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:

• Manage your printer devices and distribute your printing workload

  Many print environments have a significant investment in printer devices and a significant printing workload. 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.

• Balance the use of Linux operating systems

  By balancing the printing work load, you can also optimize the use of your Linux 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 AIX, Linux, or Windows systems, you distribute the printing demands of your organization and produce output more efficiently.

• Control print jobs

  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.

• See significant events when they happen

  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 InfoPrint Manager, you select the types of notification you want, thus ensuring that the appropriate people are alerted when significant events occur. The most common form of notification is that a job has completed successfully. For example, when a set of payroll checks has finished printing, someone in the Payroll department can be notified that they are ready.

Continue with the next section that describes the different InfoPrint Manager objects and basic configuration considerations for each.