Chapter 1. Introducing Infoprint Manager For Windows; Chapter 1, "Introducing Infoprint Manager For Windows; Optimizing Your Print Resources - Ricoh InfoPrint Pro C900AFP Planning Manual

Chapter 1. Introducing InfoPrint Manager for Windows

InfoPrint Manager for the Windows Operating System, hereafter called InfoPrint
Manager for Windows, is a flexible and scalable print management solution,
providing you with many choices of how to expand and manage your print
environment. Your print environment might be simple with a few high-speed
devices located together, or you might support many printers dispersed across
your enterprise. In either case, InfoPrint Manager helps you make the most of your
printing resources.

Optimizing your print resources

Your print resources are the applications that generate print jobs, your printer
devices, and the InfoPrint Manager objects that control the jobs as they process and
print. Your default InfoPrint Manager configuration includes one InfoPrint
Manager server, a queue, a logical destination, and an actual destination (physical
printer). Before adding more InfoPrint Manager objects, consider how InfoPrint
Manager can help you:
v Manage your printer devices and distribute your printing work load:
v Balance the use of Windows systems:
v Control print jobs:
v See significant events when they happen:
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Many print environments have a significant investment in printer devices and a
significant printing work load. InfoPrint Manager gives you the ability to
manage all of your printer hardware centrally. You can establish a configuration
that lets you route jobs with common requirements to a particular printer or set
of printers that support those types of jobs. This lets you mitigate situations
where some printers are idle while others have a backlog of jobs waiting to
print. By optimizing the use of each printer, you can distribute your print
demands among all available printers.
By balancing the printing work load, you can also optimize the use of your
Windows systems that support printing. These systems can use a significant
amount of their resources to accept, schedule, and process jobs, and to manage
the printers they control. System usage includes processing time, memory, and
fixed disk capacity. If you use several InfoPrint Manager servers running on
several Windows or AIX systems, you distribute the printing demands of your
organization and produce output more efficiently.
InfoPrint Manager provides you with flexibility in specifying defaults for your
print jobs. You might want to use different job defaults for specific output
devices or for specific types of jobs. When you configure your system, you
should consider when and how you plan to use defaults and how to use them
most effectively. Effective use of defaults can influence other configuration
decisions you make.
InfoPrint Manager supports event notification to inform job submitters,
operators, and administrators of conditions that require their attention. For
example, InfoPrint Manager can notify operators when queues have a backlog of
jobs or when the printers they operate are out of paper. Your job submitters can
receive notification if InfoPrint Manager cannot schedule their jobs at the
requested destination. Notifications include event messages to help your
personnel diagnose and isolate the cause of the problem. When you configure
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