Printing overview
How Tenvara puts printers on devices through the agent, holds and releases secure print jobs, what the Printers list shows and where printing turns up elsewhere in the app.
Tenvara looks after the printers your customers use: it installs them on their Windows, macOS and Linux devices, keeps the right driver and default printer in place, and watches each printer's status, toner and page count. Everything is done by the Tenvara agent you already install on devices, so there is no print server, no bridge box at the site and nothing extra to deploy.
How it works
- You add a printer for a customer: its name, site, address, connection and, if you like, its make and model. See Adding printers and finding them on a network.
- Tenvara picks a driver for each operating system: one you uploaded, one your model mapping points to, one it found by itself on the Microsoft Update Catalog or among the vendors' signed universal drivers, or a driver built into the operating system. See Drivers and model mapping.
- You deploy the printer to a site, the whole customer, a device group or chosen devices, optionally as their default printer. See Deploying printers to devices.
- Each device's agent works out what it should have, installs what is missing, fixes what failed, removes what is no longer wanted and reports back.
- One device at each site, the site's Device for printer work, checks that site's printers every few minutes, so you see status, toner and pages printed. See Printer status, toner and alerts and Driver sources and the device for printer work.
A few design points worth knowing:
- Printers go to devices, not users. A printer is installed per machine. Only the default printer is set per user, in each signed-in user's session.
- Every queue is local and prints straight to the printer. There is no Point and Print and no shared queue on a server, so the PrintNightmare restrictions never get in the way, and printing keeps working if Tenvara is unreachable.
- Tenvara only touches what it added. Printers someone set up by hand, or through another tool, are left alone. The device page counts them separately.
- Secure print is there when you want it. Jobs can be held encrypted on each computer until the person releases them at a printer, with quotas, costs, uploads from any device, guest printing and scan to email. See Secure print release.
Where printing lives
Open Devices from the rail. The Printing group in the sidebar has two items, each a page with a row of tabs.
Devices > Printers has the tabs:
- Printers: every printer, with its status and toner.
- Deployments: which printers go to which devices, and which is their default.
- Drivers: uploaded and found driver packages and the built-in drivers, with the model mapping.
- Discovery: network scans run from a device at a site, and the printers they found.
- Unmanaged queues: printers on a customer's devices that Tenvara did not add, grouped by the printer they point at, to take over in one go. See Deploying printers to devices.
Devices > Secure print has the tabs:
- Print jobs: every held, printed and failed job, with the Secure print queues.
- People: everyone who prints, with their department, PIN and quotas.
- Quotas: how much people may print.
- Usage: pages, colour and cost by person, department, printer, site and customer.
- Guests: guest codes for visitors.
- Sites: each site's uploads, guest page, scan agent, release stations and printer stickers.
- Scanning: scan profiles and recent scans.
Reading the Printers list
The four figures at the top sum up the fleet:
| Figure | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Printers | Every printer, with how many are OK and how many have a warning |
| Offline or in error | Printers that did not answer their last check, or report an error such as a jam or an empty tray. The first few are named |
| Low on toner | Printers with any toner under their alert level |
| Failing on devices | Printers that failed to install on at least one device, with the totals installed and pending |
Click a figure to jump to the matching view. The table shows each printer's Status, name and location, Customer, Site, a bar per Toner colour (K, C, M, Y) and the number of Devices it is on, with any pending or failed installs underneath.
Filter by Status, Customer, Site, Driver, Toner and Devices, or type in the filter box to match a name, model, address or location. The Views picker has Needs attention (offline, in error or warning), Offline, Low toner, Failing on devices and No driver. Click a row to open the printer's page, where you can also star the printer and add tags.
The All customers picker in the top bar narrows everything to one customer, as it does elsewhere.
Printer statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| OK | The printer answered and reports nothing wrong |
| Warning | Paper or toner is low, service is requested, or any toner is at 5% or less |
| Error | Out of paper or toner, a door is open, a jam, or the printer reports itself down |
| Offline | Neither SNMP nor the print port answered |
A printer with SNMP switched off is not offline: if its print port answers, it shows OK with a note asking you to turn on SNMP so toner and alerts can be read.
Where else printing shows up
- Device page: a Printers block lists the printers Tenvara put on that device, their state and driver, and the default for each user. See Deploying printers to devices.
- Customer page: the Overview has a Printers card (how many are OK or offline, and installs pending), and the Printers tab lists the customer's printers and deployments with an Add printer button.
- Alerts: printers failing to install, printers offline for an hour and low toner raise alerts, which can open tickets through your alert rules.
- Search (Cmd+K): jump to printers by name.
- Customer portal: with Secure print, people see their waiting documents, release them, upload documents, check their quotas and add printers to their own computers under Printing.
Permissions
Printing has its own area in Roles and permissions. View lets someone see every printing screen. Manage is needed to add, edit and delete printers, upload drivers, change the model mapping, deploy printers, run discoveries, print test pages and check a printer now.
Printing is its own module. A new Tenvara starts with the service desk only, so switch on Printers in Settings > Modules to get the Printing group (see Modules). Switched off, the group disappears from the sidebar for everyone and the agents stop their printer work; the printers and their history are kept.
In this section
- Adding printers and finding them on a network
- Drivers and model mapping
- Driver sources and the device for printer work
- Deploying printers to devices
- Printer status, toner and alerts
- Troubleshooting printers
- Secure print release: hold jobs until people release them at a printer.
- Print quotas and costs: page prices, quotas and usage reports.
- Mobile, guest and self-service printing: uploads, guest codes and printers people add themselves.
- Scanning: scan to email through a computer at the site.
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