Get Started now!
ezeep Blue is completely free for up to ten users. Sign up and get started with just a few clicks.
What is Printer Mapping All About?
Through printer mapping, the correct printers are made available to employees. However, there are various approaches and methods to achieve this – from completely rigid to extremely flexible and everything in between. Depending on the office concept, what may initially seem like a simple topic can quickly become complex and nerve-wracking with what are considered traditional methods and solutions.
What Setup Do Employees Need to Be Able to Print at All?
Obviously, the most apparent requirement is the printer, but in a Windows environment, printer drivers and a network address are also needed, through which the printer can be accessed. For users to select the desired printer in their applications, a print queue must exist on the respective device, which summarizes the printer’s name, printer driver, and network address. But how do you get the print queue onto the device? This is precisely where printer mapping begins.
What Are the Options for Assigning Printers?
Employees Connect Network Printers Themselves
One could naturally go the direct route and train employees so they can create the queues themselves. To do this, they would need to be provided with the necessary information such as network address and driver to let them get started. This might work with a small team with just one printer, but the more printing devices and employees are considered, the more complex, unclear, error-prone, and unproductive it becomes.
Moreover, the DIY variant is the least secure since all devices must be granted network access to the printers so that the users can print on them. It’s important to consider that printers have become small computers and can also be used as an entry point to the rest of the IT infrastructure. Conveniently, most printers nowadays are unguarded somewhere in the corridor and can quickly and unseen be accessed by unauthorized persons. Thus, printing devices are easy targets for harming a company.
More convenient, faster, and safer is to have everything available in one location: This is where the print server comes into play.
The Print Server as a Central Location for Printer Mapping
Using a print server, the administrator creates the queues centrally for the employees. They then only need the information on where to find the queues and can easily connect the so-called printer shares from the print server.
The queues can also be published in an Active Directory (AD), further simplifying the search for the printers.
However, both methods also have disadvantages: On the one hand, the IT department must consider who is allowed to print on certain printers. Otherwise, there is no way to control who uses which printers. Moreover, especially with the AD variant, “printer ghosts,” i.e., printers that are still listed but no longer available, can quickly arise. This can easily happen when a printer is replaced, and the old one is deleted without first deactivating the AD publication. Subsequently, employees may see both printers with the same location information and often try to connect to the wrong printer.
Are Group Policies a Suitable Method for Printer Mapping?
Since permissions had to be considered for adequate printer mapping anyway, why not simply make the necessary print queues automatically available to employees? Microsoft offers a tool integrated into AD with its Group Policies (GPOs).
However, when creating the rules, it quickly becomes clear that GPOs can only create very rigid structures. This may not have been a problem in the past. The employees who did not have a fixed workplace could still be professionally managed, and everyone else had their fixed place and thus their assigned printer. But times change, and so do workplace models. Shared desks and hotdesking are on the rise, making it uncertain which employee will be working where at any given time.
With frequently changing workplaces, group policies simply cannot keep up. All the printers at the location would have to be made available to the employees, which would completely confuse the users. Additionally, printer mapping via GPO significantly slows down the user login process. There must be a better way!
Scripting & Third-Party Solutions
The good news is that it can be done better. With custom scripts, more flexible factors such as IP ranges, device names, or even GPS data can be used to make printer assignments more dependent on the location of the employee, thus more accurately providing the right printer at the right time. But this means significant effort on the part of the IT department.
Therefore, the question arises about third-party vendors who distribute this form of printer mapping as standard software. There are certainly not a few of them, but most suffer from all the disadvantages that come with the concept of a print server.
ThinPrint offers a dynamic and flexible printer mapping tool, ensuring that all employees in all infrastructures always have the right printers with all the desired options available. But even with such a sophisticated print concept, the high operating, licensing, and energy costs that a print server incurs must be considered. But don’t worry, there’s an even better way!
Cloud Printing as the Best Way for Printer Mapping
To elevate security and user experience to the next level, the company can move its print environment to the cloud. Thus, no device needs to be given direct access to the printers, as either the printers connect themselves to the cloud service or a manufacturer-independent IoT device provides the printer information to the cloud service.
IoT devices and printers can be operated in their own subnet, further complicating external access. This also eliminates the aforementioned “printer ghosts” in the Active Directory or through past releases.
The advantages of the on-prem world can be seamlessly transferred to cloud-based printer management. Assigned printers and the added choice of more printers from a printer pool can be combined, easily covering flexible workplace models.
If the cloud solution has pull printing functions, it ensures that the next available printer is always accessible. If a specific function of a particular printer is needed, a web-based self-service portal can be used, where employees can directly search for the printer and intuitively activate it. The cloud solution then ensures that printers are automatically made available on their devices without further steps needed and can be used by the users.
Simple and Flexible Printer Mapping with ezeep Blue
In the cloud-based print management solution ezeep Blue, the print server is replaced by the ezeep Hub, a small IoT device. This automatically connects the printers to the cloud. Subsequently, the network printers can be assigned with just a few clicks via the assignment editor in the central ezeep portal. Thanks to ezeep’s cloud rendering, generally no printer drivers need to be installed on the users’ devices when accessing a new printer.
With ezeep, mapping can also be simplified by permanently assigning all employees a pull-printing queue. When printing via follow-me functions like AnyPrinter and Print Later into this queue, the print job is held and only printed when the users authenticate themselves at the printer they can freely choose. Thus, no administrator needs to worry about which printer is near each employee. Instead, the choice of printer is made dependent on physical accessibility. At the same time, unnecessary prints are reduced, and the risk of personal data being visible to passers-by through left-behind prints is minimized.
With the self-service feature “My Printers,” users can even manage their printers themselves without needing IT support. When searching for printers, employees can choose the location, model, or printer name to find the best printer for their needs. Once they have selected their printers, they are automatically and at once updated in all their ezeep Blue Print Apps.
Furthermore, ezeep’s user management is excellent for assigning printers to company guests. In this case, users are simply invited via email and thus receive temporary access to printers on-site. When a guest leaves the company, access is revoked by removing the guest from the user management.
Conclusion
Cloud-based printer mapping offers several advantages over traditional printer mapping using a print server. Here is a summary of how you can benefit from using our cloud print solution to assign your network printers:
- Flexible printer mapping for the modern workplace: Flexible provision of printers even in modern workplace models such as shared desking and hot desking, thereby increasing efficiency and productivity.
- Significant cost savings: Since no print server is necessary, high operating, licensing, and energy costs are eliminated.
- High IT security: Enhancing IT security through constant authentication and the elimination of direct access to printers. Printing devices can be used in isolated subnets, minimizing attack opportunities.
- Driver-free printing: Thanks to ezeep’s cloud-rendering technology, there is no need to install printer drivers on the devices of the users.
- Simple user guidance: ezeep’s intuitive self-service portal enables users to manage and find their printers without needing IT support.
- Efficient user management: Guests and temporary employees can easily be given access to printers, and this access can just as easily be revoked, further improving management and security.
- Easy integration and management: Through central management in the clear ezeep portal, administrators can efficiently and clearly control all printers and print jobs.