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Question about Active Directory and Shared Printers in Directory

E

Epsil0n00

Golden Member
I work at a school and want to setup server print queues for all of the networked printers on campus. However, we have some printers which are for faculty use and others that are for general/student use.

Is there a way to group these printers in the directory so that people can pick from a list of Student/General printers or a seperate list of Faculty/Staff printers?

I know that I could implement security settings on the printer so that students couldn't print to some printers... but I don't really care to lock them out. I just want to make two categories so that users don't have to scroll through a list of all the printers to find the one they are looking for. In fact, if this is possible, maybe I could seperate the printers by building and that would make it really easy to find the exact printer you are looking for. Is there any way to accomplish this in active directory, or am I dreaming?

Thanks in advance!
Epsil0n
 
Your best bet would be to use the location field for where the printer is located. Then students can search the directory by room no, building, etc to find printers in their area. I would also use the comments field to put in if they are for student or staff use. Then publish that information in the directory so they can search on it when adding a printer.

We do something similiar where I work. All printer have the location defined so if we have a visitor in the Sales area he can search for the printer by putting in Sales in the location field.

I would seriously look into using security on the printers if you don't want students printing to facualty printers.
 
Originally posted by: mikecel79
Your best bet would be to use the location field for where the printer is located. Then students can search the directory by room no, building, etc to find printers in their area.

I would seriously look into using security on the printers if you don't want students printing to facualty printers.
Click to expand...

A. The location field would be an okay attempt at a solution--though I don't trust my users, especially the students, to bother searching by their building or searching at all to find a printer. Most everyone just hits the "Find Now" button with no search criteria and then browses through the list to find their desired printer.

B. The issue is not that I don't want students printing to Fac/Staff printers... in fact, I don't really care if they do or not. Most of the time, they wouldn't even bother because those printers are not in a convenient physical location for students to get to (ie. a different building on campus). I don't want to bother setting up security for all the printers... just want some way to group the printers so the process of installing the print queue is easier.

Thanks for the input! I am considering the location field as a starting point--it certainly can't hurt to have that information available.

Epsil0n
 
Here's a thought for you to work off of.

Rather than having them use windows networking to find the printers put information about them in a web app and have them find the printers there. You could just have links off the web app to the UNC path for the printer so as soon as they clicked on it they would be prompted to install them. The advantage to this is you could than sort it however you wanted; the disadvantage is the time you'd have to take in order to set it up.

-Erik
 
I just realized that the location field is filled in for all of our printers... but the location names need cleaned up a bit and standardized so things are clearly seperated... That will be a good start at least.
 
Originally posted by: spyordie007
Here's a thought for you to work off of.

Rather than having them use windows networking to find the printers put information about them in a web app and have them find the printers there. You could just have links off the web app to the UNC path for the printer so as soon as they clicked on it they would be prompted to install them. The advantage to this is you could than sort it however you wanted; the disadvantage is the time you'd have to take in order to set it up.

-Erik
Click to expand...

AH, Erik! That is an awesome suggestions! I just tried that with an email to myself and it worked great! I could publish a printer list on an internal webpage, or even just send a user an email and say "Click on this link!" hmmm... this doesn't replace the printer directory method, but I can see it as being a useful installation method to compliment the standard installation routine.

THANK!!!
Epsil0n
 
I just had another thought. Not sure how your OUs are setup but let's say the PCs in Building A are all in their own OU. You can setup a GPO with a logon script to execute whenever someone logs into the machine and adds the closet printer to it automatically. Just a thought, may take some work to get it done though.

Spyordie's idea is pretty good too.
 
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