Print Manager Plus White-Papers

This document discusses the subject of print tracking and control, specifically as it applies to Windows NT/2000/XP/2003. The purpose of the document is to provide some basic guidelines and requirements for a print tracking and control system. Also included is a high level overview of the Windows print architecture and the terminology associated with it.

PRINT TRACKING AND CONTROL
As with other quota management software, a print tracking and control system (also called quota management) is used to control and limit a valuable resource, namely wear and tear on printers, paper and toner. Just like disk space, printers are abused, and many thousands of reams of paper are wasted annually, in average corporations. This is a large cost, and is hard to control without the proper data and tools.

Other networks such as Novell NetWare and Unix have software to control and track printing built in. Windows however, does not, and leaves an MIS manager quite helpless when it comes to controlling and tracking printing.

The features provided by Windows for print tracking and control are very rudimentary and include only auditing type options, with no control ability whatsoever. The auditing available is centered on print events, such as job added, job deleted and job paused. These events get logged to the event viewer. Just like any other system resource, Windows provides security control for access and management of printers.

One major fault with the printer auditing provided by Windows is that it does not count job pages for any print job which is printed from a non Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 client (such as Windows 95/98, Mac or Unix). This makes it useless for many corporations whose desktop machines are non-Windows. Microsoft does not publicize this fact, and most MIS managers find it out the hard way.

The only option left to an MIS manager who wants to control printing is to purchase a costly printing control system. These solutions are hardware based (involve custom print servers and hardware accessories) and are very costly. This puts them out of reach for most MIS managers who want to cut a few hundred dollars per week in excess printing.

This is where print tracking and control software comes in, providing a real (affordable) solution for tracking and control.

At a high-level, the functions that a print tracking and control system should perform can be broken down into three areas:

Ability to track:

• Pages per job (including copies)
  
• Inches per job (for plotters)
  
• Time submitted
  
• Specific printers (such as more costly color
  
• Specific users
  
• Specific machines
  
• Color print jobs
  
• Duplex print jobs
  
• Different page sizes
  

• Set an enforced quota on a user, in some standard system (page count, total cost, etc.)
  
• Set quotas differently for various printers, i.e., allowing less printing on more costly color printers
  
• Denial of service on jobs which exceed a maximum size (pages, file size, etc.) threshold
  
• Denial of service on job titles which match a configurable search string
  
• Denial of service on jobs which match any quality that is tracked
  
• Configurable reaction to each restriction?