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Find-Me Printing

A method of printing that provides a suprising level of effective printer queue abstraction for the end user, there are many reasons to give it praise - but it's important to understand it first.

What is "Find-Me" Printing?​

Commonly known under many names such as "Follow Me", "Push printing", "Tap and print" or any form of saying that the print task will be held until released from any device.

Find-Me Printing once configured will allow all users to print to a universal print queue, using a universal print driver.

The above statement means the following conditions will be active:

  • Users do not need to understand Print Queues or Print Management to use multi location printing.
  • Administrators do not need to manage individual Print Queues
  • Document security is increased, as Printer Job's are only released when the user is physically present.
  • Print Job's may be reconfigured before release by users
  • Reduces impact of high usage or printer outages by allowing easy redirection of Print Jobs

When it works, it works!​

Find-Me printing is designed to integrate with PaperCut Print Deploy, allowing ease of access to a network of printers on any device whether it be domain joined or not. This fundamental management of the print authority being decentralised from the singular network enables a level of access and ease of use that is ideal for a majority of use cases.

Why is there am emphasis on PaperCut Mobility?​

When reading through documentation surrounding PaperCut, it can be seen that there a lot of the documentation serves as a general guide towards the purpose and reason behind the mobility approach. PaperCut have created a timeline of the perspective of their company in regard to the level of complexity associated with the task of printing: PaperCut Mobility Timeline PaperCut makes a good argument in this timeline, while the above may be somewhat open to debate whether the descent of complexity has fallen as sharply it can generally be agreed that a universal print driver and print queue is a step back to simpler times for end users and admins.

Is the driver and print queue really "universal"?​

PaperCut have taken lenghly efforts to work with well established brands for the purpose of ensuring that device compatibility can be provided as a service, there are a wide range of confirmed partners available on their site however the following graphic also serves as a good highlight: PaperCut Supported Brands

Is there any reason not to use Find-Me printing?​

Overall it's difficult to find a negative with the setup and configuration of this service, there are a few more benefits to this imeplementation that may be worth note if you are still unconvinced of the potential use advantages:

  • The functionality is easily implemented and can be distributed through Group Policy to devices where required.
  • When used in conjunction with an automated authentication method such as Google or Microsoft, new users are automatically managed according to the User Directory.
  • If the User Directory has automated management of users based on an established MIS System, the process of PaperCut User Management is automated for a majority of actions.