How to set up Find-Me printing with PaperCut MF

… or “The end-to-end guide on setting up Find-Me Printing with PaperCut MF”.

This article demonstrates how to set up Find-Me Printing with PaperCut MF, the edition of PaperCut that allows you to track and control your MFDs / copiers running the PaperCut embedded application.

This article includes a quick video showing you how to set up Find-Me printing, as well as step-by-step instructions for a PaperCut MF environment with multiple MFDs.

Find-Me printing setup video

1. Create and test the print queues on the server

The first step is to log onto your print server and create print queues for each of printers and copiers in question and then fully test printing on them to make sure they function as expected. Chances are, you already have a print server where these are set up. So long as PaperCut is installed on this print server these printers will appear in the admin interface.

The next step will be to create the Virtual Print Queue, also known as a Find-Me Print Queue, on the same server.

2. Create the Find-Me print queue on the server

Once the print queues are working, and being tracked by PaperCut NG/MF, we need to create an additional print queue to be the Virtual Queue used for Find-Me printing. This new queue is created exactly the same way as the regular print queues and you should test that it is working as intended before proceeding with making the queue virtual.

Windows

In this example, we call our Find-Me virtual print queue Find-Me Printer.

1. Log in to your Windows Print server, click Start, type printmanagement.msc and press Enter to open the Print Management Console.

2. Select Printers, click Action, and then choose Add Printer… to launch the Network Printer Installation Wizard.

3. Select Create a new port and add a new printer.

4. Enter a Port Name of nul and click OK. (For more information, see How to set up a Nul Port on Windows.)

5. Choose a driver for your Find-Me print queue and click Next.

6. Pick a name for your Find-Me Print queue and click Next.

7. Confirm the details and click Next to create your Find-Me Printer on your print server.

MacOS

For MacOS, you can use this guide to set up a virtual printer (Null printer).

Linux

For Linux, it is best to utilize the lpadmin command. In this example, we call our Find-Me virtual print queue Find-Me_Printer.

1. Open your terminal Ubuntu, Debian, and CentOS(Ctrl + Alt + T).

2. Install the CUPS printing system if it is not already installed:

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install cups

3. Add the new printer using lpadmin with a file URI pointing to /dev/null:

   sudo lpadmin -p "Find-Me_Printer" -v "file:/dev/null" -m raw -E 

   • -p "Find-Me_Printer" sets the name of the printer queue.

   • -v "file:/dev/null" sets the device URI to hold all print jobs.

   • -m raw uses a raw driver so no formatting is enforced.

   • -E enables the printer and accepts jobs immediately.

4. Verify the printer is working and idle:

   lpstat -p Find-Me_Printer

3. Configure the Find-Me queue in PaperCut MF

This section walks you through logging into PaperCut MF to configure Find-Me Printing.

1. Log in to the PaperCut NG/MF Admin web interface and go to the Printers tab. You should see the two print queues for the MFDs and an extra queue that will be a virtual queue.
   
   For this example, our three print queues are called:

   Windows Konica Minolta 501 Library
Windows Konica Minolta 501 1st Floor
Windows Konica Virtual Queue
   
   This is how they look in the PaperCut Admin interface:

   

2. Select the print queue you wish to be the virtual queue, in this example it is Windows Konica Virtual Queue. This is the print queue everyone in your organisation will print to. It is important to give it a sensible name when sharing it so end users do not become confused.

3. in the PaperCut Admin web interface, go to Printers > [name of your find-me queue] > Summary . Change the Queue type option to This is a virtual queue (jobs will be redirected to a different queue) as per this screenshot:

   

4. Once the queue is setup as a virtual queue a new option box appears allowing you to select the print queues print jobs will be forwarded to. This is where you select the normal print queues associated with the devices in the Find-Me setup. The screen shot shows both destination queues selected as queues the virtual can forward print jobs to

   

5. Navigate to Printers > [name of your find-me queue] > Summary > Hold/Release Queue Settings:

   1. Check the box Enable hold/release queue
   2. Set the dropdown Release mode to User release (the default). This ensures that jobs are held in the virtual queue and not automatically forwarded to one of the destination queues.

This is what the print queues look like now one of them is setup to be a virtual queue; notice the “(virtual)” after the virtual print queue’s name:

So to go over what we have done here:

1. Created and tested print queues for each MFD in the find-me environment.
2. Created a new print queue and configured it to be a virtual queue within PaperCut MF.
3. Selected the print queues associated with the MFDs as the destination queues the virtual queue is allowed to forward print jobs to.

The following shows the example virtual queue setup in PaperCut MF:

Using the above settings means that users will print to one print queue (the virtual print queue), the jobs will be held in the print queue, and then when released they will be moved over to the destination print queues associated with the physical device or copier that the user is releasing them from (the MFD).

Now that we have everyone printing to our virtual Find-Me queue and our jobs being paused for hold/release, we need a way to release those print jobs…

4. Configure the device in PaperCut MF

The next step is to configure our Konica MFDs to look for print jobs on the virtual queues and then release them on the MFD the user is logged into. In this example we will assume that the PaperCut MF embedded software is already installed and up and running on the Konicas.

Navigate to the Devices tab in the PaperCut MF administration console and select one of the Konica MFDs. In this example we will be configuring the Library Konica MFD first.

To configure the Library machine to view print jobs from the virtual queue and release them on the Library machine you need to:

1. Navigate to Devices > [name of your library device] > Summary, then scroll down to the Print Release section and select Enable print release.

2. Under This device will display jobs for release from the selected source queues: select the virtual queue. If the print queue configuration steps have been followed, the virtual queue should appear neatly under a Virtual with Hold/Release heading. This makes it easy to find print queues that have a valid configuration for Find-Me printing. When a user authenticates at the MFD, the machine will display the users jobs sitting paused in the selected virtual queue.

   

3. Check the Enable find me printing support checkbox.

   

4. On the When released, jobs will be redirected to: dropdown, select This device (single queue) (the default).

5. On the Select the destination queue: dropdown, select the print queue associated with the device. Where possible, PaperCut MF will recommend print queues that appear to match the device under a Suggested heading. For this example, the match is with the Windows Konica Minolta 501 Library queue:

   

Summary of the Find-Me workflow — in simple terms

1. A user will print to the virtual queue (they will just see it as a normal print queue).
2. The job will be held in the queue.
3. The user will login to the MFD.
4. The MFD will look at the virtual queue for any print jobs for that user.
5. User selects a print job (or all of them).
6. Print jobs will be printed from the MFD they are logged into.

How it all looks:

5. Configure additional devices

In this example we have two MFDs, one Library (already setup) and the other is on the 1st floor.

Configure the 1st floor MFD much the same, for example, set it to look at the virtual queue, but tell it to release on the Windows Konica Minolta 501 1st Floor print queue, which should be Suggested by PaperCut MF based on the detected relationship between the matching print queue and device.

This gives you a working Find-Me setup, where users can print to one central virtual queue, and release from any of the available MFDs.

6. Share the Find-Me virtual queue

Now that you have your Find-Me virtual queue fully configured, it is time to share it with computers on your network. The Find-Me queue acts as a normal printer, so you can share it as you would any other printer. Here are some of the options you can use to install the queues on your client computers:

• You can access the Find-Me queue via a network share, for example: \\host-computer-name\printer-share-name, or if you’re using CUPS, ipp://<server-ip-address>:631/printers/<printer-name> .
• Use Print Deploy.
• Use Mobility Print.