Enabling and Configuring Google Cloud Print
Google Cloud Print is enabled in
→ → . On checking "Enable" a wizard dialog appears to lead you through the process.
The first step in the process is to authorize PaperCut to use your administrator Google account.
(See the section called “Administrator Authentication”.) In this process, you will be asked to give
PaperCut permission to use your Google account to obtain an authorization code. The authorization code
is needed for PaperCut to use your administrator account to manage your printers with Google Cloud Print on
your behalf.
Note
You must grant permission for your PaperCut Application Server to use
your administrator Google account to work with Google Cloud Print on your behalf.
You are not granting permission for any third party,
including PaperCut Software, to access your account.
Your authorization only applies to your PaperCut Application Server instance.
Once your Google Cloud Print administrator account is authorized, you may publish a printer to Google Cloud Print and test.
Printers are published using a button on the Printer Details page.
See the section called “Publishing Printers to Google Cloud Print” for more information.
There are several choices to make on how PaperCut process Cloud Print jobs
with respect to user authentication and client popup reminders.
Configure what PaperCut should do when a job arrives from an unknown email address.
PaperCut searches the user database for the originating email address of each job.
If the email address is not found, you may choose to have PaperCut cancel the job
or hold the job and email the user with instructions for verifying their Google email address.
(See the section called “User Authentication”.)
You may wish to cancel the job if you have decided to manually configure the user
Google email addresses in the page.
Choose whether to send a reminder email for jobs requiring a popup response.
(See the section called “Client Popups and Google Cloud Print”.)
Publishing Printers to Google Cloud Print
Before a printer can be used with Google Cloud Print it must be published to Google and shared with users.
Publishing a printer to Google Cloud Print will make the printer known to Google and enable access from
Google's Google Cloud Print user interfaces.
Printers are published to Google Cloud Print on the printer details page for a selected printer in
the tab. Click the Publish to Google Cloud Print
button to publish a printer. The printer will remain published indefinitely.
If you do not see a Google Cloud Print section on the printer details page,
check that Google Cloud Print is enabled under
→ → .
Once published, you must share your printer with users,
using your Google administrator account to login to the Google Cloud Print printer management page:
https://www.google.com/cloudprint#printers
Sharing a printer will send a sharing invitation to each invited user.
Each user must respond by accepting the invitation by logging in with their own Google account
to the Google Cloud Print printer management page:
https://www.google.com/cloudprint#printers
The printer sharing process is provided by Google as their solution for printer security
and access control. We don't document the process in detail as Google's interfaces
for sharing printers are likely to change. For example, at the time of writing,
the sharing interfaces require a desktop or Chromebook browser.
You should test sending and accepting printer sharing invitations at your site,
using your targeted mobile devices, and document any required steps for your users.
Tip
You can list only those printers published or not published to Google Cloud Print using a filter:
Go to the tab to see a list of printers.
Click [edit] to edit the filter.
From “Published to Google Cloud Print” select Yes or No and click
Apply Filter.
Testing Google Cloud Print
You should test the operation of Google Cloud Print before rolling out the system to your users. Your test plan
should factor in the following items:
Sharing and accepting printer sharing invitations. Share your printers and test using
your targeted mobile devices and applications.
Printing to a range of printers, page sizes, duplex and color settings.
Automatic email verification (if used). Send a print job from an unknown Google account
and check that a verification email is sent. Follow the steps in the email to associate the
account with a PaperCut user and print the job.
Tracking and control of Google Cloud Print jobs. Verify that print jobs from Google Cloud Print are associated with
the correct user and are being tracked in the print log.
You should take into account the requirements listed in the section called “Requirements”
when creating your test plan.
Troubleshooting Google Cloud Print Problems
Troubleshooting Printer Publishing Problems
Some printers may not be able to successfully publish to Google Cloud Print. There are several possible causes:
The PaperCut Secondary Print Server is running on Novell
For various technical reasons, PaperCut does not currently support Google Cloud Print on Novell print servers.
The Secondary Print Server is a Windows desktop machine
When running the Print Provider on a Windows desktop, PaperCut disables by
default the server events needed for Google Cloud Print operation. This is done for performance
reasons for sites running many desktop Print Providers.
You may enable server events on a desktop Print Provider machine by adding the following
line to the print-provider.conf file and restarting the Print Provider service:
ServerEventsEnableOnDesktops=on
There may be performance implications if this change is made on a large number of
desktops.
The Secondary Print Server is running an older version of PaperCut
The Print Provider must be running a version of PaperCut that supports
Google Cloud Print.
Google Cloud Print support was first introduced in PaperCut release 13.5.
A connection from the Application Server to the Internet is unavailable
The Application Server must be connected to the Internet to publish printers and
process Google Cloud Print jobs.
Google access has been revoked
This may occur if the Google administrator account used to publish printers
has been deleted or
PaperCut's access to this account has been revoked. To recover from this
scenario, you will need to disable and re-enable Google Cloud Print in
→ → and re-publish and share your printers.
Troubleshooting Printing Problems
Print jobs printed to Google Cloud Print may not appear or print correctly. If this occurs, please check the
for any error or warning messages that may lead you to the cause. The user should also check
Google's print job page
https://www.google.com/cloudprint#jobs
for job status information.
If the job was submitted, but has not printed, some causes are listed below:
The job is from an unknown user
PaperCut must map the Google email originating the job with a PaperCut
user. If no user can be matched, the job may be cancelled. See the section called “Enabling and Configuring Google Cloud Print”.
To resolve, you may manually add the Google email as a user's secondary email address in the
User Details page. Or you can enable automatic email verification.
The job requires a popup response and no response received
If a job requires popup response, for example to select an account to charge, and
no response is received, PaperCut will wait up to 10 minutes before cancelling the job.
Users must respond using the Web Client - see the section called “Client Popups and Google Cloud Print”.
PaperCut may send a reminder email to use the Web Client. If a user
has not received this email, check that the reminder setting is on, and that the email
is not being diverted to the user's Junk Email folder.
The print driver is not capable of rendering the job
When printing using CUPS (Linux and Mac print providers), the print driver is responsible
for rendering the PDF document from Google Cloud Print. Some drivers, such as a generic Postscript driver,
may not be able to render a PDF document. If you are using a generic Postscript driver
as pass-through, you may need to setup a separate queue for Google Cloud Print using the proper
printer driver for your printer.
The print driver does not perform as expected
Some print drivers may not fully comply with the print ticket from Google Cloud Print. This can result
in the printed output not respecting the requested paper size, color or duplex setting.
Google is working with printer manufacturers to resolve such problems. The first course
of action should be to update the printer driver to the latest version to see if the problem
has been resolved. Otherwise, you may report the issue to our support team.
If the PaperCut page counts or color page counts are incorrect, please contact
our support team.
The PaperCut Application Server has lost connection with the Internet
The Application Server must be connected to the Internet to publish printers and
process Google Cloud Print jobs.
The Printer or Secondary Print Server is down
A printer may still appear available in Google Cloud Print even if the printer is currently down or
the Print Provider managing the printer is unavailable. The job will print when the
Print Provider is brought back up.
