FollowMe/Pull-Printing

[timbo343]

We have just had a managed print solution installed with papercut but I was wondering how other schools have their MFDs/MFPs set to release jobs.

 

At the moment we have Staff and 6th Form on card release and its working great however Years 7 – 11 have to input their username and password into the copiers. It has been raised that students are so slow at typing that any students around the copier can easily see their passwords being inputted, it is also to stop the long queues in the library even though students have been told to use other devices.

 

I have suggested that we give cards out to students and the bursar is slowly coming round to the idea however the head has raised concerns about this route because of lost cards, cost of the cards, etc. Instead, it has been requested that we look at biometrics.

 

So, I have been asked to ring round / contact other schools on how they do it and what pluses and negatives you have for the solution so I thought I would put something on here.

 

If you use cards,

do you issue them to everyone – If they lose the card, do they have to pay for another card

do you let them have a choice – they have the option to pay for a card

do you give out lanyards with badges?

 

I can see the biometric side of things been expensive.

 

Also, whilst on this "FollowMe" issue, what are other schools credit limits for students - we have given Year 7-9: 50p | Year 10 - 14: £1.00 and this gets topped up every month.

 

Thanks

Edited April 16, 2015 by timbo343

[Meldrew]

We started off with cards and moved to biometrics (fingerprints) due to the cost and workload of printing lost cards. The biometrics with BioStore isn't too expensive, although I haven't got figures to hand.

 

Meldrew

[pcstru]

We have cards for everyone, given with lanyards. If they lose it they pay for a replacement. Cards have multiple uses - cashless catering, library loans, printing and for the 6th form, some access control - so for the cost we get reasonable value.

[Griff]

We have Equitrac here and they are able to use either... a card, their AD details or a 4 digit PIN code. So we just tell the students to use the PIN code staff generally use their PIN code or their card however this is by no means rolled out we only just had it installed

[unixman_again]

We installed this over Easter. All staff and students have id cards and they swipe them at the MFDs for pull printing, scanning to email or scanning to paper. We don't charge them for scanning to email. We've had a few niggles but mostly it is working fine.

[Grey-gear]

We have Biometrics and for the ones that opt out they have cards.

[Edu-IT]

All of our kids have cards. We started out with printed nice ones but now we just ones which equate to about 20p, they're just plain white.

 

If they're lost, the pupils are charged for replacement. They double up as catering cards too.

[MatthewL]

I would go cards over Biometrics anyday, I think its a very expensive way of doing it unless you have money to burn. Yes you may get a few kids loosing their cards but charge them for new ones.

 

You have another cheaper option, on the device enable the identity number and give each kid a pin code, which can be generated automatically and they login with that rather than AD details but you could leave the username and password option there. If kid forgets number you can change it for them. I think its under users and bulk action you can assign on there and then there is a report to pull these off.

[Meldrew]

I would go cards over Biometrics anyday, I think its a very expensive way of doing it unless you have money to burn. Yes you may get a few kids loosing their cards but charge them for new ones.

 

I'm going to have to see if I can dig out the costs - we wouldn't have gone biometrics if it was massively expensive. For us the cards were a real pain and biometrics was a welcome change. The costs I seem to remember were helped by selling the card printer which from memory cost £2,500 and running costs were really expensive. Sounds like things have changed, but we were paying 50p each for blank cards, plus the cost of the film to go in the printer was expensive too.

 

Meldrew

[Sagima]

We use cards for staff (also double/treble as door access and staff id), students use their username and password if they need to use a printer that isn;t in the it suite they are in as the it suite printers are set to immediate release from those PCs.

I'd love us to go biometrics - I'm currently trying to convince my bosses that printing the cards is a very low skill duty and not something I should be spending my time on as network manager. Unfortunately they are very much of the mindset of "it's plugged into the network therefore it is ITs responsibility" while I/We think we should be managing the backend and not doing the day-to-day printing and card replacements.

 

We supply lanyards and those elastic reel things depending on personal preference - I think most of the female staff went with lanyards as they tend to lack the pockets and belts the reels attach to.

[TomHD]

We use PINs for Staff and Students. Staff have 6 digits and is their DOB, Students have 4 digits which is auto generated. We keep a record of the student PINs in a staff shared area so we don't have to manage forgotten PINs. Simple and free!

 

Regarding cards, we use them for door access and we charge £2 for a replacement. We make staff sign an AUP when the card is issued to ensure we can recover costs.

Edited April 17, 2015 by TomHD

[Sibrows]

Are you just using this on multi-function devices?

 

I'm interested in adding this to our existing workgroup printers as we don't have the space for floor-standing copiers. Is there additional hardware available for the printers without the ability to authenticate built-in?

[round2it]

We issue cards to staff as they are dual purpose (door Entry).

 

 

All student print jobs goto a hold/release system (papercut)

 

the staff logon to print release

https:\\servername\release

they log in and they can release the work for students.

 

 

this keeps the students in the classroom until 5 mins towards the end and then they release all the jobs.

 

Well thats the idea.

[alecthegeek]

I'm interested in adding this to our existing workgroup printers as we don't have the space for floor-standing copiers. Is there additional hardware available for the printers without the ability to authenticate built-in?

 

PaperCut MF does support a feature called fast release which can be used with printers that have have no user interface.

 

It requires a network attached card reader to be associated with the printer. When a user swipes their card on the reader their jobs are released straight away. This works with find-me printing as well.

 

It's a simple approach, but works well.

 

If you have a PaperCut partner they should be able to assist you. If not email support and we can point you in right direction.

[kennysarmy]

No biometrics here or card swipe machines.

 

All staff and students authenticate at the SHARP devices with their AD username and password.