Using follow-me on different brand of printers

[NorIT]

Hi there

 

The company I'm working at is in the process of centralizing the print server and add follow-me/secure print to every MFP.

We've encountered an issue with getting information about the different solutions. They all seem to work with all brands of printers, but not simultaneously.

 

So far we've looked at:

Safecom

SafeQ

Equitrac

Uniflow

 

Uniflow is the only one so far that seems to manage a mixed printer environment the way we want, but it still doesn't support all brands due to other restrictions.

The other solutions depends on the driver printer being published to the client, which means we'd have to manage 4-5 different drivers and making sure the user picks the right one for the printer he wants to use.

Some claim that their universal print driver works with other brands, but what kind of functionality would we loose? I can't seem to figure this out.

 

What we're hoping to achieve is one queue, with multiple brands of printers.

Is this even possible or is the only solution to replace every printer with the same brand?

Edited April 27, 2016 by NorIT

[gaz350b]

try papercut? PaperCut for professionals - Track and recover printing costs and bill back to clients.

[nadeem]

We use Equitrac and it supports multiple brands of printers (we have a mixed Sharp/Ricoh estate)

[NorIT]

We use Equitrac and it supports multiple brands of printers (we have a mixed Sharp/Ricoh estate)

 

Excellent. Sorry, I just have to ask a few questions as this is a pretty big deal for my company.

How does it handle drivers and print queue? Does the user have to choose to use either Sharp or Ricoh printer or is it one print queue with a universal driver?

If it's a universal driver, do you lack any features compared to a specific print driver?

 

The way we want it to work is as follow:

One print queue deployed to the users. The user prints to the queue and walks to whichever printer(be it canon, hp, richo, sharp or xerox) he or she finds to pull the job from the server.

[nadeem]

We have it set up as you want - one print queue, user collects from whatever device they want.

 

We used originally the Ricoh universal driver, but I've recently changed it to a Sharp driver (our Sharp machines are newer, and I'm phasing out the Ricoh MFDs).

 

Obviously it still fails when people try and do things like pick up a staple job from a printer rather than an MFD (prints without stapling!).

 

We also have a small number of HP kit that is connected as well.

[NorIT]

Obviously it still fails when people try and do things like pick up a staple job from a printer rather than an MFD (prints without stapling!).

 

Am I reading this correctly? Special features like stapling works across brands (MFD's) with a brand specific universal driver?

Any features that doesn't work?

 

Thanks for the help, it's greatly appreciated.

[MatthewL]

Any of the software will support the printers but ideally you need 1 follow me queue per manufacturer if you want to use their features i.e. stapling, book making. Normally you wouldn't have a mixed fleet of machines in a situation like this. Uniflow as far as I am aware is Canon only but I might be wrong. Safecom has been dropped by a few manufacturers as been officially supported, PaperCut is your best bet in all honest opinion.

[nadeem]

Am I reading this correctly? Special features like stapling works across brands (MFD's) with a brand specific universal driver?

Any features that doesn't work?

 

Thanks for the help, it's greatly appreciated.

 

Yes we did set it up like this so that stapling for example worked whether you picked it up on one of our Sharp machines or one of our Ricoh machines. I have a feeling that booklets might have been trickier (and I'm sure that hole punchign was a real nuisance - but I was the only one whoever used that feature!) - I could go and test it now for you but we only had it configured that way for a few months whilst we were transitioning from our Ricoh MFDs to our Sharp MFDs.

 

We now only have Sharp MFDs and Ricoh printers in the print queue - the few Ricoh MFDs I have left in the print queue don't do stapling/booklets etc. so I can't test with those either.

 

Sorry to not be of more help

[Big_Ted]

a mixed fleet can cause issues. The user experience is going to be different on each machine, the functionality will be different and printing might be an issue as you look to find a driver that works on them all and provides the features you need. That being said there are global drivers or you can setup different queues

[mikkydoos]

Papercut will do it.

 

The virtual queue is just a holding / accounting queue. When the user releases the job it goes via whichever printer queue is for that specific MFP - and uses the driver specified for that printer on the print server. No client drivers are needed.

Edited May 5, 2016 by mikkydoos

[Lonix]

Papercut will do it.

 

The virtual queue is just a holding / accounting queue. When the user releases the job it goes via whichever printer queue is for that specific MFP - and uses the driver specified for that printer on the print server. No client drivers are needed.

 

+1 for this.

 

We currently use biometrics to link up the entire system but because one Ricoh we have isn't compatible with it nor with PaperCut....

 

Still, PaperCut will mix/match systems in to a single Virtual Print Queue but the only question is if the specific print models are compatible. Our Ricoh isn't mainly because... its more industry size than a standard MFD.