Right-clicking on the Printers node of any print server
launches the Network Printer Installation Wizard shown in Figure 8. You can use
this wizard to search for printers on your network, add a network
printer using an existing printer port, or create a new port to add
the new printer.
Selecting the Printers node allows you to view and manage
printers that have been installed on the print server. As shown in
Figure 9, the
tasks you can perform on a printer include
-
Opening the printer queue to view, pause, resume, restart,
or cancel pending print jobs on the printer. -
Listing the printer in Active Directory to make it easier
for users to search for printers in the directory. -
Deploying the printer for targeted users or computers
using Group Policy. -
Printing a test page to verify the printer is functioning
properly. -
Opening the Properties page of the printer to manage the
various settings available. -
Enabling Branch Office Direct Printing, a new feature in
Windows Server 2012 that helps branch-office sites reduce their
wide area network (WAN) usage by printing directly to a print
device instead of spooling print jobs to a print queue on the
print server. Branch Office Direct Printing requires print
servers to be running Windows Server 2012 and client computers
to be running Windows 8.
As Figure 10
shows, the Properties page for a printer has various settings
grouped into different tabs as follows:
-
General You use this tab to
specify the printer’s location, configure printing preferences,
and print a test page. -
Sharing You use this tab to
share or unshare the printer, specify whether to render print
jobs on client computers, and specify whether the printer should
be listed in the directory. -
Ports You use this tab to
select the printer port for the printer, add new ports, and
configure or delete existing ports. (See Figure 10.) You can
also create a printing pool to automatically distribute print
jobs to the next available printer when high-volume printing is
needed for your environment. A printing pool consists of a
single logical printer connected to multiple physical print
devices using multiple ports on the print server. With printer
pooling, the physical print device that is idle receives the
next document sent to the logical printer. -
Advanced You use this tab
to specify when the printer is available, the printer’s
priority, how documents should be spooled, separator pages, and
miscellaneous other settings for the printer. By creating
multiple logical printers that print to the same physical print
device, assigning different priorities to each logical printer,
creating different groups for users who should have different
levels of priority access to the print device, and configuring
permissions for each group using the Security tab, you can allow
documents printed by users with high-priority access to bypass a
queue of lower priority documents that are waiting to be printed
on the device. -
Security You use this tab
to configure permissions that control how different groups or
users can use the printer. By default, the Everyone built-in
identity has the Print permission configured as Allow, while the
build-in Administrators group on the server has the Print,
Manage This Printer, and Manage Documents permissions configured
as Allow. -
Device Settings You use
this tab to specify settings for the print device, such as the
form to tray assignment.
Note
Additional printer properties
Other tabs might be visible on the Properties page of an
installed printer. For example, color printers will have a Color
Management tab.
Another feature of the Print Management snap-in is Extended
View, which you use to view and manage pending print jobs for the
selected printer. (See Figure 11.) Extended
View is enabled by right-clicking on the Printers node of a print
server and selecting Show Extended View from the context
menu.
|
