How are you printing from your Chrome Books?

[Sonic007]

Hi everyone,

 

So we've got a set of 30 Chrome Books and each student logs in with their Google account.

 

How are you all managing printers? We have two MFD's and ideally I'd like them to print to those.

 

I've seen Papercuts Free Mobility Print. Does that basically make the printers show up on the Chrome Books and you assign it a user on the printer?

 

 

Thanks for your help.

[PotNoodleTech]

Were not as it's a really silly idea. The whole point of the google ecosystem is that everything is in drive for anyone to access when they need to from anywhere in the world on any device.

 

Why would you want to spoil that dream by printing things out like it's 10 years ago?

[jmak]

We're using it on shared Windows devices. It was our urgent fix to "print nightmare [emoji769]" in 2021 and it's stuck because it was easy and reliable.

 

On Windows, you get a unique URL. When you open it there's a link to download and install the client. We deployed that and put a shortcut on the public desktop to allow users to refresh printers if they disappear for any reason. Other than that, the printers appear in the list of installed printers and users can just print.

 

It seems like the process for Chromebooks isn't wildly different:

https://www.papercut.com/help/manuals/mobility-print/setting-up-cloud-print-for-mobility-print/setting-up-cloud-print-on-clients/configure-chrome-app-in-gsuite/

 

It doesn't give loads of control, but in our experience, it just works.

[synaesthesia]

Unfortunately that's a pretty idealistic view - even some of the "paperless" schools give in at some point. And even with best intentions, it can be an idea to at least have it as a possibility. Mobility print here, it's a few clicks to set up and indeed just means it shows up as a printer on the device and charges to the logged in user, nice and easy when combined with your google login (which I recall is just a matter of adding papercut as a provider in Workspace admin)

[jthompson]

In the middle of deploying PaperCutNG here. I've a feeling I initially abandoned the idea of Mobility Print during my earlier research because the Chrome APIs it relied on were being deprecated, but I think it's now switched from being a Chrome app to being a Chrome extension. That may mean that it's a viable option again.

 

As well as Mobility Print, with PaperCut you can also enable web printing, where users sign into your PaperCut server via the web and submit files for printing (PDF, usually) to any of the printers they have privileges to that are also enabled for the feature. A bit janky but can get you out of a hole, I suppose. It can be used in conjunction with a hold/release queue as well, to give teachers the opportunity to reject stuff.

[jmak]

Were not as it's a really silly idea. The whole point of the google ecosystem is that everything is in drive for anyone to access when they need to from anywhere in the world on any device.

 

Why would you want to spoil that dream by printing things out like it's 10 years ago?

[emoji1787][emoji1787][emoji1787]

...

[Sonic007]

Thankyou for your replies everyone. Much appreciated.

[talksr]

On 26/09/2024 at 15:10, Sonic007 said:

Hi everyone,

 

So we've got a set of 30 Chrome Books and each student logs in with their Google account.

 

How are you all managing printers? We have two MFD's and ideally I'd like them to print to those.

 

I've seen Papercuts Free Mobility Print. Does that basically make the printers show up on the Chrome Books and you assign it a user on the printer?

 

 

Thanks for your help.

 

One of the sites I work at couldn't afford management software so, ahving Canon iR-ADV C5540 II devices, we just added them direct to Google Workspace Admin as CUPS printers.

So Admin>Devices>Chrome>Printers. 

This works well unmanaged but unfortunately, when users print from a Chromebook, it prints in letter which keeps causing the copiers to stop printing until a user intervenes and allows the jobs to continue. 

I have raised this with Cannon Support twice as well as logging a formal complaint about Canon's handling of support tickets and still 12 months on, we have the same problem. Six weeks and no resolution on a IMO fairly simple problem is not acceptable.

The solution works for this school, sadly the hardware provider: Canon has really let the school down, particularly given the years of loyal custom we have given Canon. 

 

So maybe the above solution would work for you if you have unmanaged non-Canon devices that can do CUPS. 

 

[DGardiner]

we use papercutmf with the papercut extension, you can publish the app payload provided in admin to make the printer detection a bit more reliable.

