Important points to know about PaperCut MF version 24

 

What are the changes in PaperCut MF v24 and later?

Note that all of these changes apply to all types of licensing (perpetual license and subscription) on version 24.

Change	Version 24.x and later	Version 23.x and earlier	Details
Application Server needs access to the internet when upgrading to version 24.x.	Yes	No	On upgrade to version 24.x from a previous version, the Application Server must be able to connect to the Global Entitlements Service (https://mf.cloud.papercut.com over port 443) If the Application Server does not have an internet connection to the PaperCut Global Entitlements Service, your PaperCut MF install will enter a 30 day grace period, after which time access to most of the pages in the PaperCut MF admin interface will be blocked. This applies to all customers upgrading to version 24.x. Further upgrades (e.g. from 24.0.1 to 24.0.2) will not require internet access. See Important points to know about PaperCut MF licensing (Internet connection requirements) for more information.
Application Server needs access to the internet to claim additional entitlements.	Yes	No	When claiming additional entitlements (for example adding another device to your Application Server), the Application Server must be able to connect to the Global Entitlements Service (https://mf.cloud.papercut.com over port 443) If the Application Server does not have an internet connection to the PaperCut Global Entitlements Service, the device will be added with a 7 day grace period (if you're using a perpetual license - applied by a license file), or it will not allow you to add the device (if you're using a Subscription). See Managing entitlements and Entitlements for offline Application Servers for more information.
Entitlements are shared between Application Servers using the same CRN.	Yes	No	If you have multiple Application Servers (including any test Application Servers) using the same CRN, they will share your license/subscription entitlements between all servers. This includes device entitlements. For example if you have a license for 100 devices, and you upgrade your test Application Server running 2 devices, it will claim 2 device entitlements. If you then upgrade your Production Application Server running 100 devices, 2 of those devices will be in a 'Not Licensed' state, since you only have 100 entitlements and you're attempting to use 102 across the two Application Servers. See the "I upgraded my test Application Server to v24..." question below for more details - or see Important points to know about PaperCut MF licensing (Global set of entitlements) for more information.
When migrating, uninstalling or restoring an Application Server, the old installation needs to be Deactivated.	Yes	No	Entitlements in version 24 and later are managed by the PaperCut Global Entitlements Service (GES). Before migrating or uninstalling an Application Server you need to Deactivate the installation, to tell the GES to release the entitlements. The Application Server has to be connected to the internet for this step. These entitlements can then be used on another Application Server. If this wasn't done, or if it wasn't possible to do (for example if the original server was lost in an incident and you needed to restore the server from backups) then you will need to contact PaperCut tech support to ask them to deactivate that server's entitlements in the back-end. If you're able to, please send us your server.uuid file from C:\Program Files\PaperCut MF\server\ (or equivalent), and tell us which server.uuid file corresponds to the server you no longer need (if you have it available) or which file corresponds to the server you want to actively use going forward. See Managing entitlements (Releasing all entitlements from an Application Server) for more information.
Devices in your entitlements are brand neutral.	Yes	No	In version 23 or earlier, device entitlements are listed on the About tab grouped by brand. In version 24 and later, devices are listed on the About > Registration tab and are grouped together by 'Full embedded' or 'Lite embedded' types - no matter what brand they are. Note: for deployments using Perpetual license files, although the Global Entitlements Service converts brand-specific Device Embedded Licenses to device-neutral entitlements from version 24 onwards, brand-specific licenses are still required. See Important points to know about PaperCut MF licensing (Devices are brand neutral) for more information.
License Info section of the admin interface has moved.	Yes	No	In version 24 and later, the 'License Info' section has moved from the About tab, to the About > Registration tab within the PaperCut MF admin interface. If you become a PaperCut MF subscription customer, the License info section will be replaced with a Subscriptions section.

What else do I need to know before upgrading?

1. Ensure that you’ve read through and understood the differences introduced in version 24, listed in the table above.
2. Review the PaperCut MF Known Issues page (in particular, known issues for PaperCut MF 24.0 ).
3. Follow the Upgrading PaperCut MF & NG (upgrade steps) documentation to perform the upgrade.

FAQs

No. PaperCut MF version 24 is the first version to support subscriptions, however if you have a current license (for example, say you are licensed for version 22 and have an M&S expiry date of 2026) then you can upgrade to version 24.

Your current license will be converted to what we call a ‘Perpetual license’ on upgrade. To do this, the Application Server needs to be able to connect with the Global Entitlements Service as detailed above.

Perpetual licenses are applied through a license file, and they do not have an expiry date. The alternative is ‘Subscription licensing’, which is applied through an Activation Key, and is associated with a subscription expiry date.

For more information see our Upgrade Policy documentation.

No. PaperCut MF version 24.0.1 is an MF-only release.

Why? PaperCut MF version 24.0.1 is a release which enables PaperCut MF subscription functionality only. It does not contain fixes, features or security updates. As a result (since subscriptions are MF-only) this release does not apply to the PaperCut NG product.

When there are fixes or features which apply to PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF, there will be a corresponding PaperCut NG and PaperCut MF release.

Check out What’s new in PaperCut 24.0 which includes information on subscriptions with PaperCut MF. Alternatively have a chat with your PaperCut Partner - you can find their contact information in the PaperCut MF admin interface, under the Help tab (or About tab in older versions).

As detailed in the table above, one of the main changes with version 24 and later is that Application Servers share the total entitlements (including Device licenses) across any Application Servers using the same CRN.

In this case, you can remedy the issue by either releasing the individual device entitlements used by your test devices, or deactivating the licensing for your entire test instance.

Disabling a single device means that the single device entitlement can then be used by another device on one of your Application Servers. Deactivating the entire installation means that all the entitlements used by that server are released (which could include e.g. Print Deploy Zones) for your other Application Server(s) to use.

To do this, on your test Application Server, log into the PaperCut MF admin interface then perform one of these options:

• To deactivate the entire test instance, navigate to About > Registration > License Info then click the Deactivate Installation button.
• To release individual device entitlements, navigate to Devices > [select the device] > Summary > Configuration then set the Enable/Disable dropdown to Disabled indefinitely (Not Licensed).

See Important points to know about PaperCut MF licensing (Global set of entitlements) for more information.

Yes, you can downgrade to an older version using the database backup that you took prior to upgrading. For more details, follow the Downgrading PaperCut (to an older version) steps.

There will NOT be an option for offline activation at the launch of PaperCut MF subscriptions (24.0.1). All servers being upgraded will require an active internet connection to activate the installation after the upgrade. After upgrading, internet access can be removed.

Customers who cannot permit outbound internet access for their servers during the upgrade process should not upgrade to 24.0.1.

If the Application Server does not have an internet connection to the PaperCut Global Entitlements Service, your PaperCut MF install will enter a 30 day grace period, after which time access to most of the pages in the PaperCut MF admin interface will be blocked.

We anticipate adding offline activation handling in a future 24.0 Maintenance Release, which will open upgrade pathways for all customers.

Yes! As well as the changes in version 24.0.1 listed above, we made a number of significant changes in version 22.1.1 - so if you’re upgrading from a version older than that, it’s worth reviewing the PaperCut NG/MF 22.1.1 upgrade checklist too.