Fast and efficient printing on multiple printers
Everybody knows that any large organization produces a lot of paper documents: accounting records, internal memos, letters, notes, and so on. We should have switched to electronic document flow long ago, but what you can see today is paper used here, there, and everywhere. Sometimes it’s hard to implement a “paperless office” for technical reasons, and sometimes old habits die hard. Discussions of what should be done have been going for years, but each proposed solution usually hit an unexpected problem. As a result, printers are used in all companies, even the smallest ones.
Most companies use high-performance multifunction devices, the number of which depends on company size and profile. At best, they are used only by the staff that handles accounting records; at worst, they are available for use by all departments that have to print reports to be stored in hard copy. A high load on a printer results in printing delays. Surely you have seen people waiting impatiently for a paper jam to be fixed! Such a problem is typical of many departments that work with paper documents.
To solve the problem, reduce the load on each printer, which is much easier to do than implementing a “paperless office”! O&K Print Router can greatly reduce per-printer load by printing a multi-page document in parallel on several printers. Moreover, it can:- Redirect print jobs;
- Distribute load among several printers;
- Speed-up printing;
- Save copies of printed documents.
First of all, O&K Print Router can speed-up printing by distributing print jobs among several printers. In the application’s settings, you can see the “Redirect” tab with the list of available printers. If you work in a large company where printers are used very intensively, better select only those nearby. Otherwise you may have to go looking for some pages printed on another floor! A few printers can easily print a hundred pages in no time. So even if dozens of printers are available, there is no need to involve all of them, especially if some are located far from you.
O&K Print Router analyzes the availability of printers or multifunction devices to generate the optimal solution for your case. For example, if there are five printers in your local network, three of which cannot be used for some reason, the print job will be sent to the two available printers. Without this smart application, you would have to manually select each printer and check its current load. O&K Print Router avoids using complex routes, so it will automatically remove any jammed printer from the list of available printers. If a printer handles a lot of print jobs while other printers are idle, the new print job will be sent to one of the idle printers.
O&K Print Router’s user interface has been designed to be as simple as possible, keeping in mind the needs of ordinary users. To configure the print job redirection, open the “Redirect” tab in the settings and select the nearest printers. Then O&K Print Router will do the rest, selecting idle printers from the list as needed.
Load distribution by the print server works as follows: When a print job is received, it is handled by O&K Print Router. To let the application use this option, uncheck the “No multiply printing” checkbox in the lower part of the “Redirect” tab. On the same tab, you can also select printers for printing the document.
The document will be printed piecemeal on the selected printers. By using more printers, you can print the whole document in less time. Finally, go and collect printed pages from each printer. O&K Print Router lets you combine printers that use different drivers, which you cannot do with built-in Windows tools.
It’s great to always have a backup copy, but sometimes it’s difficult to save a fragment of each page that you print. The typical user doesn’t even think about doing that! Sometimes, a week after a document was modified or even deleted, you need to print its original version again. But how can you do that? O&K Print Router will come to help: It can automatically save a copy of each printed page in the PDF format.
It’s very easy to turn on this option, just check the “Save the printed document as PDF” checkbox. After that, all documents printed will also be saved in the PDF format. So O&K Print Router can double as a PDF printer.
Any company where a lot of documents are printed. If a few printers are used, O&K Print Router can make it easier to handle them, and reduce printing delays. If creating and printing documents is an essential part of your company’s activities, it will be able to work more effectively. The employees will appreciate how easy it is to configure O&K Print Router, and will enjoy automatic selection of an available printer. Now they won’t have to wait in line each time a printer needs fixing! As a result, the performance of the department using the software will be higher.