PaperCut rules

[accesstomusic]

Hi.

 

Next week I will have PaperCut installed on the network for all of our mono printers and MFDs.

 

I'm having a think about what rules I'd like to have in place as a Managed Print company are coming in soon to help configure them with me.

 

I was wondering what rules other schools/colleges have, and if there's anything in particular I should be looking out for?

 

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[tekins]

We have the rules as follows:

 

No more than 3 copies, no reprints within 2 minutes, no printing documents with filename document1 etc (this forces them to save their work - helps prevent printing and not saving, then needing it again!).

I also have a script that pops up if the document is over 15 pages asking are you sure you want to print this (or similar).

[accesstomusic]

Thanks @tekins much appreciated, but please can I ask why do you limit to just 3 copies? What if you're copying a document for a class set of 30 students?

[tekins]

Sorry, should've said, the limit is for the printers in the ICT rooms, the staffroom devices don't have limits.

[3s-gtech]

We also have strict copies limits on printers - the MFDs don't have these. This is so that departments have to directly pay for class sets through their copier budgets and can't do typical things like print it to another departments' printer!

[Big_Ted]

My advice would be:

 

1. get the software installed and run it in the background (https://www.papercut.com/kb/Main/SilentMonitoringMode)

2. after a few weeks you will have a good picture of who prints what.

3. use the reports to have a coversation with the department heads. Starting from the top and explaining at a human level what the reports mean and how printing simplex/colour can be a huge resource drain on the school.

4. identify any persistant bad users - again discus printing habbits (they may have legit reasons to always print in colour etc)

5. start to throw in some rules about coverting jobs by default. - Consider allowing some users to be unaffected by this or have different queues for those you trust not to print every email ever in colour.

 

In summary - keep an eye on things and using the data in papercut make people aware of their impact.

[pete]

Redirect large jobs with notification (requires PaperCut client installed on the computer sending the job, but trivial to deploy) to a more economical printer. Requires all printers to be talking the same language (postscript > postscript or PCL > PCL) in order to work.

 

We're set up so everyone has just 1-2 printers: the printer in the room (if there is one) and a virtual queue that can be released on the copiers with a job retention of 72hrs.