 

if you dont need managed/print release, most printers can be manually setup in google admin without much of an issue

[DGardiner]

25 minutes ago, talksr said:

 

One of the sites I work at couldn't afford management software so, ahving Canon iR-ADV C5540 II devices, we just added them direct to Google Workspace Admin as CUPS printers.

So Admin>Devices>Chrome>Printers. 

This works well unmanaged but unfortunately, when users print from a Chromebook, it prints in letter which keeps causing the copiers to stop printing until a user intervenes and allows the jobs to continue. 

I have raised this with Cannon Support twice as well as logging a formal complaint about Canon's handling of support tickets and still 12 months on, we have the same problem. Six weeks and no resolution on a IMO fairly simple problem is not acceptable.

The solution works for this school, sadly the hardware provider: Canon has really let the school down, particularly given the years of loyal custom we have given Canon. 

 

So maybe the above solution would work for you if you have unmanaged non-Canon devices that can do CUPS. 

 

 

search google admin policy for DefaultPrintPaperSize and set to A4

[talksr]

34 minutes ago, DGardiner said:

 

search google admin policy for DefaultPrintPaperSize and set to A4

Thank you, it worked but just makes me even more furious that Canon took over 12 months and STILL we were no further forward. Yet another example of why we will be moving away from Canon and their awful support. 

[DGardiner]

Just now, talksr said:

Thank you, it worked but just makes me even more furious that Canon took over 12 months and STILL we were no further forward. Yet another example of why we will be moving away from Canon and their awful support. 

 

 

I hade the same issue with ours when we initially did it.

 

Id check the other defaults incase theyre of any use too!

[talksr]

7 minutes ago, DGardiner said:

 

 

I hade the same issue with ours when we initially did it.

 

Id check the other defaults incase theyre of any use too!

It seems to have done the trick, just cannot believe it has been all of this time and just by chance I made a post to try and help someone else. 
Canon should be ashamed of themselves. Such poor service. 

[mikes]

We have had issues with Letter printing and other devices as well - our Ricoh ones will prompt a "paper mismatch" the user has to then press unless you manually set forced paper sizes. I have forced A4 printing here wherever I find policy that allows it.

 

We decided not to have printing from chromebooks here - it is more work for staff as students have to e-mail or submit documents via Google that the staff then print off - but this way is preferred otherwise our budget will probably double solely due to nonsense. E.G. we had staff who have work submitted, print it off, mark with a pen, scan it, send it to students for feedback, get a new one, print it off...    Boxes of trash.

 

And bear in mind if the papercut online print is Internet facing (which I'm sure it must be to work?) that is a potential vulnerable entry point - when we had Papercut set up the guy on the phone was very keen I set up the online print and couldn't understand when I declined it (declined it as I knew our LEA would not like it) - and I dodged a bullet because less than a month later the Papercut vulnerability got exploited and a bunch of networks got ransomwared due to it.   So is it really worth it ?

[DGardiner]

15 minutes ago, mikes said:

We have had issues with Letter printing and other devices as well - our Ricoh ones will prompt a "paper mismatch" the user has to then press unless you manually set forced paper sizes. I have forced A4 printing here wherever I find policy that allows it.

 

We decided not to have printing from chromebooks here - it is more work for staff as students have to e-mail or submit documents via Google that the staff then print off - but this way is preferred otherwise our budget will probably double solely due to nonsense. E.G. we had staff who have work submitted, print it off, mark with a pen, scan it, send it to students for feedback, get a new one, print it off...    Boxes of trash.

 

And bear in mind if the papercut online print is Internet facing (which I'm sure it must be to work?) that is a potential vulnerable entry point - when we had Papercut set up the guy on the phone was very keen I set up the online print and couldn't understand when I declined it (declined it as I knew our LEA would not like it) - and I dodged a bullet because less than a month later the Papercut vulnerability got exploited and a bunch of networks got ransomwared due to it.   So is it really worth it ?

 

if you use mobility with the paid version you can connect it to papercut cloud and print remotely and its isnt internet facing?