Adding printers and finding them on a network

Before a printer can go on any device, Tenvara needs a record of it: which customer and site it belongs to, where it is on the network and how to talk to it. You can type the details in yourself, or have an agent at the site scan its network and fill most of them in for you.

Adding a printer by hand#

1. Go to Devices > Printers and click Add printer. (You can also click Add printer on a customer's Printers tab, which picks the customer for you.)
2. Fill in the form:

3. Click Add printer (or press Cmd+Enter).

Adding a printer does not put it on any device yet. Deploy it next: see Deploying printers to devices.

Tip: Leave Windows driver on Automatic and fill in the make and model. Tenvara then chooses the driver through your model mapping, so when you upload a newer driver package later, every matching printer follows it. See Drivers and model mapping.

Choosing a connection#

• TCP/IP (raw) on port 9100 works with almost every network printer and is the usual choice on Windows.
• IPP and IPPS suit macOS and Linux, where IPP Everywhere needs no driver at all. On Windows, a printer on IPP uses the Microsoft IPP Class Driver unless you choose another.
• LPR is there for older printers and print servers that only speak it.

On macOS and Linux, IPP Everywhere always talks IPP, so a raw or LPR printer set to IPP Everywhere is created on the printer's IPP address. If the printer does not answer IPP, the agent falls back to the generic PPD and says so in the device's note.

Finding printers with Discovery#

Discovery asks one device at a site to scan its network for printers. It is the quickest way to add the printers at a new customer.

Starting a scan#

1. Go to Devices > Printers, the Discovery tab and click Look for printers (the same button is on the Printers list).
2. Choose the Customer.
3. Choose From the device: a Windows, macOS or Linux device with the agent, at the site you want to scan. Whatever it finds belongs to that device's site.
4. Leave Subnet empty to scan the device's own network (a /24 around its address), or enter a subnet from /16 to /30 with at most 1024 addresses, for example 172.16.8.0/24.
5. Change SNMP community only if the printers do not use public.
6. Click Start looking.

The scan takes a minute or two. The device tries every address on the print ports (9100, 631 and 515) and SNMP, and listens for printers announcing themselves on the local network (mDNS). Only hosts that look like printers are listed. For each one it reads the make, model, serial number and MAC address where the printer offers them.

What you see#

Recent scans lists each scan with its status, site, customer, the device and subnet it used, who started it and how many printers it found. If the device could not do part of the job (for example macOS did not let it use mDNS), the scan still finishes and says what it could not do.

Found lists every printer found, with its Address, Make and model (and host name), Customer, Site and which protocols it Answers on (Raw 9100, IPP, IPPS, LPR). The Printer column shows either the printer it already belongs to, or two buttons:

• Add opens a short form for that address, with the make and model it found. Enter the Name (it starts as the model), check the Site, add a Location and pick the Connection from the ways the printer answered the scan. Click Add printer. You can fill in the rest (driver, defaults, toner alert) afterwards with Edit.
• Ignore takes the entry out of the list, for things you never want to manage, such as a label printer used by another system. Tick Show ignored to see ignored entries again and bring them back.

Note: Any device with the agent can run a discovery, including a protected device. There is no special bridge or probe to install at the site.

Scheduled discovery#

Each site can look for new printers by itself, on its own subnets, on a schedule. The Scheduled discovery card on the Discovery tab lists every site with the device that looks (its device for printer work), its subnets, how often, the last look and what it found, and whether it is On or Off. A site with no device chosen says No device for printer work at this site yet: choose one to look on a schedule.

1. Go to Devices > Printers, the Discovery tab and find the site under Scheduled discovery.
2. Click the pencil on its row.
3. Choose the device at the site that should look. Choosing a device switches the schedule on.
4. Add the site's saved subnets (or leave them empty for the agent's own network), how often to look (every 30 minutes by default, set for new sites in Settings > Device management, under Printers) and the SNMP community.
5. Save.

New printers it finds appear under Found, ready to Add or Ignore as above.

What a printer can do#

The device that checks a printer also asks it what it is and what it can do, over IPP and SNMP. The printer's page shows the answer under What it can do: Colour (with where the answer came from, or Unknown and why), Two-sided, the Languages it takes, the Model it reports, Paper sizes, Trays, whether it answers IPP, its Windows hardware ID and its IEEE 1284 device ID. The printer's defaults then offer only what it can do, so a mono printer is never set to colour, and the driver lookup uses the IDs to find the right driver.

When a printer reports an error#

A jam, a door left open, no paper or another error the printer reports raises a warning once it has lasted 15 minutes (the time can be set per customer). It clears when the printer stops reporting it. See Status, toner and alerts.

Editing and deleting a printer#

Open the printer and click Edit (or press E) to change any field. Changes reach the devices it is on at their next reconcile: a new address, for example, gets a new port and the old one is removed.

To delete a printer, open it, click the ... menu and choose Delete printer.

When you delete a printer, Tenvara removes it from every device it put it on.