Auto pop-ups for user codes

[JayPaul]

Hi all,
I did see a thread from about 5 years ago regarding this but didn't want to bring that back from the dead as things may be different now anyway.
I installed an mpc 4504 and imc 3000 at a school earlier. They currently have 2 toshiba machines, which when they print anything it has a pop up asking for their department code (user code) and they type in a 4-6 digit code. Then when they go to photocopier, they type in that code and get their prints out. Ricoh drivers do not have that function built in but I found that if you build a driver with the 'Driver Packager NX' you can set it to have the auto pop-ups, then I set other defaults and set it to 'Hold prints'
I had already installed all of their department user codes before installation so that was done. I send a print job, it asks for the code, which was great, then you go to photocopier and the job has already been received and deleted automatically. All the users have black and white/colour copy and printing priviliges so that wasn't an issue, I tried it with the printing restrictions set to 'Restrict mono/colour' 'Restrict colour' 'PC Control' and 'Do Not Restrict' but every single time it fails. I see it receive the print job and delete it within 2 seconds, on the print error logs it has error 91 which is usually to do with print driver errors but seeing as it is the PCL 6 driver I used that shouldn't be an issue. What else could be causing this... OR is there another easier way to just get these damn pop ups to work like their Toshiba machines?
The reason for it is they have about 200 PC/Laptops and only about 8 of them are used by 1 person, the other 192 can be used by anyone, so I cannot put a persons user code into each driver individually, because 3 other people may use that same PC later in the day.
Does anyone have any suggestions, more info provided if necessary.

[Dan G]

I believe if you use the Universal Driver and or PCL5 you will have better luck?

[slimslob]

I believe if you use the Universal Driver and or PCL5 you will have better luck?

According to the information on Universal Drivers that Ricoh used to on their download page they are intended fore use when pooling different makes and models of printers as in order to pool different printers they have to be using the same driver.

[slimslob]

If they have to login to the computers individually then using Windows authentication instead of User Codes might work.

[JayPaul]

I tried Windows Authentication but it had 2 problems, 1 was that they do their codes by departments and not one code per person and other problem was that the Ricohs can't see the print job and log it in the 'Display/Clear/ Print counter per user' because it is something separate to the Ricohs address book.
I honestly can't see a way around this without installing PaperCut MF which is costly and more hard work.
After numerous tests I can see it is deleting the print jobs because the machine does not like the fact it is being sent without a User ID, even though the password has been put in and matches it will not allow the job without the User ID also which I cannot put in to every single job.
So does anyone know a way of the Ricoh allowing a hold job to be sent to it without it needing a User ID?
I tried turning on 'Auto Continue' which I knew wouldn't make a difference and it didn't, tried turning PC restrictions off which made no difference also.

[rthonpm]

Are the printers installed locally, or shared from a server? If they're shared from a server, every user that logs into a computer would have to manually add the shared printer, which could then be set for the appropriate user code. In a Windows environment the quick and dirty way to install a shared printer is to give users an SMB link, just like to a share drive like \\servername\printersharename since to Windows, a shared printer is no different than a shared folder. Clicking on the link would then install the drivers from the server. In a more sophisticated environment,group policy could even be used to automatically install the correct printer for each user, though the user code would still have to be installed in either instance.

The Printer Driver Packager should allow you to pre-populate user codes as long as you're using a PCL 6 driver: Printer Driver Packager NX | Support & Downloads | Global | Ricoh

I don't think you're going to get the pop-up option though.

[JayPaul]

The idea is to install them on the server (already done) then share them out via group policy, which we didn't even get around to doing as we couldn't get anything to print. I have edited the PCL 6 driver using the Driver Package NX which does have an option to allow user code pop ups. So now using that driver even just printing a test page it pops up asking for the user code, which is great, you enter the 4 digit code and the print job sends. Problem is the second the Ricoh gets that print job it deletes it no questions asked. I believe the reason it deletes it, is because it does not have a User ID on it. Why it needs that I really don't know because on the Ricoh if I look at the error log, it shows my test page, it shows, the user name of the contact I typed in the user code for, so it knows which contact in the address book is trying to print but it just will not do it. I have tried about 25 different variations for about 8 hours and have achieved absolutely nothing! Have tried contacting ricoh level 2 but for months now they take days just to even get back to you to ask 'so what is it you have a problem with?'
I have gone through loads of old threads spanning the last 10 years and there seems to be no resolution to this on a Ricoh

[slimslob]

The idea is to install them on the server (already done) then share them out via group policy, which we didn't even get around to doing as we couldn't get anything to print. I have edited the PCL 6 driver using the Driver Package NX which does have an option to allow user code pop ups. So now using that driver even just printing a test page it pops up asking for the user code, which is great, you enter the 4 digit code and the print job sends. Problem is the second the Ricoh gets that print job it deletes it no questions asked. I believe the reason it deletes it, is because it does not have a User ID on it. Why it needs that I really don't know because on the Ricoh if I look at the error log, it shows my test page, it shows, the user name of the contact I typed in the user code for, so it knows which contact in the address book is trying to print but it just will not do it. I have tried about 25 different variations for about 8 hours and have achieved absolutely nothing! Have tried contacting ricoh level 2 but for months now they take days just to even get back to you to ask 'so what is it you have a problem with?'
I have gone through loads of old threads spanning the last 10 years and there seems to be no resolution to this on a Ricoh

Try printing the error log. It should tell you why the job was dumped.

[JayPaul]

It didn't help me at all, did one this morning and it just says System 91: Error then the date and time it happened.
The error is because it does not like the fact I sent a print job to it with a user code but not a user id. There is no pop up to also enter the user id as well as the user code, they user would have to go into printing preferences every time and add one manually, rendering the point of the pop up useless. It would be a very long winded process every time someone wants to print. Plus the time I tried it just to see what happens, it did hold the print job and allow me to release it with the user code on the copier, but when I looked at the users counters, that user was still on 0 prints so it didn't even count it.

[slimslob]

It didn't help me at all, did one this morning and it just says System 91: Error then the date and time it happened.
The error is because it does not like the fact I sent a print job to it with a user code but not a user id. There is no pop up to also enter the user id as well as the user code, they user would have to go into printing preferences every time and add one manually, rendering the point of the pop up useless. It would be a very long winded process every time someone wants to print. Plus the time I tried it just to see what happens, it did hold the print job and allow me to release it with the user code on the copier, but when I looked at the users counters, that user was still on 0 prints so it didn't even count it.

Are you sure that User Authentication is set to User Code and not User ID, the users Windows login?