PaperCut NG/MF is a comprehensive print management system designed to seamlessly monitor and control your resources with easy to use administrative and user tools that can be securely accessed from anywhere on the network though a web browser.
Print management requirements vary from organization to organization, and often change dramatically within an organization over time. PaperCut NG/MF is designed for flexibility and scalability and can be configured to meet your print management needs now and in the future. It is used in a wide variety of environments ranging from universities with large printer fleets supporting over 100,000 users to smaller organizations that track printing for a fewer than 50 users on 3 or 4 printers. You can implement a basic system within a few minutes, or if you need more than simple monitoring and reporting, you can configure powerful features that include differential pricing, blocking filters and programmatic control via APIs and scripting. No matter where you start, you can easily adjust parameters to implement changes as gradually or quickly as you want.
Possible implementations can include:
- Silent activity monitoring
- Visible activity monitoring and expense tracking by work area, projects and departments
- Quota/allowance enforcement
- Charge per-print system
- Combinations of all of the above to accommodate various user / group profiles
In addition PaperCut NG/MF provides SysAdmins with a kit of tools to manage printers including:
- Detailed logging and reporting
- Notifications for printer errors and low toner
- Job blocking filters and re-direction
Benefits
Some of the key benefits of PaperCut NG/MF are:
- Transfers accountability to users or departments by individually tracking activity.
- Creates environmental awareness by drawing users’ attention to the impact of their specific usage.
- Reduces overall printing cost through job filtering, enforcing flexible quotas, or direct cost recovery.
- Discourages overuse of IT resources by establishing a managed print environment.
- Improves efficiency by allowing administrators to create rules that can steer printing to designated printers for load balancing, to implement Find-Me printing, or to redirect print jobs based on criteria defined using advanced scripting tools.
- Improves network reliability by implementing rules to prevent printer queue jams, queue hogging, and inappropriate printing types.
- Protect intellectual property and conform to audit objectives by enabling features such as print auditing and digital signatures.
Key features
Some of the key features of PaperCut NG/MF are:
- Track all printing activity by user, client account, printer and document metadata.
- Enforce per user quotas, or group account budgets
- Differential print cost/charging allowing costs to be assigned on a per printer basis with advanced options to charge different amounts based on document type (e.g. color, grayscale or duplex), page size, user or group.
- Hardware neutral solution supports all major printer types and operating systems. No hardware vendor lock-in!
- Both cross-platform and multi-platform support. Run a mix of Windows and/or Linux print servers and support clients ranging from Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix and Novell OES.
- User Web Tools allow end users to track usage, transfer funds, request refunds and upload documents from unauthenticated (wireless) laptops.
- Provides end users with advanced options to allocate print jobs to shared accounts, cost centers, faculties or departments.
- Single sign-on user authentication with native Active Directory integration or synchronization with LDAP user accounts. (no separate passwords to manage!)
- Flexible hold/release queue support with Release Station software allowing administrators to implement management approved or secure user release printing environments.
- Service Oriented Architecture utilizing the latest software design methods including, test driven development, XML Web Services and layered architecture. This ensures scalability and stability by design.
- Advanced reporting and charts available in standard formats including PDF, Excel, and HTML. All reports accessible from anywhere on the network via a standard web browser.
- Ability to run on top of leading 3rd party Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL Database.
- Enterprise level security and encryption based on SSL.
- Open architecture with a powerful scripting language, source code access and API documentation.
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