November 12, 2024

No More Painful Migrations: The Easy Switch to Vasion Output Automation

Chris Bulger

Implementing a robust, highly available solution for your critical back-end printing has never been easier. Whether you’re printing from Epic, SAP, Oracle Health, or a homegrown system; Vasion Output Automation has the tools you need for a powerful and stable printing infrastructure.  
Let’s explore how to implement Vasion Output Automation and what proactive print management can look like in your organization.


Implementation Overview

 

Printer Migration

If you’re familiar with Vasion Print (formerly PrinterLogic), you’ll know that our cloud-native platform makes print management extremely easy. Onboarding with Vasion Output Automation leverages the same intuitive interface, allowing your team to seamlessly migrate your existing print queues into the platform using our Network Scanner and Data Manager tools. 
We know how much you love managing your printers, but I’m afraid I have some disappointing news—at this point, there’s not much more printer configuration needed for this implementation. Looks like you’ll have to find a new hobby!
You might still be asking…what about drivers and printer deployments?!
 

Driverless Printing

Over the years, Vasion Print has made driver management and printer deployment incredibly straightforward. And with Vasion Output Automation, we take it a step further by eliminating the need for drivers or deploying printers entirely. 
The Vasion Output Automation Service Client automatically converts documents to print-ready formats without requiring drivers (we’ll cover that more below). Worried about printer compatibility?  Rest easy—we offer support for all common Page Description Languages (PDLs), ensuring compatibility with all of your printers and legacy devices.

I’m Ready to Make the Switch

Contact us today to discover how easy it is to make the switch and implement the Vasion Output Automation solution!

How to Configure Output Automation

Vasion Output Automation utilizes our patented Service Client technology, a lightweight desktop application designed to manage network-side operations like printing efficiently. And configuring it is very straightforward!
To configure the Output Automation service, follow these simple steps from your Vasion Print Admin Console: 
  1. Create a new Service Client or use an existing one.
  2. Click on the Output Automation tab to start the configuration.
    Configuring Output Automation in the Vasion Print Admin Console

    Before you’re good to go, you will need to fill out a few essential fields. Let’s define them: 
    • DNS Name: The DNS address or IP that the Output Automation service will broadcast.
    • Shared Storage (optional): A central storage location (using Samba or AWS S3) for job data storage, providing redundancy and shared access between Service Clients.
    • Zone: An admin-defined grouping that allows service clients within the same zone to automatically load balance print traffic for efficiency and high availability. 
    • API Print Service: The HTTP service for receiving print jobs from external systems, with native support for printing from Epic and agnostic, configurable support for other systems.
    • LPD Service (not pictured): Used to receive print jobs via the LPD protocol, commonly used for SAP and Oracle Health (formerly Cerner) integrations.
    See this tool in action by watching this demo.
     

    Network Topology

    You can deploy as many Vasion Output Automation Service Clients as you’d like to your network. As mentioned earlier, these lightweight desktop applications facilitate printing between your EMR/ERP and your printers.

    You can choose to regionalize your print traffic by grouping the service clients into zones. This approach can reduce latency and help ensure compliance with government data regulations if they apply. For optimal high availability, we typically recommend using a network load balancer to route traffic to the Output Automation service clients as seen in the image below.
    Route traffic to the Output Automation Service Clients using a network load balancer

    Now, what about configuration within your EMR/ERP system? Well, it’s pretty minimal. 
    1. You’ll configure your EMR/ERP to send print jobs to the Vasion Output Automation Service (or your load balancer, if you have one). 
    2. Each print job request will include a printer name, which we’ll match against your imported printers. 
    3. We then automatically convert the job to a print-ready format.
    4. And finally, send the job to the printer.
     

    Proactive Administration with the Vasion Output Automation Console

    Along with the highly available network infrastructure you’ve just put in place, our newly launched Vasion Output Automation Console empowers you to monitor the health of your printing environment in real time.

    The console gives you a live overview of print jobs running through your environment. This allows you to monitor the status and address any issues instantly—whether by retrying the print job or redirecting it to another printer.
    The Vasion Output Automation Console

    The console also provides a live summary of your printers’ health using our Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) service. 
    • The “Queue Status” column displays the virtual status of the print queues, allowing you to automatically Play, Pause, and Redirect jobs to any of your print queues. This is useful for performing routine maintenance on your printers without disrupting your end users. 
    • The “Printer Status” column shows the physical status of your printers that we gather using SNMP. If there’s an issue, simply click on the status to identify the exact problem.
      Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) service in the Vasion Output Automation Console
     
     

    Conclusion

    The Vasion Output Automation solution provides organizations with a secure and highly-available printing platform for your mission-critical document-based processes while facilitating a fast and smooth migration from your existing infrastructure. Using Vasion Output Automation, you can also gain access to a full set of automation features such as:
    • Print job Rules & Routing
    • Single Sign-On support
    • Automated Workflows
    • Off-Network Printing
    • Document Capture and Signature
    • And much more!
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