client tool. 

Charging to a shared account

This is a bugfix release for PaperCut MF 9.6, and contains the following changes:

Enhancements:

•Enabled virtual queues (Find Me Printing and load balancing) for use with Web Print.
•Improved memory allocation on PPC based Macs, resulting in better performance on this platform.
•Improved Slovenian translations.
•Mac: Performance improvements when analyzing very large PostScript jobs.
•Group selection lists in the admin interface now all include “Enlarge” links next to them, for sites with very long group/OU names that all start the same.
•Shared account list report in CSV now includes the parent account code on each line.
•Added feature to allow real-time lookup of a user’s card/ID number in an external database.
•CBORD Payment Gateway: Improved support for using release stations and copier devices when using the CBORD live/on-demand transfer mode.
Fixes:

•Introduced workaround for long-standing Windows bug that resulted in network connectivity issues and non-paged pool memory leaks at some large sites.
•Fixed problems using the new print job refund requesting features when running PaperCut on an Oracle database.
•Fixed problem preventing print jobs from being manually refunded when the cost had been rounded for display.
•Fixed problem using Web Print for users who had the manager mode pop-up enabled.
•Fixed problems with Find Me Printing when the print queue name contained non-ASCII Unicode characters.
•Web Print: Fixed problems handling jobs with document names that contained non-ASCII Unicode characters.
•Fixed problem that could cause the Web Print service to stop unexpectedly.
•Fixed issue on CentOS x64 running CUPS that may have prevented PaperCut from working with particular backend types.
•Improved Web Print support when using the sandbox method with a Linux primary server.
Printer compatibility improvements:

•Improved page size detection when printing custom sizes with InDesign on the Mac.
Copier / Device Integration:

•Sharp OSA:
•Fixed problem that displayed users as “Unrestricted” if they had a negative balance. This would only be displayed if overdrafts were enabled that allowed the user to continue copying even after their balance was negative.

In the latest round of our Vote for a Feature survey we’ve received thousands of votes. Thanks to all those who have contributed. We’ve listened to your feedback and polished off the top two most requested features:

1.Driver-less printing for wireless clients

Version 9.6 introduces a new solution to help manage wireless and laptop printing: Web Print. Web Print allows users to print by simply uploading documents using a standard web browser. No client software or driver installation is required. Web Print provides a simple way to enable printing for laptop, wireless and anonymous users without the overhead of installing printer drivers and managing server authentication.

2.Renaming printers

Printers can now be renamed via the admin interface. This can be useful after renaming a print queue in the OS or after migrating a print queue to a new system.

Another highly requested feature added in this release is print job refund management. If a user finds that some or all of their job wasn’t printed, e.g. due to a paper jam or toner problem, they can now easily request a refund via the user web interface. Administrators can be notified of pending refund requests via email and attend to them via the admin interface.

Remember your votes count so keep the feedback coming! As always the full list of changes can be found in the release history for PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF.

New features:

•Web Print: Web Print is a driver-less printing service that allows users to print by uploading documents from a web browser. No client software or driver installation is required. Web Print provides a simple way to enable printing for laptop, wireless and anonymous users without the overhead of installing printer drivers and managing server authentication.
•Refund Management System: Print job refund management tools have been added to PaperCut. If a user finds that some or all of their job wasn’t printed, e.g. due to a paper jam or toner problem, they can now easily request a refund via the user web interface. Administrators can be notified of refund requests via email and approve or deny them via the admin interface.
•Added the ability to rename printers. This can be useful after renaming a print queue in the OS or after migrating a print queue to a new system.
•New payment gateway module for RBS WorldPay’s Business Gateway Plus service.
•New payment gateway module for CBORD’s Odyssey range of card systems.