Configure a Release Station

This section describes various aspects to configuring Release Stations.

Some additional installation notes can also be found in the Release Station README file located here:

[app-path]\release\README.txt

Enable hold/release support on a printer

By default, print jobs are sent directly to the printer and are not held. To turn on hold/release support on a given printer:

1. Click the Printers tab.
   The Printer List page is displayed.

2. Select a printer.
   The Printer Details page is displayed showing the Summary tab contents.

3. In the Hold/Release Queue Settings area, select the Enable hold/release queue check box. This ensures that jobs are held in the print queue until users are ready to release their jobs.

   

4. In Release mode, select one of the following:

   • User Release—(default) allows users to release and view only the jobs printed under their name/user account.

   • Admin/Manager only release—jobs can only be released by administrators or hold/release queue managers.

Assign hold/release queue managers

A hold/release queue manager is a user that has additional privileges to manage Release Stations and jobs held in hold release queues. Managers can:

• Log on to the “manager mode” Release Stations (both the software and web-based Release Station).

• Log on to the “secure mode” Release Stations, which switches them into manager mode so that users’ print jobs can be released.

• Release jobs that can only be released by managers or administrators.

• Can close the Standard Release Station when running in full-screen mode.

• Use the Override Print Account selection in the web-based Release Station.

Assign a hold/release queue manager role to a user or group

1. Select Options > Admin Rights.
   The Admin Rights page is displayed.

2. Assign administrator access to a user or group.

3. Restrict the held jobs that a hold/release queue manager can view based on user and printer groups.

   • To restrict them to a group of users:

   1. Change Allow job releases for to Users from the following groups.

   2. Select at least one user group from the list.

   • To restrict them to a group of printers:

   1. Change Allow job releases for to Printers from the following groups

   2. Select at least one printer group from the list.

   • If both user groups and printer groups are selected, then the hold/release queue manager is restricted to only jobs that meet the user and printer group criteria.

4. To restrict their access to only the Release Station interface, deselect all the other admin rights.

5. Click Apply.

For more information about assigning admin rights see Assign administrator level access .

Make a user a hold/release queue manager

1. Click the Options tab. The General page is displayed.

2. In the Hold/Release Queues area, in Hold/Release Queue Managers, enter the user’s username. To enter multiple users, separate usernames with a comma (,).

3. Click Apply.

Configuring a Standard Release Station

The Standard Release Station is configured using a configuration file located in the directory where the Release Station executables are located. The default configuration file is:

[app-path]\release\config.properties

This configuration file allows you to configure the behavior and look of the Release Station in a number of ways. Each of the configuration items are described in the table below:

Standard Release Station config settings (for other advanced config settings, see the config.properties file)

Release Station modes

The Release Station modes available are described below. The Release Station mode is changed in the configuration file as described in Standard Release Station Configuration .

Standard Release Station modes

In all modes except Manager mode, users are logged out automatically after a period of inactivity defined in the configuration file, the default being 30 seconds.

Card-based user authentication

In some environments, users are issued with identity cards that are used for authentication. The cards might be used to gain entry to buildings, or borrow from a library. The cards can also be used to authenticate users at the standard Release Station. Using a card is often much more convenient and less error-prone than entering a username and password.

To use card-based authentication an appropriate hardware card-reader is required. The card reader must be connected to the machine running the Release Station and act as a keyboard. i.e. when the user swipes/scans their card, the card reader outputs the digits just as if someone entered them using the keyboard. There are card readers that can do this for all commonly used card types (e.g. magnetic stripe, barcode, etc). An easy way to test a card reader is to open a text editor and place the cursor in a new text document. Then when a card is swiped the card number is displayed in the text file.

The card numbers entered at the Release Station are validated against the Card/Id number field for the user. This is located at the bottom of the User Details screen in the Admin web interface. Before card authentication can be used, the users’ card numbers must be associated with the user record in PaperCut NG/MF. You can manually enter the numbers, automatically synchronized from Active Directory or LDAP (see Synchronize user and group details ) or imported in bulk using the Batch User Import file (see Batch import and update user data ).

Once card numbers are associated with users, you can enable the card-based authentication in the Release Station by setting the use-card-authentication to Y in the Release Station’s config.properties file. Once the Release Station is restarted it is in card-authentication mode, and can be tested by swiping a card through the card-reader.

Alternatively, users can self-associate card numbers at the Release Station. Enable this functionality by setting enable-card-self-association to Y. Note that this also requires use-card-authentication to be enabled as well.

The config.properties file has some other settings to change how the card-number is read from the reader. For example, you can change the header and trailer characters used by some card readers to indicate the start and end of the card number. See the config file for details.

Friendly client machine aliases

In some environments (for example, public libraries), it is important for users to identify print jobs by the client machine from which they were printed. By default, the Release Station lists either the IP address or the machine’s unique network name Neither of these are helpful to Release Station users. To avoid this problem the administrator can define a list of aliases, that map the unfriendly names to a more user-friendly name.

For example, print jobs might be displayed in the Release Station as 192.168.1.100 or winpc0076, but would be more meaningful for the user to be displayed as Public PC 1.

These aliases are defined in the [app-path]/release/client-machine-aliases.properties file. The entries are in the format:

[machine]=[alias]

It is also valid to have multiple entries that map to the same alias. So to add aliases for the example above the following lines would be added to the client-machine-aliases.properties file:

192.168.1.100=Public PC 1 winpc0076=Public PC 1

Unreleased Held Jobs timeout

If users do not release held print jobs, then after a defined time, these unreleased held print jobs are automatically deleted. This prevents a buildup of old and abandoned jobs in the Hold/Release queue. The default timeout is 30 minutes.

To change the timeout:

1. Click the Options tab. The General page is displayed.

2. In the Hold/Release Queues area, in Delete held jobs if not released after, enter the number of minutes to wait for users to release their job before it is deleted.

3. Click Apply.

Configuring the User web interface Release Station

1. Click the Options tab. The General page is displayed.

2. In the User Features area, complete the following options as appropriate:

   • Allow users to view held jobs—enables the Jobs Pending Release screen in the User interface. When this check box is cleared, no related functionality is available from the User interface.

   • Only allow users in this group to view held jobs—enables the Jobs Pending Release screen in the User interface for all users in a group.

   • Users have permission to—changes the type of jobs users can see and release. The available options are:

     • view their own jobs only—users see their own jobs that are held in the hold/release queue. Jobs printed by other users are not displayed. They can cancel their own jobs, but cannot release them. This is useful if users are required to be physically at the printer to release a job, where a standard Release Station is running.

     • release their own jobs—users can release or cancel their own jobs. Jobs printed by other users are not displayed.

     • release any jobs (charged to their account)—users can release or cancel any job that is being held, including jobs from other users. If a user releases a job that was sent by a different user, the releasing user is charged for the job. This option is equivalent to the Release Any mode used in Release Station and is ideal for authenticating printing in a unauthenticated environment.

   • Enable the ‘Release All’ and ‘Cancel All’ buttons—allows users to release or cancel all held jobs by clicking one button. When this option is disabled, users must release or cancel jobs individually.

     This option is for the convenience of the users. It can save a user a few clicks when they want to release all their jobs at once. However, if the user is able to release jobs other than their own, a user might accidentally release (and be charged for) many other users’ jobs.

3. Click Apply.