Papercut MF embedded questions

[Jonesminor]

Hi all,

 

As a cost cutting exercise, both in terms of leasing and consumables, over the Christmas break we ditched our Ricoh kit and installed 8 new Konica Copiers and upgraded Papercut NG to MF.

 

Everything is working of a fashion and the reporting is excellent but the integration of Papercut with the copiers is horrible to use. Lots of niggles but the two main issues (so far) are..

 

1) We're set for department printing, not charging individual users. It's cumbersome to login to a copier. Far too many steps / key presses required. Each user in Papercut is assigned a default department and this is recognised on the Papercut client on the PC but not on the copier.. it has to be selected every time. Card readers are on order that work with our ID badges but this will only solve part of the problem.

 

2) We have a virtual 'Follow me print & release' queue and physical queues on PCs sited near a copier. When printing direct to a copier, there is no indication on the copier screen of what's happening. For example, on the old Ricoh, if there was a job sent in US Letter instead of A4, it was easy to fix, now only the login screen is displayed. Such jobs disappear into the ether but the dept is charged.

 

Does anyone have experience of Konica / Papercut integration? Does Papercut integrate with other kit any better? Are there better solutions out there?

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

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[TechMonkey]

Don't know about Konica kit but we have Sharp running Papercut MF and have groups working without them selecting.

In the groups section of Papercut do you have "Automatically charge to a single shared account" set? Then did you bulk update the members of the group?

 

My first thought is talk to managed print provider and let them do it. You at least have someone to yell at and can offload these issues to someone else to fix. The problem with that is, as ever, money.

[pete]

Regarding 2), when we asked KM about MF integration our rep (or the person he forwarded the query on to) hid from us for about 3 months. They did say "hey, why not use this expensive KM option instead?", to which our response was "it doesn't support $other_printing_hardware and it's really expensive". Make of that what you will.

 

What have PaperCut said? They're usually pretty responsive and (IIRC) some of them lurk on here.

 

We're pondering an MF + $copier_brand integration when we refresh (Easter-ish) so I'll be interested to see how you go.

[ADMaster]

I setup paper cut on the Konica's over the break as well. I've had a few users with jobs that just disappear too. I have one that shows as error deletion in the KM job log after papercut releases it to the printer. The user is still charged and the papercut log says printed.

I recall seeing a setting for shared accounts, but I don't have any of that setup yet.

[Paid_Peanuts]

We run Konica with PaperCut MF - regards problem 1 ask your Konica contract about iOptions. It basically removes the horrible Konica interface to PaperCut and replaces with a much nicer, easier to select interface. We run this on all our 454e and it makes life so much easier for the end user. When I'm in the office later I'll take a picture of the interface and upload so you can see what I mean. There is a cost to it but for us we wouldn't use the Konica's without it.

[Jonesminor]

Thanks all for the info.

 

Paid_Peanuts - sounds interesting. I would be interested to see a pic of the iOptions screen and do you know a rough cost?

 

Pete / Techmonkey, agree the 'Auto charge to single account' works better but many of our users currently print for more than dept and so for them we use the 'show standard account popup'. I haven't contacted Papercut yet as everything is mostly working. The supplier is coming in this week but I like to be prepared to avoid the fob off.

 

I'll post back any progress.

 

Thanks again.

 

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[Paid_Peanuts]

Thanks all for the info.

 

Paid_Peanuts - sounds interesting. I would be interested to see a pic of the iOptions screen and do you know a rough cost?

 

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Here are a copy of the photos I have just taken which show the iOptions in use on the Konica 454e.

 

Photo 1 : The welcome/logon screen

 

Photo 2 : manual keyboard if they have forgotten their mifare card

 

Photo 3 : After authenticating IF you have any prints in your queue it displays them

 

Photo 4 : If you have no prints in your queue or you choose to use photocopier you are presented with your account selection page

 

After that it's all the usual Konica screens.

 

As you can see it makes releasing their print a lot easier. A simple swipe of their card, select the print from the screen and click print.

Job done.

 

As to the cost - sorry I don't know as it was all in our solution. Your Konica rep will be able to tell you.

[ADMaster]

I have the i-options installed. I had no idea it is/ was an extra cost.

I have a couple 552's that don't support i-options, not enough memory, but all my 654's have it. Perhaps it's just standard on those machines??

[Big_Ted]

There are some config keys in the KM manual that can change the workflow a little they may be worth looking at.

If you took papercut off a Konica where on the screen would it display warnings about incorrect page sizes etc?

[Jonesminor]

Hi all, to update..

 

The supplier have been back in and installed the card readers.

 

The machines also now display info about empty paper, jams and incorrect paper sizes. It's possible this was happening before but these were either timing out or being cancelled by another user.

 

We were advised our machines would need a memory upgrade for iOptions so we've ordered that and the iOptions interface.

 

Thanks.

[ITGURU]

We are using PaperCut MF with Samsung MFPs

We ditched the AD login and use PIN numbers - only niggle is that you cannot set the login screen to default to numbers so a press of the text/number key to enter their pin, then get list of printers.

 

Only other annoyance is you have to go through the ;use copier functions and get to the main screen before you can log out (or wait for it to time out).

[Big_Ted]

We are using PaperCut MF with Samsung MFPs

Only other annoyance is you have to go through the ;use copier functions and get to the main screen before you can log out (or wait for it to time out).

