The Business Problem – Sound Familiar?
From an end user’s perspective, printing is easy—click “Print” and pick up the document at a nearby printer. What they don’t know is all that’s involved to make printing appear easy in enterprise environments where IT departments juggle hundreds of printers and thousands of workstations assigned to those printers across multiple locations.
According to Quocirca 2024, 49% of organizations indicate that the IT admin tasks associated with print driver deployment is the top challenge, followed by the complexity of print driver deployment (49%)*.
Organizations rely on Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to solve this deployment headache, but they further complicate the problem. GPOs require elevated permissions to manage, create slow login times, and can cause deployment and printing problems.
Another frustration is their limited reach within an organization—a GPO can reach a Windows operating system but not Mac, Linux, or Citrix. This limitation requires IT to manage multiple deployments for varying operating systems, each requiring a different IT approach.
All of this is managed within a print server infrastructure, which further complicates deployment, requires additional management, consumes IT resources, drives up costs, and creates risks. Security updates, feature enhancements, and even renaming or moving a printer inside a print server environment require IT to configure various workstations, either manually or with a script, and rename it on the print servers.
Further frustrations surface when end users travel between various offices. If the helpdesk is not available for print support, the end user can be blocked from completing a vital task, such as printing a proposal, contract, or letter to be signed in a meeting.
These issues make managing and deploying printers and drivers a major pain point for IT.
The Business Problem – Sound Familiar?
Vasion Print simplifies printer and driver management by eliminating the print server and converting your environment to centrally managed direct IP printing. The solution provides a web-based Admin Console to configure printer drivers, define deployment rules, and solve the complexity of getting the right driver to the right workstation without complicated scripting and GPOs—all from a single interface.
It supports many versions of Windows (including 32- and 64-bit), Mac, Linux, and Virtual Desktop Environments (Citrix and VMware). It also supports native or universal printer drivers, giving IT organizations the most flexibility and compatibility for printer driver configuration and management.
Here are four steps to simplify printer and driver management:
- Simplify Transition and Setup—Automatically import your existing printer objects and eliminate all print servers. Easily add all printers and devices regardless of manufacturer or model.
- Streamline Management—Centrally manage printer objects, drivers, profiles, and settings from our Admin Console. Get visibility into all users, devices, and more from one centralized screen.
- Manage Updates Efficiently—Push new printers, updates, and changes to end users, without scripting or GPOs, on your team’s schedule. Keep your environment secure with automatic updates.
- Enhance User Access Setup—Quickly configure printer access for all users, regardless of their location or device. Reducing reliance on IT for troubleshooting and offering self-service options.
What used to take hours will take only minutes with these easy-to-implement steps:
"We have reduced the print cost by reducing the number of printers we are deploying... and we have decided to reduce the number of print servers... PrinterLogic (now Vasion Print) is actually the easiest tool to install, deploy and eliminate."
"When we opened three new facilities and configured 20 to 30 printers per site, we simply exported the data from PrinterLogic and changed the names to reflect the new location. This has cut deployment time from three days to one hour."
1
Simplify Transition and Setup
The Vasion Print Admin Console allows IT professionals to easily manage printer details (such as printer names, locations, and properties). IT admins can also manage drivers and create printing profiles based on cost-saving measures, such as duplex and grayscale.
Additionally, they can easily deploy printer drivers through either auto-deployment (using criteria such as IP Address, IdP Group membership, Active Directory user name, computer, organizational unit, and Hostname) or by publishing through the Self-Service Installation Portal, where end users can intuitively install their own printers with a single click.
To get started, use your preferred deployment tool to push out the Printer Installer Client to your end user’s workstations. The client installs printer drivers, configures printers, and collects print job data without having to manage permissions. It also converts all existing printers connected to print servers into centrally managed IP printers. The conversion keeps the default printer and customized printer settings (including name, comments, location, and printer drivers) intact.
Once you have imported printers from print servers or defined your own, you can manage them using the centrally managed Admin Console.
On the console’s left is a treeview where IT admins organize printers, usually by physical location (country, state, or region—even as granularly as building and floor location).
The General tab can be used to name the printer, letting IT and end users quickly identify its properties. This includes assigning a name and location to the printer and listing the specific printer properties, such as whether it supports duplex or color printing. A print value can also be assigned for grayscale and color copies so you can track the expense associated with a particular printer. In the Port tab, you can assign the printers an IP address or DNS name and port number.
2
Streamline Management
Vasion Print categorizes printer drivers by both 32- and 64- bit architectures and operating systems. This built-in, multi-architecture support for Windows, Mac and Linux end-user workstations (and even Citrix and VDI environments) ensures full-featured, dependable printing even in mixed-OS environments. It also supports native or universal printer drivers, giving IT organizations the most flexibility and compatibility for printer driver configuration and management. In a drop-down list, you can easily see all drivers that are compatible with each individual architecture and operating system. Vasion Print eliminates all concerns about installing the wrong driver on the wrong architecture, as both architectures can exist side by side.
