Papercut Print Mobility for Trust Staff

[Theldron]

Morning all,

 

Hope you are well.

 

From September, Trust staff are going to be working at one of the schools on a more regular basis. They have Trust laptops, but will need to print. We currently have Konica Minolta printers with Papercut MF. I was looking at Papercut Print mobility will this do what I want?

 

Is it fine to have Print Mobility on the papercut server, or is it better to have it on a second VM? As the trust staff will need to plug into the network rather than using Guest wifi.

 

Does anything need to be installed on the Trust staff laptops, apart from the printer drivers?

 

Thanks

Edited June 21, 2024 by Theldron

[localzuk]

Mobility Print allows BYOD devices to print pretty easily. I'm not entirely clear from your post the structure in place.

 

Would Mobility Print be at the school they're working at? If so, the easiest solution is installing it on the print server with papercut.

 

You then need the client installed on the laptop - Set up printing with Mobility Print on a Windows device (using mDNS/ DNS) | PaperCut

[MatthewL]

If they are not on the same domain as your setup then yes mobility print is ideal, they will how ever need a domain username and password for that domain for it to work as they need to authenticate. I have mine on the same server for what little use it gets, you can run it on another server depends how secure your network setup is. Obviously the network they are on will need to see the mobility print server.

 

There is a bug I have found with it where it doesn't always display the printers as in config is stripped out the server IP so didnt know where to look so if you have an issues give me a shout and I will dig out what I did to make it work. I have mine setup so will only display printers based on IP and the hostname of the PC.

[RichFix]

Morning all,

 

Hope you are well.

 

From September, Trust staff are going to be working at one of the schools on a more regular basis. They have Trust laptops, but will need to print. We currently have Konica Minolta printers with Papercut MF. I was looking at Papercut Print mobility will this do what I want?

 

Is it fine to have Print Mobility on the papercut server, or is it better to have it on a second VM? As the trust staff will need to plug into the network rather than using Guest wifi.

 

Does anything need to be installed on the Trust staff laptops, apart from the printer drivers?

 

Thanks

 

It is better to have all paper cut software on the same server especially from a troubleshooting perspective. Not sure how your printing solution is set up. If the laptops are local ad domain joined, then you could set up follow me printing and deploy the virtual printers using group policy but again does depend on network infrastructure.

[Theldron]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for the help.

 

Apologies for not giving more info. We currently have Papercut MF I think it is, so its integrated onto the printers.

 

The Trust staff laptops are on a completely different domain, I have no admin access on them.

 

So the mobility software does need to be installed on them? Does the software need to be installed whilst they are onsite? Do they need to connect to the server whilst installing? As I would need to as the IT admin for the Trust laptops to install it.

[Frodo_Baggins]

Hi all,

 

Thanks for the help.

 

Apologies for not giving more info. We currently have Papercut MF I think it is, so its integrated onto the printers.

 

The Trust staff laptops are on a completely different domain, I have no admin access on them.

 

So the mobility software does need to be installed on them? Does the software need to be installed whilst they are onsite? Do they need to connect to the server whilst installing? As I would need to as the IT admin for the Trust laptops to install it.

Deploy through whichever management system the trust uses, It should install but depending on your configuration they may not be able to login remotely - are they authenticating via AD or 365/Google? (I assume unless VPN then AD auth would need to be done on site.)

 

I've just retired our setup but happy to have a chat, I deployed Print Deploy with Mobility Print queues with BYOD printing turned on and deployed via Intune (as it's just a package should install from anywhere unless your using a tool directly connected to your AD network)

 

Users sync from 365\Entra and authenticate with that as well - with this setup they could print on and off site - there is some more setup required for stuff like 2FA but worked well for the most part (MF and Mobility Print were installed on the same server for ease of use.)

Edited June 24, 2024 by Frodo_Baggins

[DavonPotter]

Setting up Print Mobility on your Papercut server sounds like a solid plan for enabling printing with Trust staff laptops. Having it on the same server should streamline management and ensure connectivity is robust, especially since they'll be plugged into the network. As for laptop setup, besides installing printer drivers, ensuring they have access permissions and possibly configuring network settings should cover your bases. Good luck with the setup for September!