Printer Management Software

Technology Software
1

Is anyone using some type of printer management software like PaperCut MF in their environment? If so, what are your experiences with it?

2

We’ve been on papercut mf going on 6 years.

Love it.

3

We’re on PaperCut. I have a love hate relationship with it, but that’s probably because it was never set up well by our vendor. We’re switching vendors and starting fresh. We’re hoping for a better experience.

4

We use PrintPath because it was supposed to do all kinds of magical “release the print job with your staff badge” stuff, but we never got that set up with our vendor.

Apparently when you are trying to resolve your entire staff’s issues with the new copiers and software isn’t the time to roll out new features, then 6 months later you forget all about the new things you were excited about because you just hate printing.

2 Likes
5

Thank you everyone for their input. Basically where we are at with everything… We have 6 (about to be 7) Canon copiers that we are wanting better management of. For our Windows devices, they “print” to the copiers by pointing to a Windows Print server… our Macs print directly to them via TCP/IP.

A couple of things that we are trying to solve…

  1. We use department IDs for accounting and chargeback to the ministries… Canon just simply DOES NOT do this well, and sometimes the copiers won’t even receive the department ID and thus will not process the job.

  2. Printer drivers - oh the dreaded printer drivers… when I first got here, we had Toshiba copiers, and senior leadership canceled that contract and went with the current Canon copiers that we have now. That was a dark time in IT having to update EVER. SINGLE. PERSONS. MAC. with the new drivers. If my understanding of PaperCut MF’s functionality, I can install a small app on everybody’s computer that is used for printing instead of the driver.

So, with all that being said, @willpolley, what has your experience been with PaperCut and are y’all using it in the same way we would like to use it?

6

We user PrinterCloud because it’s basically the only tool that works with our current workflow and spread of devices, whilst not requiring much on-prem stuff in the form of servers. If you’re more cloud-based or use pull-printing, I’m not sure I’d pick it. But current situation is users pick which printer they want, and PrinterCloud supports almost everything, to varying levels of effectiveness (Mac/Windows/Linux/etc.)

7

There are a few products that could be helpful: Printerlogic/Printercloud, Papercut, Printix. We use Printix because everyone is on AAD, it’s a bit costly, but fantastic due to the AAD integration and that you pretty much never have to deal with drivers. As for releasing prints, it’s a piece of cake because they can be released via mobile phone app. That being said, I know a lot of guys using Printerlogic that are quite happy with it… and a few are actually doing both Printerlogic and Papercut together.

8

Papercut released a generic driver that handles basic printing across multiple print hardware vendors. You would then setup a hold queue for the generic driver and allow release on your different devices.

If you need access to features like finishers, you will need to install the native driver and print queue.

We don’t do chargebacks per dept, we have a consolidated bill which is broken out per machine/location.