Paper cut and follow me printing for Special schools

[beancole]

Hi All,

 

I am a network manager in a special needs school and I am trying to push for follow me printing. I would implement paper cut with an external provider on a number of sharpe MFDs. we can only have this for staff so only need a few machines (admin and prep room.) This is becuase the kids cant leave the room etc so paper cut would incorporate our existing printers.

 

I have done the sums and by replacing two machines we save £2000 per year so you would think it simple. The follow me would use our existing RFID dongles but the head is still sceptical. I need to find another special school with follow me printing that can give me a testimonial to help convince the head.

 

any IT guys in special schools out there able to lend a hand?

[adamholt1]

Hi,

 

Im from a SEN school so deffo could bounce some ideas off with each other.

 

It is something we are currently looking at. How many printers do you have throughout the school?

 

We have 9 colour laser printers currently and our toner and paper bill is about 5k a year. Whats yours? The problem is the ethos of the staff as taking the print as much as you want anytime you want away from them wouldnt make us popular!!

[Crumpet]

We're not a special school, but Papercut has been pretty good from an IT perspective, we've replaced all printers on site apart from about 3-4 with shared printers. Some teachers were apprehensive about having their printers replaced with shared printers but they're pretty happy with the system now they've got used to it.

 

The only ongoing issue that we have is setting the iPads up to print to the Virtual Print queue, which still hasn't been resolved but that's a bonus feature rather than an essential need in our school.

Edited October 24, 2014 by Crumpet

[spadam]

We are a Primary Special School of 90ish pupils and have been using Papercut NG for almost a year now. We bought NG fom the Papercut website for around £400 at the time and it is a really, really well designed bit of software, works really well and I love it.

 

We currently have 2 x Sharp MFD's shared between our 7 classrooms, 1 smaller MFD for the office and the head and deputy have an old mono printer each in their office.

 

Our current setup is that all staff get unlimited printing and children get a few pages a week which can be increased on request. The head decided it would be unworkable to try and limit staff printing here but at least it is monitored now.

 

The Teachers were not at all happy about losing their printers in their classrooms (less convenient, other staff walking off with their printing) but the complaints have slowly subsided over time. I am now working on setting up a virtual print release queue and release stations for the 2 MFD's to reduce the waste from print jobs which are never collected and ensure users only collect their own printouts. I wanted to do this initially but the teachers complained that having to wait at the printer for their jobs to print would be far too inconvenient.

[MatthewL]

You can setup release stations if licensed within PaperCut so that any printer could be used a hold printer if that is what you want to do.

 

Other than that just using PaperCut and the client to monitor the jobs for the small printers will help you reduce costs alone. There are scripts that are built into PaperCut where you can get a teacher to put in an code so the job can be processed.

[D0liver]

We're not a special school, but Papercut has been pretty good from an IT perspective, we've replaced all printers on site apart from about 3-4 with shared printers. Some teachers were apprehensive about having their printers replaced with shared printers but they're pretty happy with the system now they've got used to it.

 

The only ongoing issue that we have is setting the iPads up to print to the Virtual Print queue, which still hasn't been resolved but that's a bonus feature rather than an essential need in our school.

 

 

We are also stuck on trying to share the 'virtual printer' from our Mac..we can add a real printer and print fine but we can't share a virtual printer from the mac..Do the iPads print from the user mobile for you?

[round2it]

Paper cuts new release has some new features for users with special needs.

http://www.papercut.com/blog/development-team/2014/10/21/v14-3-the-importance-of-accessibility/

 

Might help with persuading the head

Edited October 24, 2014 by round2it

[Dos_Box]

Moving to Enterprise Software forum.

[beancole]

Hi,

 

Im from a SEN school so deffo could bounce some ideas off with each other.

 

It is something we are currently looking at. How many printers do you have throughout the school?

 

We have 9 colour laser printers currently and our toner and paper bill is about 5k a year. Whats yours? The problem is the ethos of the staff as taking the print as much as you want anytime you want away from them wouldnt make us popular!!

 

I don't even dare look at our toner bill.

 

I am looking to replace just 2 of our printers for staff only this would save us 2 grand alone because of the volumes. I would then put all our existing printers onto paper cut. Im told when staff print to an expensive printer it can throw up a warning letting them how much it costs compared with going to an MFD. I think our deputy was over at your place a few months ago for something to do with integris.

[round2it]

Yes thats correct. You can customise notices force black only and double sided printing.

 

Departments are resposible for printing costs and the bursar takes the cost out of budgets.

 

Not its problem any more