Intune - Deploying Printers

[NorthernNoel]

I hate Intune and I hate printers. Found out recently that we don't deploy printers at our place so staff need them adding manually. Trying to fix this with Intune's polling rates is like pulling teeth. At least in the good old days I could create a GPO, deploy it and see instantly if it's actually working.

Anyway here's what I've done.
 

• Printer is hosted on a local print server so I shouldn't need to deploy drivers.
• Written a PowerShell script with the following in: 

  Add-Printer -ConnectionName "\\print-server-name\printer-name"

• Tested the script running it manually and check it installs the printer okay.
• Gone to Platform scripts in Intune, added the PowerShell script and assigned it to a device.
• Logged in on the device forced it to poll, wait an hour and printers arrive 👍.
• Reset the device in autopilot to check it re-deploys.
• Set the device to poll again and wait.....
• Printers don't connect and the status shows Failed in Intune 😡.

 

Go to the cloud they said, it'll be easier to manage 🤬

[lparry]

Two options off top of my head if either fits your needs:

 

My go to but involves fiddling with drivers: 

This guide has a nice how-to about packaging printers in Win32 apps with an install and uninstall script - used it successfully many times without issue.

https://msendpointmgr.com/2022/01/03/install-network-printers-intune-win32apps-powershell/

 

Device restrictions > Printers

Under the device restrictions configuration profile you can specify domain printers to be added - only used it once so can't give it a solid review but seemed to work without issue

[NorthernNoel]

Thanks @lparry my next step was to go to manually adding the drivers which seems a bit of a faff when it should be able to pull them from the print server. Not realised I could do it under device restrictions though so might give that a go first.

[DrCheese]

If you have Papercut, use the Print Deploy software to do this.

[6Foot3]

1 minute ago, NorthernNoel said:

Thanks @lparry my next step was to go to manually adding the drivers which seems a bit of a faff when it should be able to pull them from the print server. Not realised I could do it under device restrictions though so might give that a go first.

Just use Printix, it will save you a lot of time, and it's not that expensive.

[NorthernNoel]

Thanks all, @lparrys suggestion of using device restrictions sorted it. Although my post was more of an old man yelling at (virtual) clouds 😁

[lparry]