Printer Pools - one of the best kept secrets

Do you set printer priorities?

Best Practice (Litmus Test)

Professionals: Create a pool of printers with different priorities

Amateurs: Create only one printer

Printer Pools

The best practice is to have several printers or print queues leading to one physical print device.  The advantage is that you can set different priorities for different users.  For example: high priority for mangers low priority for secretaries (or would that be better the other way around!).

  How to Setup Printer Pools

• To create a Printer Pool:  Start Menu, Settings, Printer folder, add printer. 

• The trick is to create multiple printers, each with a different priority. 

• To adjust the priority, go to the Advanced Tab and look for the Priority box.  Finally give different permissions to the various printers.

Check out Web based printers

Once Microsoft realised the power of the browser they have made more and more interfaces browser compatible.  Users can now use their Internet Explorers to search for printers and install the appropriate driver.  Show the users this path: http://server/PRINTERS.

Note: Whilst server will vary dependent on the name of your print server, PRINTERS should by typed as shown as there will be a share called PRINTERS on each server.

Another of Guy's Litmus Tests - Performance Monitoring

Professionals install ipMonitor (40% off until Sept 26th)
Consequently they can see instantly which servers are short of resources, and which are running smoothly.  

Amateurs
Keep their fingers crossed that the servers have enough memory and disk space.

Free Download of SolarWinds ipMonitor

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