VendPrint Professional from VendPrint
The perfect choice for libraries, colleges and universities that need to manage, control and automatically recover their printing costs. VendPrint Professional provides customers with a solution that enables them to monitor and automatically (through attendantless pay stations) charge for their patrons/students printing. VendPrint Professional is a Windows based application that can be used to manage and control print queue(s) on a Windows 98, NT (workstation or server) or Windows 2000 (Pro or server) based computer system. VendPrint works in any environment including Windows, Novell, Unix and Linux.
VendPrint intercepts the print jobs that are submitted by clients connected together through a LAN/WAN connection. Each user’s print job is spooled (spooling is inherent to all Windows, Mac and Unix clients, thus no client software is required) to a designated queue. Thereafter the user, by accessing a VendPrint Release Station, can select his/her job to be printed and indicate to which printer the job will be printed. VendPrint Professional will calculate the cost of the job, allowing payment to be automatically collected by a number of means without intervention by an attendant. Payment means can include but are not limited to debit cards, cash, smart cards, account billing against a prepaid running balance, and account billing by statements. As with all VendPrint products, a detailed log file is written reflecting all jobs that have been printed.
With VendPrint Professional you can:
- Notify users how many pages will be printed from the sending workstation, this is especially useful for Internet printing
- Allow patrons to rename and/or password protect their print jobs for greater security and privacy
- Automatically purge unclaimed print jobs from the VendPrint queue
- Justify offering color printing for public use by assuring that it will not be abused and payment will be received for its’ use
- Reduce you print volume by 40% or more by eliminating accidental and abusive printing
- Provide quick and easy override capability for staff
- Limit print job size on a printer by printer basis
- Automatically provide free printing when and where appropriate
VendPrint Professional provides flexible options to charge customers, students or patrons for their print activity. We interface with most vending machine manufacturers and also offer account based billing options in many environments.
Printing using VendPrint is easy!
All VendPrint products were carefully designed with your users in mind. Easy to understand patron interface screens ensure that minimal staff intervention will be required as patrons proceed through the process of identifying and releasing their print jobs. Our "client pop-up" provides additional functionality at the sending workstation, including the ability to rename the print job for easier identification at the VendPrint Release Station. Password protection options will ensure the patron’s privacy.
Once the patron has selected all windows print options they click "OK" and the print job will be displayed at the VendPrint Release Station. The user may wish to send multiple print jobs before proceeding to the VendPrint Release Station where the Five Easy Steps will walk the user smoothly through the payment and print process.
VendPrint Software will allow you to modify the client popup in a number of ways to include:
- Requiring patron’s to enter a name for their print jobs .
- Allow the patron to enter a user name and password to protect their print jobs.
- Popup can be configured to just display information allowing the patron to view the size and cost of the print job.
When the user proceeds to the VendPrint Release Station they will view a four-section screen designed to guide the user through the process of identifying, paying for and releasing print jobs. Each section is highly configurable to match the requirements of your institution. Likewise, the verbiage of the Five Easy Steps can be modified to meet your needs.
Print jobs are identified a number of ways including the name of the print job (or URL address if from the Web), sending workstation name, time job was sent, even the user name if a user login is required. Users can rename their print jobs using the optional feature on the client popup. Additional information about the print job includes number of pages and number of desired copies. Available printer options and Amount Needed and Amount Tendered buttons are clearly displayed. The Amount Tendered button will remain at zero and the Start Printing button will remain inactive until payment has been tendered. VendPrint can be configured to not require Release Stations.
Payment options include cash, coin, magnetic stripe, barcode, or file based accounting. VendPrint works with a number of vending manufacturers and campus card providers. Jobs that have been printed will immediately purge from the print queue. Jobs that are left unclaimed will automatically purge from the queue after a period of time determined by library staff. Maximum page limits and copy counts may be enforced on a printer-by-printer basis.
Staff Override Workstation
The Staff Override Workstation consists of VendPrint software loaded onto administrators workstations strategically located throughout the facility. These override workstations monitor the same print queues as the release stations and allow staff to print, cancel, or release print jobs in the patron queue. The screen for the Staff Override Workstation varies from the VendPrint Release Station in a number of ways. First, the Five Easy Steps have been removed, as staff will understand how the system operates. Second, additional staff printers, not available to other users may be made available. In the fourth column, the Start Printing button is always active and a Cancel Document button has been added, both provide override functions.
At the top of the Staff Override Workstation screen the Exit (X) and Minimize (-) functions have been enabled. This is to allow staff to run the VendPrint Software in the background until needed, and close the application at the end of day. As with the VendPrint Release Station this screen may be modified to match the requirements of your institution.
VendPrint has recently added a number of job handling features including the ability to allow users to release multiple print jobs with a single transaction. If you choose to utilize the password protection the software can be configured so that after logging on to the Release Station, each user will only be able to view their own documents. Also note
that additional printers may be made available for staff to provide override functionality to redirect user print jobs.
VendPrint Reports
VendPrint Reports provide for a wide variety of reporting capabilities. VendPrint stores the data in a format that allows the information to be imported into a variety of popular database programs and manipulated into a variety of reports. Reports that may be generated include: Printing by printer, printing by individual, printing by sending workstation, printing by department, etc.
VendPrint Reports will allow you to reconcile monies collected by staff and/or in a vending unit, versus number of actual prints. In a typical environment a report is run periodically at each release station, and compared to revenues actually collected.
VendPrint, Inc. combines friendly user interfaces with uncommon flexibility to provide the best products on the market today.
Supported Operating Systems
- Windows: 2000 Workstation, 2000 Server, XP, 2003 Server and Terminal Servers.
- Novell: 4.1 and newer. NDPS and non NDPS printing.
- Unix: All
- Apple: All
- Citrix servers: On the supported Windows servers.
VendPrint Professional from VendPrint
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