Deployment of O&K Print Watch in a local network.

O&K Print Watch is one of the most popular software products for controlling, auditing, and monitoring the use of printers. If there is a dedicated print server in your local network (in a network with locally installed and shared printers, any computer can be a dedicated print server), you can easily install and set up O&K Print Watch in just a few minutes. When installing O&K Print Watch on a print server, specify connection parameters for using an existing MS SQL Server in your network, or install and use MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Express (or MS SQL Server 2012 LocalDB) included in the O&K Print Watch distribution package. O&K Print Watch supports automated installation and setup of MS SQL Server. After that, all local printers on that print server will be automatically added to print monitoring, and statistics of documents printed by each user will be available in real time.

What if there are several print servers and personal computers with local printers (for example, connected via USB) in your network? If this is the case, install O&K Print Watch Service on each such computer. No need to install a separate instance of MS SQL Server for each new computer with a printer. Moreover, using one MS SQL Server as an O&K Print Watch database server will allow you to collect overall statistics for each print server in your network.

Let’s consider an example of installing O&K Print Watch in a local network. Say, there are two print servers, PRINT_SERVER1 and PRINT_SERVER2, and also personal computers USER_PC1, USER_PC2, etc., with USB printers.

Step 1:

Install O&K Print Watch on PRINT_SERVER1. If you are going to use an existing MS SQL Server, select Use existing MS SQL Server and specify connection parameters for that server: server name (SQL Server instance name, if necessary), administrator name, and password. If there is no MS SQL Server in your network, select MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Express to install it. (MS SQL Server 2012 LocalDB doesn’t support remote connections, so we cannot use it.) O&K Print Watch will automatically install MS SQL Server 2008 R2 Express and create a database for printing statistics. After that, PRINT_SERVER1 will be ready to collect printing statistics from its printers.

Step 2:

Install O&K Print Watch on PRINT_SERVER2. Here you can select installation of O&K Print Watch Service only, without Control Program. Just like at the previous step, MS SQL Server is already installed and set up, so select “Existing MS SQL Server.” If at Step 1 you used an existing MS SQL Server, specify the same connection parameters. When MS SQL Server is installed by the O&K Print Watch distribution package, the following connection parameters are used:

Server name: PRINT_SERVER1\PRNWATCH (O&K Print Watch installs a named instance of MS SQL Server)
User name: sa
Password: SQL Server administrator password specified during the installation.

Step 3:

Install O&K Print Watch on personal computers with local printers. Because any computer with a local printer is a print server, installation of O&K Print Watch is similar to that at Step 2.

You can simplify the setup of MS SQL Server by using a registry editor.

1After Step 1, launch the registry editor on PRINT_SERVER1. From the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\O&K Software\O&K Print Watch (for х64, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\O&K Software\O&K Print Watch), copy the value of ConnectionString.
2Before installing O&K Print Watch on PRINT_SERVER2, launch the registry editor on that computer. In the same registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\O&K Software\O&K Print Watch (for х64, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\O&K Software\O&K Print Watch), create a REG_SZ variable named ConnectionString. Set that variable’s value using the copied connection string from the previous substep.
3Launch the installation of O&K Print Watch and select Use current settings for the database type. Similarly, you can install O&K Print Watch on any other print server or PC with a local printer in your network.

Now each instance of O&K Print Watch will use the same database to store collected printing statistics. You can connect via Control Program or web interface to any print server with O&K Print Watch installed, and view printing statistics of each print server or PC with a local printer.

Using consolidated printing statistics and centralized management of print servers considerably simplifies printer administration in the local network, and makes it much easier to handle.