It’s easy to add printer drivers: simply click “Upload New Driver”, and the dialogs guide you through the process of selecting and uploading your chosen printer drivers to Vasion Print.
There is a complete repository of all printer drivers and their associated profiles, regardless of platform or operating system. To see this, click “Manage Driver/Profile Repository.” This offers a simple way to update existing drivers with newer versions. The traditional difficulty of this task is a particular challenge that organizations face, with 38% indicating that potential security risks are a concern due to outdated drivers not being updated, rising to 43% among organizations with over 1000 employees.* Now, in one click, you can upload, replace or delete drivers. GPOs and scripts are no longer needed, as the Vasion Print Client ensures that any changes are automatically pushed out to workstations associated with that driver.
3
Manage Updates Efficiently
IT can save time and money and simplify printing for end users by setting unique profiles for each printer driver, such as duplexing, color, DPI, paper size, paper source, and other finishing options.
When printer drivers are imported from print servers, any profiles are included in the conversion. On the Drivers/Profiles tab, you can update those profiles or upload new ones. Click “Add” to create or modify a new profile based on the native printer driver. Clicking “Add” temporarily installs the printer driver and launches the preference dialog for that printer. Simply select any preferences in the dialog (including paper tray, color or black and white, simplex or duplex, and print quality). These preferences are saved in the profile after clicking “Save.”
The Profile drop-down list reflects the current profiles created by admins for that driver. Selecting a profile then becomes the initial profile used when deploying the printer driver to workstations.
Vasion Print does not lock profiles, allowing users the flexibility to override profiles when necessary. However, in the Profiling Options section of the Drivers/Profiles tab, you can configure the profile to reset to the selected profile each time a user logs on or even after every print job. If a user or department continuously overrides profiles, those trends are visible in a usage report.
4
Enhance User Access Setup
Vasion Print deploys printer drivers using either auto deployment or the Self-Service Installation Portal. Auto deployment is a push installation using the Printer Installer Client. The Self-Service Installation Portal is a pull installation and enables employees to install a printer on their own without helpdesk intervention. The portal also assists those who simply want to install an additional or even a different printer than what was originally installed through an auto deployment.
Option 1: Auto Deployment
To manage deployment rules, select a printer in the treeview and click the Deployment tab. In the right pane, click “Add.” A drop-down list lets you deploy printer drivers using IdP Users or Groups, Active Directory (user, computer, group, container, or OU), IP address range, hostname, MAC address, or a combination of these called Advanced Groups.
These flexible options provide the ability to target printer deployments using end-user details, like job function or physical details of the workstation. For instance, if you want to deploy printer drivers based on a laptop’s proximity to the printer, you set up a deployment rule based on an IP address range. Now when the end user enters a specific location specified by the network segment, the printer is automatically installed and uninstalled when they leave.
The Advanced Groups option lets you use a combination of deployment options to help specifically target the correct end users. For example, you can deploy a printer driver to employees in an AD Marketing group, but exclude employees who are not physically in the corporate office building. Once an advanced group is defined and saved, you can access it again for future deployments.
Option 2: Self-Service Installation Portal
The Self-Service Installation Portal reduces helpdesk calls and empowers the end user by enabling them to install printers on their own without admin privileges. The portal displays a list of printers that are available for installation. As an administrator, you can further enhance the portal by uploading a graphical floor plan of your choice. End users will see the list of printers and the optional floor plan map detailing where printers are located for users. To add a floor plan, select the desired floor in the treeview, and then use the features on the Map tab. Once the floor plan is added, drag and drop the printers assigned to that floor onto the image.
You can also define security parameters. For example, if your organization has a specialty printer that should not be widely installed, you can hide that printer (or folder) from the Self-Service Installation Portal using the Security tab.
End users access the portal by clicking on the Vasion Print Client in their system tray or through a URL link that you can send through email or post on a corporate intranet. When they open the portal, they will see the list of printers and floor plan with printer icons. You can program the portal to open to the end user’s current location, even if they are roaming. When they hover over a printer, a pop-up appears that lists the printer name, driver, location, and any comments. They click “Install Printer” in the pop-up, and that’s it.
Turn Hours Into Minutes
Vasion Print simplifies printer and driver management by eliminating print server and converting your environment to centrally managed direct IP printing. Administrators can use the Admin Console from a single interface to manage all printer drivers in the repository. No more GPOs and scripts.
Vasion Print makes printing as easy as it should be—for end users and IT. Ready to take the next step? Schedule a demo with one of our experts, and we’ll walk you through how our serverless solution can save you time, money, and IT headaches.