How to work from home with PaperCut Pocket/Hive

Our new world requires new versatility and flexibility for user printing - more and more people need to work and print from home. With PaperCut Pocket and PaperCut Hive you’ve got the ability to have your users do just that, and still track and monitor their printing usage.

When it comes to printing from home, there are generally two different scenarios:

• Scenario 1: Print from home and collect from a home printer

• Scenario 2: Print from home and collect from an office printer

We’ve got you covered with both of these situations.

Scenario 1: Print from home and collect from a home printer

In this scenario a user has taken their laptop home. That laptop has the PaperCut Pocket/Hive edge node software on it. The user wants to be able to do work on this laptop and print to their personal home printer, but also have it tracked through PaperCut Pocket/Hive.

For this to work, PaperCut Pocket or Hive needs to discover and publish the user’s home printer. This allows the user to select it to release the job from.

Depending on the configuration being used, the discover/publish process might not be done automatically - the user’s printer might be discovered already (in the printer list), but not published.

To publish the printer, head over to the Printers page and switch the toggle on. Otherwise, if you have limited which subnets are scanned, check your settings by going to the PaperCut Pocket/Hive admin console, Easy Printing > Printer Discovery.

All your user should need to do now is print to the PaperCut Printer and release from their home device from their PaperCut Pocket/Hive mobile app

Scenario 2: Print from home but collect from an office printer

In this scenario a user who was working from home has printed a document. Now they want to release it from a printer that is at the office. Maybe they’re working remotely on a report that someone at the office needs a physical copy of. With either of the two following methods the user can print the document from home and have it released onsite.

Method 1: Use the Cloud Node to release the job any time

The simplest way to do this is via the use of the Cloud Node. The Cloud Node acts as a secure gateway into your mesh. With the Cloud Node enabled, the user can click ‘print’ from their laptop while at home and simply release it out of a printer on site. The Cloud Node securly receives the print job and passes it onto your Edge Mesh.

To enable the Cloud Node, go to the Edge Mesh section of the admin console and simply toggle it on.

Find out more about how the Cloud Node works

Method 2: Release onsite when in the office (No Cloud Node)

If your organization is, for one reason or another, unable to enable the Cloud Node the user still has an option. They can be working from home and choose to print a document. The print job will then sit in the Edge Node on their machine. In order for them to release the job on site, they’ll have to bring their laptop to the office. Once it’s connected to the same network as the rest of the mesh, the job will be able to be released to devices as per usual.

Still have a question?

Let us know! We love chatting about what’s going on under the hood. Feel free to leave a comment below or visit our https://support.papercut.com/ for further assistance.

For more information about PaperCut Pocket and Hive, check out the https://www.papercut.com/help/manuals/pocket-hive/ .