The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
Stopping people who hit print
futility
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Registered User, ClubPA regular
Does anyone know of some sort of technological solution that can be implemented in an office to curb people from printing? I want to stop the world from my office full of people who think it's cool to print out web pages and other blank pages and pages of junk.
futility on
0
Posts
Seriously, I don't really see what you're getting at. Do you want to have a process where anyone who needs to print something has to get approval first?
I was kind of hoping someone knew of some sort of tracking/permission software.
edit: it's an office printer, and there are people who need to and are printing right, it's curbing people who print entire 100 piece of paper web pages or large documents that I'd like to try and solve
It's either educate the users, stop all printing, or implement some sort of new policy where all printing must be emailed in document form to a person who gives the yay or nay.
edit: One thing you can do, is create a Dword value at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Polices\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions called "NoPrinting" which will remove print and print preview from the file menu.
If you're IITG, you can probably find a setting to change that will be a pain to change back, but it's probably best if you let it go because you don't want to make it hard for people to do their job.
If you're one of the former two, you can implement a per-day page limit for each department. I know you can do this because my school does it, although I don't know how, to be honest with you. It's probably something you can find out though. The only problem with this is that you need to make sure that if someone legitimately needs more pages for work, there exists a channel for them to do so. My school doesn't bother with that part because anybody printing more than 75 pages a day probably has some advance notice of the assignment. :P However, in an office environment if such a channel exists (like asking a manager to raise your page limit for the day) people are a lot less likely to bother when faced with the possibility of the dreaded "What for?" if the printing isn't for work.
In that case, hell, even the possibility that they may have to print something important later is enough to make some people not want to bother with the extras. It's also important to make sure the page limit for each department is reasonable for the amount of printed work that comes out of that department, which may require a little research on your part.
I'm sure that there are ways for this solution to backfire horribly.
Really though, the best way to prevent people from printing out web pages is probably to restrict internet access so that if they're printing out a web page it's more likely actually related to making their job easier.
You ever have to deal with office-wide printers? Between managing ink and paper purchases, tech support/troubleshooting, driver support, and network printing, it's a facet of someone's job that can drive anyone up the wall and takes up far too much time in a person's day. The less he can focus on idiots printing out full color pics of their kids, the better he can get on with the rest of his job.
Instead of prevent though, does anyone know of any solutions where I can identify where the problem is coming from and thus be able to try and shun the appropriate people?
I wouldn't shun them, I'd just make a memo by the printer, and have oddly specific examples of things people should NOT print. Then, when they print out that retarded lolcat pic, they'll see the memo and realize they aren't doing anyone a favor.
Where I work everyone who isn't a temp has their own printer. Many have multifunctions.
Or you could charge them, set a kind of a limit (that they can go over if they need to) and if they go over it then charge them a nickle or something tiny for every sheet of paper after that.
I don't know a lot of techincal tricks to help you out, I just know that you'll have a lot of upset [strike]adult[/strike]children very soon.
That will curb the shit right there.
There may even be a written rule in opposition to this.
The problem is that there is no oversight and no enforcement.
I'd recommend the Regan option: Trust but verify.
Do NOT set arcane settings, turn off the printer, leave rude notes, or hire a printer troll to guard the printers.
DO set up a print server that logs print jobs back by terminal. Flag X terminals for large amounts of prints. Record X terminals exact files by recording anything sent to the print queue.
Copy offending data and escalate to manager for training of users. When addressing to the managers, avoid any mention of "How this part of my job sucks and he/she makes it sucks more". Instead, talk about "The average user prints out a certain amount of personal crap, costing the company about this much. This silly goose prints out 10 times that amount every other day."
His way of dealing with useless printing was by buying less and less paper. He'd just tell everyone "hey, I bought only a few 100 sheets of paper this month, I expect everyone to spend it wisely, because I don't want to buy more"
Peer pressure, personal responsibility and an inclination to please the boss did the rest.
Regards.
That said it sounds like your company is kind of effed up. Beyond that one situation, everyone kind of knows not to print personal stuff. The embarassment of walking to collect your e-harmony printout when someone else is printing their financial estimates for the month is enough to stop everyone, but I guuess there are more stupid people in the world than I got to know.
PSN - sumowot
THIS
Try working at a hospital and having an add from Craigslist end out in a patient chart. There are certain places where there's just too much transient traffic to really control printing well, but in a closed office it shouldn't be that hard. Well, not too hard as long as the powers that be want to stop it or care.
If this should go the other way, where they really don't care. Start keeping a worklog of just how much time you spend fucking with printers, so if they for some reason think your productivity is going down, you can say, "No, I spend 20 hours a pay-period dealing with printer issues". Think of it as a little job security even if it does suck.
