Troubleshooting PaperCut User Client Not Popping Up

The PaperCut user client is used to:

• Deliver notifications/messages for denied print jobs, jobs held in the release station, etc.
• Display print job popups for account selection or print confirmation.
• Display print job popups as directed by printer scripts (Advanced Scripting).
• Authenticate users through PaperCut (see the ‘Authentication’ section on this page).

PaperCut delivers these notifications by determining where the user printed the job from (i.e. the workstation where the job was printed). If user client notifications are not being delivered there could be a number of reasons why, and this article discussed how to diagnose/resolve these problems.

Is the PaperCut client running?

If the client is running and displaying the current balance of the logged in user then this is a good indication that the client is working correctly. If the balance window isn’t displayed, then hover your mouse over the PaperCut client task-tray icon (Windows) or the PaperCut client menu bar icon (Mac). If the client isn’t connecting to the server a “tooltip” message will be displayed showing “Connecting…”.

If you don’t have the client running, try installing the client for Windows, Mac or Linux.

Is the job being tracked by PaperCut?

In order for the client popup to work successfully, the App Server has to know that there’s a job in the system which will trigger the popup. Make sure that jobs from the user not seeing the popup, are in fact getting tracked by PaperCut.

Log on to the PaperCut server, click Logs, then Job Log, and verify that the job print job is being tracked by PaperCut.

If you do see the job here… That’s a good sign. Jump to the next section.

If you don’t see the job here… Navigate to Printers then the Jobs Pending Release tab and look for the job there.

If you see the job on that page… good, skip to the next section.

If you don’t see the job recorded on either of those pages… then PaperCut doesn’t know about the print job. Head over to our article Print jobs not getting tracked for further troubleshooting.

Does the owner of the print job match the user signed into the client?

If you’re finding that one particular user is not getting an account popup, confirm that the user is printing as the username that you’re expecting. Use the method in the previous section to confirm that the job is getting tracked correctly - and that it’s showing up as the correct username.

A useful trick here is to disable the Account Selection (see next section) temporarily while you’re confirming that job tracking is working correctly.

Another trick is to check the Application Log, under Logs → Application Log. If you’ve printed a job, and the user has Account Selection enabled, and the job doesn’t print, but there’s no popup appearing after 10 mins - you’ll see a message in the Application Log showing that the job was cancelled because the user didn’t respond to the client popup. This can be useful to see if the username is correct, and if the client workstation details are correct:

If you find that the owner of the print job according to the job log is different than the user signed in to the PaperCut client, it might be worth having a look at this knowledge base article: Troubleshooting jobs attributed to the wrong user or wrong owner name.

Is the job owner correct, but the wrong user is signed into the client? Then see Why is my username saved?.

Is Account Selection turned on for the user?

If you’re expecting a popup when printing, to allow the user to select a shared account / project code / matter code, make sure that the Account Selection setting under Users → [select user] → Details → Account Selection is set to ‘Show Standard Account Selection’.

Try sending a test notification to the user

To test basic communication with the client software, perform a test notification as follows:

• Login to PaperCut web admin
• Go to the Options→Notifications page.
• In the Test Notifications section (at the bottom of the page), enter the username of the test user you are using. Ensure that this user is logged into a workstation and the user client is running.
• Set the Send the test message field to the user client.
• Enter a test message and press the “Send test notification” button.

If this message is delivered to the client, then the client is operating correctly. Proceed to the next section to diagnose the print popup/notifications.

Troubleshooting pop-up authentication

Do you normally get the authentication popup when you start the client?

• Check which username the client is starting as - normally this will be the username that you’re logged into the workstation as… e.g. if you log in to Windows / macOS / Linux as the username ‘tim’ then the client is going to start, and try to connect to the Application Server using the username ‘tim’. The exception to this is if the user flag has been configured, as detailed on the user client config page.
• Does the username that the client is starting as, exist in PaperCut? If so, make sure that the user is marked as ‘unauthenticated’ (under Users → [select the user] → Details → Advanced Options → Unauthenticated user). Assuming you’re not wanting to print as that unauthenticated user. Worth checking Popup Authentication Considerations if you’re not sure. The exception to his is if the client.config.auth.popup-on-startup-if-unauthenticated key has been set to ‘N’ in the config editor.
• Does the username that the client is starting as, not exist in PaperCut? If so, you should always get the popup asking which user to log in as - unless the client is starting as a different user (see first bullet).

Do you normally get the authentication popup when you print?

• Check which username the print jobs are going through the system as - at the Windows/macOS/Linux print queue level. Use the tricks over on Print jobs not getting tracked to make sure that it’s the username that you’re expecting.
• Make sure that the print job is getting detected correctly - again, over on the Print jobs not getting tracked page.
• To prompt for authentication, you’ll have to make sure that either the username (from the bullet above - the OS-level username of the job) or the Printer is marked as unauthenticated - as described in the unauthenticated printing article.

Other Considerations

• Are you using NAT on your network? This can obscure the IP address of the workstation. If you’re only using the client for Shared Account Popups / Notifications, you can try setting the config key client.allow-match-on-user-only to ‘Y’.

• If you’re using the client for Authentication, take a look at the Popup Authentication Considerations article.

• If you’re using Terminal Services of some kind (VDI, Citrix, etc), take a look through the Considerations on Terminal Server article for config suggestions to get things working.

• Is your DHCP lease time set to a very short value (less than a workday). This can mean that users sign into the client on X IP address, but when they return from lunch the IP address changes to Y. The result is that the PaperCut server sends the user client pop-up to the wrong IP. There are two possible solutions for this: Either set the config key client.allow-match-on-user-only to ‘Y’, or edit the Time to Live settings for the Client to only allow users to select shorter options.

• If you’re finding the client is slow - take a look at the ‘Why is my user client running slowly’ page, including resolving issues with DNS by updating the client config file to point to an IP address instead of a hostname.

• If you’re seeing the popups not appearing after the Windows 10 client (workstation / laptop) comes out of sleep / hibernation, this is something that should have been fixed in version 17.3.3 [PC-10628]. Make sure that you’re running that version (or later) if you’re seeing that behavior.

• Are you looking for help with the Save Paper Widget? Take a look at the Save Paper Desktop Widget page.

• Confused between Authentication and Identity? So were we! So we wrote an article on it.

• Are you printing to a Mobility Print queue with a vendor-specific driver (perhaps using Print Deploy to push out this driver), or are you printing via Universal Print with our connector? If so, try setting the config key client.allow-match-on-user-only to ‘Y’ - these two printing paths can render the IP address from which the print job appears to have originated unreliable, meaning we’ll need to be able to find a matching User Client session using the username only instead.

Collect logs for further troubleshooting

Before proceeding any further, please follow the steps to enable debugging in the PaperCut application server. This will cause PaperCut to produce more diagnostic information to assist in resolving the popup/notification problem.

Then reproduce the problem of the popup not appearing on the client workstation, and collect the following information. It is important to collect all of this information to give the support team as much information as possible.

• The approximate date/time of the print job
• The username of the user that printed
• The printer name
• The IP address of the workstation
• The machine name of the workstation
• If applicable, a screenshot of the PaperCut print log screen showing this job.

Then send this information to PaperCut Support along with a zipped copy of the all server debug logs located in:

  [app-path]/server/logs/