Chapter 21. PaperCut & iPad / iPhone Printing (iOS)

Table of Contents

Requirements
Sharing Printers to iOS Devices
The PaperCut iPad / iPhone App (iOS app)
Deployment
Usage
Troubleshooting & FAQ
Advanced iPad / iPhone Printing Setup
iPad / iPhone Printing Technical Description
Limiting Printer Deployment
Advanced App Deployment

PaperCut's iPad / iPhone Printing support enables printing to all your PaperCut managed printers across your enterprise (and iOS devices - iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch). As well as enabling printing, the PaperCut iPad / iPhone App also provides the rich functionality desktop users are used to, such as authentication, balance display and selecting / charging to shared accounts when printing.

The PaperCut iPad / iPhone App is able to be deployed / installed in a pre-configured form for your network via a simple URL.

PaperCut's iPad / iPhone Printing support works by providing two key parts:

  1. The PaperCut Printer Advertiser - advertises the Apple CUPS printers managed by PaperCut using Bonjour/mDNS (so the iPads / iPhones users can find the PaperCut controlled queues).

  2. The PaperCut iOS App, providing support for print authentication, balance display, account selection and other features.

At the time of writing there is no built-in option provided by Apple to print from an iOS device to server shared print queues. PaperCut uses existing technologies built into Mac OS (Bonjour/mDNS) to advertise PaperCut managed server shared print queues so you an track and control iPad / iPhone printing. Some printers include built-in support for AirPrint®[1] (for printing direct from iOS devices to the printer), however the nature of print control/accounting requires that print jobs are intercepted by a central server. Additionally, most larger organizations want to leverage their existing print infrastructure, policies and print rules rather than change them. PaperCut's solution for iPad / iPhone Printing will now allow you to leverage your existing network and PaperCut setup.

Requirements

  1. Mac OS X 10.7 system to share the print queues (desktop version is fine, server tools not required)

  2. Apple iOS 5 devices to print from

  3. Wireless network

The PaperCut Printer Advertiser is a part of the PaperCut primary and secondary server installation and advertises the PaperCut print queues to iOS devices. iPad / iPhone Printing is a new and emerging technology, so although older versions and other platforms could work, we have chosen to support the latest release (and consequently the latest patch levels) for the best experience.

For Windows, Linux or Novell sites (or sites with a Mac OS 10.6 or older print server they would prefer not to upgrade), a separate (secondary) Mac OS 10.7 print server can be configured to share print queues. This can be as simple as purchasing a Mac Mini system and making it accessible from the wireless network.



[1] "AirPrint" is a registered trademark of Apple Inc.