In a newer update they added a log off button, i think this makes it more visible on the screen (useful for devices that did not have a hard key for log off)

[ITGURU]

In a newer update they added a log off button, i think this makes it more visible on the screen (useful for devices that did not have a hard key for log off)

 

What version of Papercut MF are you on and the version of the Papercut Software running on the MFP?

[Big_Ted]

What version of Papercut MF are you on and the version of the Papercut Software running on the MFP?

 

The change was added in 15.3 PaperCut MF - Release History (search samsung)

[ITGURU]

The change was added in 15.3 PaperCut MF - Release History (search samsung)

 

That will be why then as we are still on 15.2.

 

Once the server is upgraded does the Papercut XOA have to be re-deployed to update the version of the app on the MFPs?

[mthomas08]

We have Toshiba equipment linked to Biometrics, each user has their own budget in Papercut. At the end of every month a DEPT report is sent to Finance who charge the correct budgets.

 

Although not perfect due to some Staff being in multi depts, we charge slightly less than what they should be.

 

We've still got some niggles to work out too but we are getting things close to perfect.

[MatthewL]

Although not perfect due to some Staff being in multi depts, we charge slightly less than what they should be.

 

Use accounts so those staff who work in several choose which they are printing for and then you can bill from there.

[Joxta]

Interesting thread.

 

We have a Konica Minolta with Papercut MF, and the default interface has p**sed me off for as long as we've had it. Never knew anything about i-options, even when I spoke to our rep about how bad the interface was compared to the Kyocera copiers we also have papercut on.

Those pictures look just like the interface on the Kyocera's, which we've never had any problem with.

 

Our kit is up for refresh in the summer, and I'd already decided we were not getting KM again, because of the interface. If i-options is the answer, I'll think again. (especially as everyone likes the banners our KM will print)

[vladker]

Interesting thread.

 

We have a Konica Minolta with Papercut MF, and the default interface has p**sed me off for as long as we've had it. Never knew anything about i-options, even when I spoke to our rep about how bad the interface was compared to the Kyocera copiers we also have papercut on.

Those pictures look just like the interface on the Kyocera's, which we've never had any problem with.

 

Our kit is up for refresh in the summer, and I'd already decided we were not getting KM again, because of the interface. If i-options is the answer, I'll think again. (especially as everyone likes the banners our KM will print)

 

FYI, just replaced our fleet with Konica and papercut. iOptions give you the papercut embedded interface. iOptions are now standard on some models, namely the C308. Engineer had to enable but it was at no cost.

[Seb1780]

What are the cost implications of adding PaperCut to your MFDs? At a recent meeting where we were discussing print management it was stated "it doubles the cost per print" and "it's only worth doing on large volume machines". Does this sound correct? Is there such a huge difference in cost for the same machine with and without PaperCut?

 

Our MFDs are leased.

[Jonesminor]

Quick update..

 

We now have the iOptions interface on the Develop/Konica machines - cost was £850 for 7 devices and included additional memory for each device. The major improvement over the previous papercut interface for us is that the list of 'follow me' print jobs are listed as soon as you log in, without having to select a department.

 

Apart from a few teething troubles the machines seem ok and we're saving money. Print volume is down and the weekly reports automatically emailed to department heads seems to have helped to.

 

Seb1780 - we were quoted £327 for an embedded papercut license and this included 3 years support.

 

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[MatthewL]

What are the cost implications of adding PaperCut to your MFDs? At a recent meeting where we were discussing print management it was stated "it doubles the cost per print" and "it's only worth doing on large volume machines". Does this sound correct? Is there such a huge difference in cost for the same machine with and without PaperCut?

 

Our MFDs are leased.

 

To add PaperCut MF embedded which allows you to use follow me print and track copies its costed on number of MFD's, over say 3 years it probably costs about £30 a quarter depending on the manufacturer to have a machine on this which will pay for its self I think. Some manufacturers need additional things fitting to machines to enable it which can add cost but in the overall picture its nothing much.

[robyholmes]

Could I ask people to either post or PM me who you use for leasing / papercut support? The i-options thing is very interesting!

[Jonesminor]

Hi all, may be of use to someone in the future..

 

We normally leverage DHCP & DNS wherever possible but with the MFDs connected to Papercut, we've had to switch to static IPs. Since they arrived we had the odd instance of a device showing a connection error but it got to the point where 2 or 3 devices became disconnected every day.

 

I'm not sure what the root cause is.. I trust our DHCP and DNS config; I could ping the hostname and clients could print direct but Papercut thought the devices were disconnected. Switching to static IPs seems to have improved matters!?

 

Thanks.

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[ITGURU]

Hi all, may be of use to someone in the future..

 

We normally leverage DHCP & DNS wherever possible but with the MFDs connected to Papercut, we've had to switch to static IPs. Since they arrived we had the odd instance of a device showing a connection error but it got to the point where 2 or 3 devices became disconnected every day.

 

I'm not sure what the root cause is.. I trust our DHCP and DNS config; I could ping the hostname and clients could print direct but Papercut thought the devices were disconnected. Switching to static IPs seems to have improved matters!?

 

Thanks.

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Shouldn't those kind of devices have static IP addresses anyway??! I took over a network that had a print server and all the printers were on DHCP, no wonder the clients were dropping the printers off and not working, printer changed IP but the print server wont automatically update the IP.

 

the only devices I have on DHCP are clients. CCTV, Door Access, Printers, Switches, Servers, iLO, MFPs etc etc are all statics.