That way in the situation that the worst offenders actually need to print something, you or someone else who isn't a dumbass can actually verify if they need to print whatever it is. Although that might add more bullshit to your life... having to go deal with these people every time they want to print something.
Some offices are fucking retarded with their printing as well. I worked at this one stupid fucking office where the whole operation, i shit you not, was to print out these financial history request sheets, move them 20 feet to another guys desk, and have him scan them, email them and then shred the papers.
I was convinced this whole office existed just so some paper company could make sales.
This. Also, find some people in your office who also hate idiots for printing out e-mails and other worthless BS and institute some kind of environmental policy or whatever and put it out there that people should think before they print something.
A print server that logs jobs is a step in the right direction.
You can also use the print server to impose a limit on large prints (say, anything over 50 pages?) for all users, except those with explicit permission for large prints. Send out a notice saying if they need to print more than 50 pages, ask their manager (or IT, or whoever) and the job will be printed for them. If you're the person in question, you might think this will make more work for you, but most of the time people will realize they didn't really need to print that much and give up rather than calling about it.
Also, set up the greyscale and color printing profiles separately (you can do this easily if you're using a Server 2003 or later print server), and set the greyscale profile to be the default on users machines. Give them access to the color one, and teach them how to use it, but as long as it takes extra effort they'll just print in greyscale most of the time.
The best way to do this is really going to depend on your network setup. If it's just a Windows domain, you can do it with server 03/08 and maybe some extra stuff for limiting. If you've got a Novell network or something similar, they probably have a solution that fits into your authentication scheme. Novell's is called iPrint, and it works about as well as the rest of their products
I worked in a lab at campus where all print jobs went to a machine running Windows 2000. From there, people had to walk up and scan their student cards to "release" the job, assuming they had enough money on the card (0.10/page B&W, 0.50/page color). It's not impossible. Assuming you can't start charging people, maybe you could implement a similar system with "credits" on peoples accounts that refill everyday.
I couldn't tell you what the software was, unfortunately. I think it had a mythological greek-sounding name. Might have just been the machine though.
One co-worker asked if they could guarantee the safety of this bit of private information, the executives started with "oh but who would ever try to steal su---" before my co-worker asked again if they could 100% guarantee that this private information would be impossible to access to anyone who did not have a specific clearing to access it. After some more mumbling and 'stop complaining ahhh' they had to admit that they could not 100% guarantee it and he was the only guy working there (on 100+ people) who did not give his fingerprints and who got a fancy card instead.
Half the reason why he asked was because of privacy concerns, the other half was because it is fucking annoying to have to jump through hoops for a legitimate print.
So, if you instigate a system where everyone is fucked over equally, the 'annoying' people like Zenpotato will do everything they can to find loopholes and will fuck you over, just on principal.
This is easily the best solution. It's probably the only workable one.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Not only is it a cost-related issue, but it's an environmental one as well.
You don't need anything fancy like fingerprint and retinal scanners, but just find out who is wasting paper/toner and deal with those people. How bout an inter-office memo beforehand reminding people about what is and is not acceptable use of the office printer?
Printing your 300 page Zelda fan fic at work would be an example of not acceptable. Although, it could lead to hilarious Internet discussions when another employee finds it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e3mLmFScB8
A Windows Server hosting the printer, published in AD, as long as the users are clients of the shared printer the Server will log each job in the Logs (can't remember if it's application or system).
If you have more than 10 users, this is how your network should be configured.
Yes. People have mangers for stuff like this. Point out the waste of resources and let them manage it.
Your technological solution is to track the issue and report on it, then see what happens.
On our print server, we set up multiple printers for each physical printer, based on color or black and white, simplex or duplex. Some printers can be listed 4 times based on the different configurations. This makes it easier for the user to change common options, and doesn't give them an excuse like "I didn't know it was set to Color."
Then we educate and remind people where to print what, and that black and white, duplex is preferred in order to minimize cost.
We then make sure no one has a color printer set as their default. This is just a matter of catching it either through the logs, printer output, or when you are working on a user's computer.
Beyond that, get a manager involved.
NintendoID: Nailbunny 3DS: 3909-8796-4685
Depending on what your role is (wasn't clear on that), you could provide some other kind of positive incentive for lowering printing usage....like cookies. Pretty much every potential solution is going to be influenced by the management and culture of your department.
It works pretty well. During work hours, printings are pretty legit. After hours, people sometimes print out nominally personal stuff, but it is limited and nothing inappropriate.