The Dashboard tab is the first page displayed in the PaperCut NG administration interface. It provides an overview of system activity from the past and in real-time for devices and users. It does this by using a collection of gadgets which are described below.
What's Next gadget
At the top of the page is the What's Next gadget. It gives a list of hints which are particularly useful for first-time administrators of PaperCut NG. They give descriptions of useful tasks to do in PaperCut NG with links to other administrator interface or help pages. This gadget can be closed for more experienced administrators who no longer need it.
System Status gadget
The System Status gadget provides a list of system level statistics. They provide an overview of system information including any warnings or errors that may need attention.
Pages Printed gadget
The Pages Printed gadget provides a graph showing the trends in printing volume over the last 30 days. The graph displays after three days of data has been accumulated. When upgrading from a version of PaperCut NG prior to a version supporting the Dashboard feature, the data from the previous version is not displayed.
Environmental Impact gadget
The Environmental Impact gadget provides overall environmental impact statistics in terms of trees, carbon and energy. For more information on Environmental Impact, see the section called “Environmental Impact”.
Printer Status gadget
The Printer Status gadget provides a status overview of the printers managed by PaperCut. The information displayed includes the daily number of pages printed and device alerts such as low toner levels or printer jams. Alerts for printer errors and low toner levels are also available via System Notifications. Refer to the section called “System Notifications and Emailing” for additional information.
News gadget
The News gadget ensures you're kept up to date with relevant release and development activity regarding PaperCut.
Real-time Activity gadget
The Real-time Activity gadget shows a list of current events in real-time. It shows activities such as print jobs arriving, users logging in, exceeding print quotas, print job status, a variety of errors and much more. This tool is designed to help administrators monitor activity and diagnose problems. The events are updated as the occur and errors are highlighted in red. The events are described in a one line summary, but may be expanded by clicking on the link to the right of the message. The gadget can be expanded by clicking on the Expand item at the bottom of the gadget to display more events. Refreshing the browser page will reverse the expansion. The Pause item at the bottom of the gadget can be used if the number of events being reported makes viewing difficult.
Tip
The Real-time Activity gadget will alert you if the PaperCut Account Selection has been configured to use the client software, and the client software is not running on the workstation. For example, if a user has popup confirmation enabled, (see the section called “The Account Selection Popup”) and the client software is not running, the job will stay paused and eventually time out. In this situation, as soon as the user prints a document the administrator will be warned in the Real-time Activity gadget that the client software is not running for that user.