Citrix provides some great technological advances and advantages within a company. One thing it does not do, though, is solve your printing problems. Depending on a company’s size and location, many networks are setup to have a Citrix farm at the main data center that everyone connects into from anywhere in the country. There are also different scenarios where a few farms are scattered throughout the country or world to assist with localized connection.
And that leads us to the printing issues. How are print jobs getting to local physical printers when you are connecting from all over the world? Citrix does provide a few built in capabilities with AutoCreate, which allows localized printers to be displayed with a Citrix session so they can be printed to (note that this is only valid with fat clients, as thin and zero clients are usually left with nothing on them locally). There is also a redirect feature which allows print jobs to be redirected out to the local clients, rather than having to go from the Citrix server (note that this is only valid with direct IP printing).
With these two solutions, you need printers created locally and then you are sending print jobs from the Citrix server to the localized workstation, then to the print server that may be local or back at the main data center where the Citrix server is housed, then back to the localized printer. You are making all sorts of WAN hops just to process a print job. Even if you already do Direct IP printing and use the redirect feature, you will not have management for all of the printers without deploying scripts, and without frequently running into driver and spooler issues.
PrinterLogic’s web application gives you all the benefits and features needed for effective Citrix printing bundled into one simple package. It eliminates your print servers, automatically converts all Windows Shared printers into Direct IP printers, then allows Direct IP management in Citrix. It allows you to use all Citrix features without the need of scripts or GPO as all PrinterLogic installed printers are done via system service, guaranteeing all installs regardless of end user permissions and based upon any physical device for Citrix sessions (IP, Hostname, MAC, or any AD credentials).
With PrinterLogic, you can now print within Citrix via Direct IP being sent out the workstation. So even if you’re connecting to a Citrix session on the other side of the world, printing is all done locally from the client directly to the printer. This drastically reduces your WAN traffic and provides you with far greater print management and administration capabilities, all while greatly simplifying the print environment for your end users.