Print saving solution

[sydborn]

Hi,

 

 

I have been asked to look into our printer.

 

At the moment we use Ricoh printer.

 

When a user send document to the printer ,the user inputs his/her code before it can print.

 

 

The Business manager runs a report at the end of term.

 

Now the School wants staffs to be able to print only a 1000 sheet withing a set period of time and has asked if I can set the printer to do this.

 

They want a situation whereby at the begining of the month the teacher is given a quota of say print 1000 copies and when it exceeds a 1000 ,He /She will ask the Business manager and then they will ask what have you done with your 1000 print credit?

 

 

Please How can I do this for free?

[robyholmes]

Quotas never work, staff just use another code or go crying to the business manager to have it reset. Look in to Papercut and put a monetary value on each print. There's loads of topics on here about how to set this up. We have it that each department gets asked each half term how much they want on there printing budget. It comes out of their annual budget so they use it wisely (On the most part). Staff authenticate with a fob which is linked to their AD account. Department heads can request a report showing who's done what.

 

Just by having a £ on each job makes people think. 'You have 200 pages left' doesn't have much affect but 'You've just spent £80 on exams papers and have £10 left' does.

Edited January 9, 2017 by robyholmes

[hallb15]

I agree with @robyholmes in that print quotas are more of a headache than they are worth. We've re-introduced them since coming back to school this term and all that happens is people run out so ask for more credit. Papercut isn't free but it does come highly recommended and is the route I'll be pushing for when our current printer/copier contract runs out.

[unixman_again]

+1 Papercut.

 

The only real way that you can reduce printing is to remove as many printers as you can, and site the remaining ones well away from offices. Make it so that office staff have to walk to collect a print and printing will be reduced.

[Julian]

We are using "follow me" printing with Richo MFD's and Papercut MF. For staff, every print / photocopy job has to go against a cost centre. Papercut automatically generates reports (weekly), which it emails to each budget holder, about how there budget is being spent.

 

The follow me printing has cut down on print wastage. When you have to walk to the photocopier, before anything is printed, it helps make users think about if the need to print.

 

We had some users concerned about others seeing what they are printing, this has receded as users realise that nothing is printed out until they are physically, at the photocopier, and have asked for that document to be printed.

[ITGURU]

We had in excess of 65+ desktop printers and went to a centralised print solution 18 months ago to "save money" However according to the papercut statistics, I reckon we are spending more now because staff can copy and print themselves, rather than just printing.

 

We have it default to mono/double sided but people forget and still waste paper when it's been printed and forgotten to change the settings.

 

We also have an issue when staff photocopy, they enter someone elses pin number so get complaints when the reports go to departments saying x name isn't in our department but using x's code.

[MatthewL]

PaperCut way forward. You can then report on your other printers and put rules in place.

 

Using codes on machines is a faff, other people use other codes, they can often work intermittent depending what application you are printing from also.

 

Save yourself the hassle get PaperCut, will give you far more accurate information and you can invest to save with this.

[fiza]

We had in excess of 65+ desktop printers and went to a centralised print solution 18 months ago to "save money" However according to the papercut statistics, I reckon we are spending more now because staff can copy and print themselves, rather than just printing.

 

We have it default to mono/double sided but people forget and still waste paper when it's been printed and forgotten to change the settings.

 

We also have an issue when staff photocopy, they enter someone elses pin number so get complaints when the reports go to departments saying x name isn't in our department but using x's code.

 

We use papercut and our users have a Mifare sticker on the back of their Staff ID badge which they use to authenticate to the MFDs. No chance of any mix ups unless they deliberately give their badge to someone else. If they forget the ID then they can still manually enter their AD credentials.

[ITGURU]

We use papercut and our users have a Mifare sticker on the back of their Staff ID badge which they use to authenticate to the MFDs. No chance of any mix ups unless they deliberately give their badge to someone else. If they forget the ID then they can still manually enter their AD credentials.

 

Unfortunately I wasn't involved with the whole process and they went with the pin option. They didn't want to use AD as will take a while for them to enter, and there would have been additional cost to get the card readers added.

[Achandler]

The issue with using each others PIN is tough really. You get issued a PIN everything printed on your PIN is charged to where you chose, if you give your PIN someone else and they charge it to your department its your fault.

 

If you told the bank you gave your PIN to your friend and then he stole your money, they would just laugh at you. If you give someone else your login and they access NSFW material online, it is your fault as well. Your staff need to take repsonsibility for their own actions, the students are expected to, the adults can lead by example.

 

Share your PIN, your department gets charged more, didums your departments loses the money is the rule here. We have mifare stickers (all staff) on ID badges and manual PINs for most others, your locked down on which departments you can print too.

 

You can have individual PINs remember now just departmental ones.

[CAWJames]

We have standard Papercut with pin codes and Ricoh MFP's, and set all queues to release only. At each printer is a Raspberry Pi touch screen and barcode scanner. Everyone has their pin encoded as a barcode on their badge, no manual entry. V effective and cheap at about £100 per copier for hardware plus the cost of a Papercut release station licence, so circa £200 per copier in all. Copying is by pin on the Ricoh screen. Release printing is the way forward If someone prints and wanders off and leaves their printing on top of the copier, and I am around, they will usually find it in the bin. They love me in the office!!

[Bedders]

At the secondary school I used to work at, we had 6 Sharp MFP's with Follow-Me Printing managing it all - one queue, go to any printer to release a document. Since we already had biometrics in the canteen, fingerprint readers were added to the side of every printer. Each printer could print, scan, copy, all in either colour or black&white (default to B&W, changed in Print Options from the computer when it was sent) and had 3 x A4 500-capacity trays and an A3 500-capacity tray.

User logged in with their fingerprint (linked to Active Directory) or could manually enter their Active Directory username & password - it did mean staff were initially handing their logins to 'trustworthy' students to collect their printing but this died down once we reset any staff's password that were caught doing this.

Documents were sent to the print queue under the credentials of the user logged in to the computer and could only be release from a printer by that user account.

 

We also had the paper trays locked away with a key (giant metal bar that was raised to cover the right side of the paper trays) which prevented a lot of staff going 'Oh we need some paper. Let's not go down to Reprographics and get charged, let's nick some from the printer'. A couple of them were trying to be clever and printed 30 blank pages to get paper, without realising their department would still be charged. Made me chuckle...