Printer Control App

bpate · 14th February 2006

I started a new position with a company and have an issue with printer control. The Goal is to have fixed Printer Assignments and allow variable printers depending on what office an individual is working in. For example User1 in City2 has printers A, B and C installed via net queues as his defaults. User1 now visits City3 and needs to print to printer Z. Once the user returns to City2 we want to remove the temporary printer from the machine automatically.

Now to throw a curve ball. On Occation we have a user that prints regularly to another City and needs that queue on a regular basis.

Any Thoughts?

Thanks
Bob

**ReggieB** · 24th February 2006

Log on scripts is the way I would to go. And VBScript ones probably to give the level of sophistication you need. However, how you set them up depends on your server and domain set up.

Perhaps you could use the IP address of the office to determine which branch of a script fires off.

If start of IP address is 10.0.1 then connect to these printers otherwise connect to these printers.

This site gives you an example of a bit of VBScript that will grab the IP address.

bpate · 25th February 2006

Thanks ReggieB
I just finished going through our login scripts on a plane. We already use the login scripts (to an extreme) and hence the reason for wanting to scale these back. They are using Printer Access Groups to determin who gets what printers and what is the default. But when we have a situation of a traveler between the offices is when most of the difficulty comes in.

I think what we really need is more of a application distribution system and maybe a VB app for unique Printer assingments or temporary assignments.

Thanks
Bob

scorp508 · 26th February 2006

Windows Server 2003 R2 would be great for this.

**ReggieB** · 27th February 2006

Laptop users who connect to different networks at different times are "challenging" with 2000 or XP. The fact that the OS insists on creating a new profile for you just because you log onto a different domain is a pain (OK as a default behaviour, but there really should be an easy way to tell the system to use an existing profile instead).

I recently came across this:

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/msh/

Monad might give you the functionality you want without having to go for a dedicated VB app. I'd be interested to hear if you did find it useful. Monad's current on my list of "interesting new technology that I must look into when I have a spare moment".

bpate · 27th February 2006

I agree that Monad may have some possibilities for this but unfortunately I won't have time to look at it until late June.

Thanks. I'll keep the tread in mind and let you know.