PaperCut print quotas for staff and students on different domains

We're now implementing a print quota for both Students and Staff. The only real issue we have come across is how to seperate the staff from the students.

We initially had the system so that whenever anyone printed to the system, it would add their account to PaperCut, setting their credit to £2.00 and limiting them to that quota. For staff we simply went through the list and unticked "limit account".

Now we are giving students £1.00 per week and Staff £2.00 per week. It was a while ago so I can't remember specifically, but I remember having to set up a group in the staff domain with staff members from the department in, and a group in the student domain which had the group in the staff domain in it. I think this was because with PaperCut NG you couldn't import groups from different domains.

I didn't have access to staff domain to add new members so computer services have added me as some sort of read/write user. I am writing here how I can add members to the group so as to not forget:

1. Load up outlook
2. search for users and groups
3. Open ArtDesignStaff group
4. Modify Members
5. Then click the Add button

Sorted!

Now, every week I simply:

1. Click Bulk User Actions
2. Click:
1. All Users
2. Whose balance is less than £1.00
3. Set credit to
4. £1.00
5. Apply
3. Click Bulk User Actions
4. Click:
1. ArtStaffPrintList
2. Whose balance is less than £1.00
3. Set credit to
4. £2.00
5. Apply

It appears that PaperCut does update the groups. I checked it 18 hours later (the next day) and the new users were registered as being in the ArtStaffPrintList group.

Cheers

Copying printers from one computer to another - windows

I've currently got a PC running windows server 2000 acting as a print server. It's essentially just sharing it's printers, but all computers in the department use the shared printers on this computer. It runs very well even though the computer is about 8 years old. We've also got PaperCut NG install with unlimited user license which gives each user £2 credit each week and deletes any jobs costing more then what the user has in credit. It's saved a lot of money down to wasted prints!

Just one problem we have now is that if this old computer fails, no one can print in the department. My plan is to copy the printers from this computer to another and if the server fails, simply rename the new computer to the old computers name and everything should go quite smoothly. The only thing which won't work is the print quotas, but this wouldn't take too long to fix.

So, after reading up on how other people do it (and also trying your simple copy and paste and other menu's on the computer) I found this where they talk about Print Migration Utility. Works like a dream. Load it up on the original computer, backup the printers to a cab file. Load the program on the new computer and restore it from the cab file. Takes a while as it installs all the correct printer drivers, but what amazed me was that it was from windows server 2000 to windows xp. Perfect.