Printing. One of your workplace's most mundane functions-- and yet, the source for so much attention, and frustration when you needed those documents...five minutes ago. While printing may not be at the top of your priority list, or anywhere on your radar for the majority of your day, it still needs to work. If you were tasked with creating a list of machines you wanted to take a baseball bat to, would your office printer be at the top of your list?
As your organization grows, printing needs become more complex. Multiple machines, a growing workforce, separate locations and hundreds of devices add more cogs in an already overwhelmed wheel. Luckily, there are solutions and new advancements that allow for simpler printing that keep your team sane and your printer in one piece.
Regardless of whether you have an office with a PC or operate from a portable laptop, you need your documents to print out wherever you are at the moment. However, your profile’s printer preferences are set to print only from your office or assigned area. You may run back to your office or opt not to print at all just to avoid the hassle. Believe it or not, there is an easy way of handling even the most chaotic printing scenario. Some call it follow me printing.
It’s possible to assign printers to users, but maintaining a smooth, well-managed print environment for an intricate workspace can be a daunting challenge. Rather than stress yourself over the seemingly simple act of printing, proximity printing might be a helpful addition to your set of desktop management tools.
Third party software solutions provide two methods you can choose from when implementing proximity printing.
Assign Printers to Machines, Not Users — This method allows you to assign a printer to a specific machine, regardless of who’s logged on. This ensures that your document will always be printed to your nearest location.
Assign IP Addresses — This technique accomplishes printing by way of a network assigning IP addresses to individual machines such as laptops. In doing this, you can carry your mobile device to any location and print as long as you are within certain designated IP ranges.
Both methods of applying proximity printing are useful when you have users that need to print in various places from personal or business machines, locally or remotely.
Tricerat offers Simplify Printing, a comprehensive print management solution that is uniquely flexible in that it can assign printers to machines and via IP addresses. Not only does Simplify Printing offer both “follow me” printing approaches, if you are accustomed to assigning printers via the Active Directory, this intelligent software pulls directly from the AD. This provides you with all the necessary data to assign printers to any OU you choose, all from one console. Who thought this task could actually be easy?
Want to find out more about how you can transform your chaotic print hazard into a print haven? Learn more about Simplify Printing.