How do I monitor status of network printers?

[rowanbradley]

Our company network has quite a few printers, each offering different features (i.e. some are colour, some will print A3, some will do double sided and stapling). They are in different parts of the building. Currently if I connect to one of these shared printers, it often appears to be "Ready" or "Idle" in the print dialog when actually it is busy doing a huge print job for someone else, or is turned off, or is out of paper, or is broken. If I try to print to one of these devices, often the document shows as "printing" when it obviously isn't.

How do I set things up so my users can immediately see what the status of a printer really is (i.e. if it's busy, switched off, paper jammed, out of ink etc.)?

Thanks - Rowan

 

[kmkeshav]

Users will be able to see the status of the printers in the Printers and Faxes folder.

Right click in the Printers and Faxes folder and select VIEW > DETAILS. This will show up the Name of the printer, Documents waiting to be printed, Status of the printer, Comments, Location of the printer and the Model of the printer.

I believe this data would be reliable, as I manage quite a few printers located in different floors of the building. Some times even I see paper jam reported.

-Keshav