Anonymous guest printing

In the normal case, PaperCut NG/MF must identify the user responsible for each print job so that jobs are correctly tracked and charged. However, for ad-hoc guest printing by visitors, it is often more important to provide a convenient printing solution than to provide individual print tracking per visitor.

In addition, visitors and guests often want to print from their BYO mobile devices so a generic, widely available printing solution is required.

For these scenario’s, PaperCut NG/MF provides the ability for guest users to print anonymously using Email to Print . This solution provides a simple and convenient printing experience from any device, imposing minimal or no administrative inconvenience on the guest user as there is no need to set up accounts or network access for the guest.

You can implement anonymous email printing in three ways:

• Direct Print
  Guests can send their job directly to the anonymous email defined for a physical printer. This is the most convenient way to provide printing access for guests or visitors.

• Managed release
  Guest users send their job to the printer’s anonymous email address where they are held in a hold/release queue. Jobs are released by the receptionist or a trusted person in the organization. Jobs sent by different guests are identified by the guest’s email address, which is appended to the document name.

• Guest self-release
  Guest users send their job to the printer’s anonymous email address where they are held in a hold/release queue. Guests are provided with a common username and password by which they can log in to the MFD to release their job. Jobs are identified by their email address appended to the document name.

Each of these options has advantages:

Guest Email to Print modes

Anonymous setup

The starting point for all three anonymous printing modes is the Options > Mobile & BYOD page. Email to Print must be enabled and configured. If you have not yet set up Email to Print, do that first (see Email to Print ), then return to this section.

Step 1: Enable an anonymous printer email address

1. Select Enable Printing > Mobile & BYOD.
   The Mobile & BYOD page is displayed.

2. In the Email to Print area, select the Enable anonymous printer email addresses check box.

3. Optionally change the user to which anonymous jobs will be logged. The default user is guest-user.

4. If you want guests to receive a reply email in response to sending a print job, select the Send a response email check box. You can customize the email body as required.

   

Step 2: Enable a printer

Enable a printer for anonymous printing by configuring an anonymous printing email alias.

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 Email to Print area, add a valid email address or alias in the Anonymous email address text box.

4. Click Apply.

Step 3: Configure the anonymous printing mode

The remaining steps are specific to your selected anonymous printing mode:

Known users and anonymous printing

The anonymous printing feature is designed for ad-hoc use by guests and visitors. It should not be used by people within your organization, as printing is not tracked by user and many important features such as account selection, script popups etc are not supported.

If an Email to Print job is sent to an anonymous printer email address by a known user (i.e. the source email matches a user in the PaperCut database), the job is not logged to the guest-user account. Instead, the normal print workflow for the known user is performed and the job logged against that user.