[sims] FMS - Default Printer Issue

[CHiLL]

I've just had a call from our bursar, who is attempting to print off year end reports and roll over to the new year. Apparently this has to be done before she can do payroll for this month, so she's quite stressed. We do not have any access to the building at the moment because the head's decision was to completely shut the school, though the she is trying to contact the site team or one of the deputy heads to open the school for a couple of hours to print.

 

To the issue; FMS is a bugger with printers, I know this. It doesn't print properly unless the printer you want to print to is the system default. She is working from home and accessing FMS via our RDS connection. So group policy is adding the normal printers she would have if she were sat at her desk, but obviously she can't access that printer physically. She has a small inkjet Epson printer that is connected to her laptop via USB and it works fine when printing from Word, even if when the job has been sent from Word on RDS (as it has redirected the printer/passed it through).

 

However the system's default printer is still the her office one. I have managed to change that via Notepad (because the Control Panel/Settings applet are blocked on RDS for security) and changed it to her Epson inkjet. When I open up Office applications such as Word, Excel, etc...they all see this Epson as the system default printer and print to it. However FMS will still show her office printer as the default, even after closing the application and reopening it. I have absolutely no idea why. If I specify in FMS to use a different printer, it will print to the office printer regardless.

 

Has anyone encountered this before or know how to solve it? If she can't access the building, I can see there being a lot of issues and questions asked.

[synaesthesia]

Yes, the joys of Crapita's 1990's software bugs causes the same problems in Options & Exams modules too. The fix for us was to disable the tickbox in the RDP connection to redirect printers.

[CHiLL]

Yes, the joys of Crapita's 1990's software bugs causes the same problems in Options & Exams modules too. The fix for us was to disable the tickbox in the RDP connection to redirect printers.

Yeah, I loaded the Options module by mistake earlier and it's the first time I've accessed it...I had a flash back to 1998!

 

We need the redirected printer though, because she needs to print the stuff to the printer in her home.

[synaesthesia]

Ah, I'll see if anyone else has cunning plans then; we just put our foot down and said noone should be expected to print anything from home, certainly not this day and age (referring to exams but these days it's all PDF format, so no issue there). I wouldn't want staff printing anything at home though, mostly to protect them and us from data loss.

[3s-gtech]

Is the Microsoft PDF printer showing if set as default? Print to PDF, email PDF to herself, print at home.

[CHiLL]

Is the Microsoft PDF printer showing if set as default? Print to PDF, email PDF to herself, print at home.

No, her school office was set as the default in FMS. FMS could see the PDF and home printer, however would send ALL jobs to the school office printer, regardless of which printer was selected. Even when I set the default printer in Windows, so other applications picked up the home printer...FMS wouldn't detect that at all and ONLY have the school office printer as the default.

 

She managed to contact someone with keys to the building and got on site, so she managed to do the work she needed there.

[dapaulio]

Not sure if this will work as I too know how much of a snow flake fms is. You’d think the finance sector would enter the 21st century. It’s amazing how finance departments in schools still use fax...

 

Have you tried changing the printers in the print setup in I think the file menu?

There are 5 or 6 tabs where can set the printer away from system default. You may be able to set the redirected printer.

 

Edit - evidently repeated the post above sorry

Edited April 18, 2020 by dapaulio

[04amh]

No, her school office was set as the default in FMS. FMS could see the PDF and home printer, however would send ALL jobs to the school office printer, regardless of which printer was selected. Even when I set the default printer in Windows, so other applications picked up the home printer...FMS wouldn't detect that at all and ONLY have the school office printer as the default.

 

She managed to contact someone with keys to the building and got on site, so she managed to do the work she needed there.

 

Our Business Manager also had this problem. I just set the default to "Print to PDF", and then once in PDF she can print the PDF wherever she wants to. It's interesting that it still defaults to the other printer... Have you tried disabling all other printers in Device Manager? Or if security settings prohibit this, remove all other printers through a GPO policy that only applies to your bursar. Maybe temporarily set a 'Deny' permission onto all the other printers to give FMS no other choice than PDF printer. As I say, setting the default within windows to PDF printer done the trick for us.

[CHiLL]

Not sure if this will work as I too know how much of a snow flake fms is. You’d think the finance sector would enter the 21st century. It’s amazing how finance departments in schools still use fax...

 

Have you tried changing the printers in the print setup in I think the file menu?

There are 5 or 6 tabs where can set the printer away from system default. You may be able to set the redirected printer.

 

Edit - evidently repeated the post above sorry

I did try and change the default printer in FMS, however it just wouldn't take it and revert back to the school office printer.

 

Our Business Manager also had this problem. I just set the default to "Print to PDF", and then once in PDF she can print the PDF wherever she wants to. It's interesting that it still defaults to the other printer... Have you tried disabling all other printers in Device Manager? Or if security settings prohibit this, remove all other printers through a GPO policy that only applies to your bursar. Maybe temporarily set a 'Deny' permission onto all the other printers to give FMS no other choice than PDF printer. As I say, setting the default within windows to PDF printer done the trick for us.

I didn't try removing or preventing the other printers, mainly because they'd get automatically added back in during a session by GP (there's a setting where GPOs will re-apply during a session). I didn't actually think about removing the printers manually and trying that, though again, they'd get added during a session again. I could have gone and found that setting and disabled it temporarily, but again I didn't think of that.

 

Since she was able to get on-site she managed to get everything sorted. If this happens again, I'll definitely try those steps. Hopefully it won't be needed now, as the end of year stuff is done and she can move onto processing payroll.