Overview of software installation

In most cases it is sufficient to install a SafeCom server and a shared SafeCom Pull Printer on the server.

If you have multiple Windows print servers with shared printers you can turn these printers into SafeCom Pull Printers by making them use the SafeCom Pull Port, a special port monitor (3.5.4). You still need to install SafeCom hardware at the physical device to allow Pull Printing.

To administrate your SafeCom solution from other computers, simply install the SafeCom Administrator on those computers (5.2).

To release yourself of some of the administrative obligations you can assign administrator rights to appointed SafeCom users.

3 Planning your SafeCom solution

3.5.1 Server installation

You need to make a SafeCom Server installation on a server computer. Just insert the SafeCom CD and select Server installation (4.2.2). This will install all the required software, including the port monitor SafeCom Pull Port and the administrative application SafeCom Administrator. Refer to 1.10.1 for a description of the server requirements.

The Server installation allows you to specify two destination folders; one for the program files and another for the print jobs. You may wish to locate the print jobs on a hard disk equipped with RAID or similar technology.

The default installation folder is:

C:\Program Files\

SafeCom\SafeComG3

3.5.2 Multiserver installation

The SafeCom master server must run Microsoft SQL Server. You need to make a SafeCom Server installation on each server as outlined in 3.5.1. You use

SafeCom Administrator to group the servers together. The steps involved are described in 4.6.

3.5.3 Disk space considerations

The amount of recommended disk space on the SafeCom server depends on a number of parameters: The number of users, number of documents, the size of these documents and the time they are stored before they are collected by the users at the devices.

Through the SafeCom Administrator you can specify how often uncollected documents should be deleted and if users should be notified by e-mail in advance about this (5.7.1).

With today’s low storage prices we recommend something like 100 Mb per user for printing purpose. The SafeCom software itself requires less than 25 Mb.

disk space = average number of jobs on the server per user  average size of jobs

3 Planning your SafeCom solution

3.5.4 Shared SafeCom Pull Printer

The easiest way to make SafeCom Pull Printing available to users is to make an existing shared Windows printer on the SafeCom server or on a Windows print server use the SafeCom Pull Port, a special port monitor that sees to the transfer of documents to the SafeCom server.

Prerequisites:

 A Client installation is performed to install the SafeCom Pull Port on the Windows print server (4.2.3). The SafeCom Pull Port is installed on the SafeCom server as part of the Server installation (4.11).

 The SafeCom Pull Port should be set to Use network logon.

To avoid interfering with your users while you test your SafeCom solution, we recommend leaving shared printers as they are and just add a few new shared SafeCom Pull Printers, dedicated to testing SafeCom.

3.5.5 Local SafeCom Pull Printer

A local SafeCom Pull Printer (4.12) must be installed on the user’s computer in order to print encrypted (4.15). In all other cases it is sufficient to use a shared SafeCom Pull Printer. However, SafeCom PopUp (4.14) must be running on the user’s computer in these cases:

 If users need to print from the computer without being logged into Windows as themselves (4.13.4).

 If SafeCom Rule Based Printing (10) is used to ask for print confirmation.

 If SafeCom Client Billing is used and the user has to select a billing code at print submission time (11).

3.5.6 SafeCom printers can reference multiple servers

The SafeCom Pull Port (4.13.3) and SafeCom Push Port (9.3) can reference more than one SafeCom server.

This feature can be used to give additional resilience in a multiserver solution where SafeCom printers are installed on local clients or print servers.

If the first SafeCom server on the list is unavailable it will try the next one.

After 60 seconds it will attempt to revert to the first SafeCom server.

3 Planning your SafeCom solution

3.5.7 Printer driver and document fidelity considerations

When printing, the SafeCom solution takes the output from the installed Windows printer driver and stores it in the SafeCom database until the user collects the document at the device.

The question is: What happens if the document is subsequently collected at a different device model? The worst case is that the document prints incorrectly or not at all. The best case is that the document prints correctly.

However, you may also experience something in between. For example if you request printing on both sides (duplex) in the printer driver, but this is not supported by the device. In this case you will probably get single sided (simplex) print.

Document fidelity is determined by comparing the name of the printer driver embedded in the print job with the list of driver names returned by the SafeCom device. If there is no match it is considered low fidelity and the document is labeled with a question mark [?]. Refer to 5.7.3 on how to configure document fidelity.

In our experience document fidelity is pretty high if you use a printer driver that generates PCL and subsequently collect the document at a printer that supports PCL. The same goes for PostScript.

If you use many different devices from different manufacturers then you may have to install multiple shared SafeCom Pull Printers, each one with their specific Windows printer driver.

3.5.8 High Speed Print considerations

By enabling High Speed Print on the SafeCom-enabled device, documents that are collected at the device are printed almost as fast as those that are printed directly. This is because print data is sent directly to the device from the SafeCom server.

However, as the print data is received directly by the device, it is not always possible to hold off other users print jobs, while a user is logged in at the device. Users may risk that the output bin contains other users’ documents.

This is obviously not an issue if management has decided to ban all direct printing and only allow Pull Print.

Documents that are submitted via a SafeCom Push Port within the same SafeCom group can be held off, but documents that are submitted via a Standard TCP/IP Port cannot be held off.

3 Planning your SafeCom solution