ThinPrint Tracking allows you to oversee your print volume: How many printers are overloaded? Which are hardly used? How many color or black&white printouts are printed on a daily basis? What are the resulting costs?
How it works
The print data of ThinPrint Ports is compiled by the server and transferred into an SQL database. From there, they can be graphically presented as a website using the Tracking Report Engine, which also allows for many other settings, such as querying print volumes for a certain branch during a certain time period. Authorized individuals can access the website from anywhere.
Print job tracking has the following components:
- ThinPrint Engine
sends data to the ThinPrint Tracking Service - ThinPrint Tracking Service
receives data and writes it to an SQL database - ThinPrint Tracking Report Engine
web component for clear analysis, summary, and graphic report of tracking results
Tracking is part of the following ThinPrint products:
- ThinPrint Engine
- Personal Printing
If not yet installed, an SQL server must be installed to enable use of the tracking feature within the ThinPrint Engine. This program is not included in the ThinPrint Engine software.
Tracking Service
With the Tracking Service, you can gather information about the print jobs sent with the ThinPrint Engine or with Personal Printing for your statistics (tracking).
To do so, you must set up a Microsoft SQL server. The ThinPrint Engine sends its tracking data to the server that has the tracking service installed. Print data which can be analyzed and displayed by Tracking Report Engine are:
- author of a print job (user/group)
- printer used
- settings used
- number of pages printed
- information on any errors
- costs
- compression rates (ThinPrint Engine only)
- print duration
- print data during a defined period
The SQL server can collect print data from different sources – from ThinPrint Engines on application or print servers or from Personal Printing servers.
Tracking Report Engine
ThinPrint Tracking includes a web application for viewing the tracking data. This program represents the SQL data graphically in its web interface – installed on a web server.
The tracking data can therefore be analyzed from the web browser on any workstation.
