[Misc] Using User Boxes

[Dan1984]

Hi everyone,

For the sake of background, I'm new to working with printers, computers generally I can handle but printers give me the shivers haha. I'm working in a school, but I'm only there once every two weeks, which makes practical experimentation very hard! The school has 5 Konica Minolta printers/copiers, C224(e), C220, C452 and 2x C454(e).

The school want user boxes implemented on each printer, but I'm struggling to set it via the printer defaults on the server, when I try it asks for a Name/Box number the same as the other computers. If I fill this in, will it push out that name/box number to all other computers, replacing the settings that they already have? I haven't tried it yet as I'm not there to clear up any mess, but I'm trying to get a clear picture of what to expect.
If I can't enforce the implementation of User Boxes from the server, how do I stop users just changing the settings back to direct printing in printer defaults?

Really grateful for any help offered

Dan

[avecosat]

Re: Using User Boxes

You can configure an MFP and with a USB in administrator mode ( Import/export ) copy the data to the rest of the MFPs. Users can be the same on all copiers

[Kenny]

Re: Using User Boxes

Hi everyone,

For the sake of background, I'm new to working with printers, computers generally I can handle but printers give me the shivers haha. I'm working in a school, but I'm only there once every two weeks, which makes practical experimentation very hard! The school has 5 Konica Minolta printers/copiers, C224(e), C220, C452 and 2x C454(e).

The school want user boxes implemented on each printer, but I'm struggling to set it via the printer defaults on the server, when I try it asks for a Name/Box number the same as the other computers. If I fill this in, will it push out that name/box number to all other computers, replacing the settings that they already have? I haven't tried it yet as I'm not there to clear up any mess, but I'm trying to get a clear picture of what to expect.
If I can't enforce the implementation of User Boxes from the server, how do I stop users just changing the settings back to direct printing in printer defaults?

Really grateful for any help offered

Dan

can you not use secure print? personally we prefer to set this up as you wont need to create each individual user box on each device. the users can create the credentials themselves, it then creates a user box on the machine when they print

Operation procedure: Performing secure print

[wjurls]

Re: Using User Boxes

We are in house techs for a large school district here. For setting up teachers, we always set them up for secure print. When we install the driver, we set the output method to secure print using their last name for user and employee ID# as the password. After installing the driver, go to "printer properties" ,"advanced" tab, "printing defaults", then set output method to secure print. A pop-up should come up for you to enter the name and password. Then hit apply. Back out of this screen and confirm under "printing preferences" that secure print is still the output method. If not, select it and apply it. When you send a test page, the box will be automatically created on the machine.

There is really nothing you can do to prevent staff from changing the output method back to "print". Many will inadvertently do that too.

[Dan1984]

Re: Using User Boxes

Funny you should say that, the original plan was to set them all up with secure print, however one printer just would not do it. We did follow all the steps you mentioned. This one particular printer would just delete the jobs before they reached the printer. So you would put in the credentials after pressing print, go to the printer, but no job, look at the history and it says authentication error. It is however set up identically to all of the other printers, so after a few weeks messing about with that, (and the school getting angrier and angrier that the printer wasn't doing what they wanted it to do), It was decided that we should use user boxes instead as all the printers took to it.
Any input on the original secure print issue would definitely be appreciated, but I'm not keen to go back to the school and say I want to change it again unless I have a sure-fire solution.

Thanks again for the replies

[kingarthur]

Re: Using User Boxes

Funny you should say that, the original plan was to set them all up with secure print, however one printer just would not do it. We did follow all the steps you mentioned. This one particular printer would just delete the jobs before they reached the printer. So you would put in the credentials after pressing print, go to the printer, but no job, look at the history and it says authentication error. It is however set up identically to all of the other printers, so after a few weeks messing about with that, (and the school getting angrier and angrier that the printer wasn't doing what they wanted it to do), It was decided that we should use user boxes instead as all the printers took to it.
Any input on the original secure print issue would definitely be appreciated, but I'm not keen to go back to the school and say I want to change it again unless I have a sure-fire solution.

Thanks again for the replies

going back to your original plan, have you tried ID & Print - jobs will be rejected if they don't use this. if your jobs are only being rejected for one printer, and it is different model to the others - check that you have the correct print drivers

[Dan1984]

Re: Using User Boxes

Sounds promising, what is ID & Print? It needs to be set as well as secure print? Yeah the drivers are right, they were one of the solutions I tried in the weeks of messing around

[wjurls]

Re: Using User Boxes

Funny you should say that, the original plan was to set them all up with secure print, however one printer just would not do it. We did follow all the steps you mentioned. This one particular printer would just delete the jobs before they reached the printer. So you would put in the credentials after pressing print, go to the printer, but no job, look at the history and it says authentication error. It is however set up identically to all of the other printers, so after a few weeks messing about with that, (and the school getting angrier and angrier that the printer wasn't doing what they wanted it to do), It was decided that we should use user boxes instead as all the printers took to it.
Any input on the original secure print issue would definitely be appreciated, but I'm not keen to go back to the school and say I want to change it again unless I have a sure-fire solution.

Thanks again for the replies

Is the offending machine by chance set up for user authentication? If so, you will either need to add the access code to the driver, or else enable "print without authentication" on on the machine.

[Dan1984]

Re: Using User Boxes

Is the offending machine by chance set up for user authentication? If so, you will either need to add the access code to the driver, or else enable "print without authentication" on on the machine.

Oh right, where do I find the access code?

[wjurls]

Re: Using User Boxes

Right under the Output method window in Printing Defaults you will see a button that says "user authentication/account track" When you click it, a pop up will allow you to enter the pertinent information.

[Dan1984]

Re: Using User Boxes

So I need to get it from the printer and enter it in the user authentication/account track? or do I set the authentication code on both?

[kingarthur]

Re: Using User Boxes

ID & Print, is where you set up an account for each user, they have a user name & password, which is entered into the print driver, once, and saved. if they turn off the ID & Print in the drivers, the device will reject the print job. you can restrict certain users to only be able to print mono, or restrict them to how many colour or mono prints they can do. When they reach that limit, then the "administrator" can reset that for them. No jobs are released until that person logs onto the device, and no one else can access their jobs. You can set how long the device holds that job, before it's deleted, default is 1 day. if you want, instead of them physically logging in with a user name/password, you can have a card reader and issue each person with a card. if you don't want to restrict copying/scanning, you can set up a public user, you can restrict this to only mono copying, and they have to log in if they want a colour copy. with this in place, the administrator can see who is doing the printing, and see how much colour/mono each person is doing. once you have set it up on one device, you can copy it to the others, easily, via USB. It's really easy to set up

[rrrohan]

Re: Using User Boxes

There is really nothing you can do to prevent staff from changing the output method back to "print". Many will inadvertently do that too.

secure print only.png you can lock it down if you worried

[wjurls]

Re: Using User Boxes

secure print only.png you can lock it down if you worried

Good to know thanks. Yet another step to an already tedious installation process.

[emujo2]

Re: Using User Boxes

Keep in mind that in order for any of this to work, bi directional communication must be working. If the print driver is not aware that authentication, secure print, or ID and Print is ON then any jobs it gets with this config will be deleted. If, when you open the driver, properties, and the get device info fails, you will not get any further. E