The Print Management Console

Print Management displays a root node and three main subnodes. You expose the functionality of these different nodes in the Action pane (or by right-clicking a node). They can be summarized as follows:

• Print Management (root) node Adds or removes print servers to/from the console and launches the Printer Migration Wizard to export or import printer configurations.
• Custom Filters node Displays all custom filters, including four default filters:
  • All Printers Displays all printers on all print servers and allows administrators to open the printer queue for a selected printer, pause or resume printing, print a test page from a printer, configure printer properties, and deploy a printer connection using Group Policy.
  • All Drivers Displays all printer drivers for all printers and allows administrators to view driver properties and remove driver packages from the driver store.
  • Printers Not Ready Displays all print queues that are in a Not Ready state for any reason.
  • Printers With Jobs Displays all print queues that currently have jobs pending in them.
  When you create a new custom filter using the New Printer Filter Wizard, you can configure an e-mail notification for troubleshooting purposes to alert administrators when a printer matches the filter conditions. You can also configure a script action so that a specified script can be run when a printer matches the condition-for example, a script to restart the Print Spooler service on a print server.
  In addition, the Show Extended View option (available by right-clicking a custom filter) displays jobs pending on the print queue and-if supported by the print device-the Web page from which the printer can be managed.
• Print Servers node Displays all print servers being managed by Print Management, together with a manageable view of their drivers, forms, ports, and print queues. You can also use this node to export/import print queues and printer drivers, configure e-mail notifications or script actions during times when the spooler or server is down, and launch the Network Printer Installation Wizard to add new printers manually or automatically search for TCP/IP and WSD printers and add them to the list of printers being managed by Print Management.
• Deployed Printers node Displays printer connections that have been deployed using Group Policy. For more information, see the section titled "Deploying Printers Using Group Policy" later in this tutorial.

Note Print Management also lets you view print queues on both a UNIX or Linux server running Samba and on Apple Macintosh computers. You can view these queues and also monitor these print servers by receiving notifications when they go down, but you cannot use Print Management to add or remove printers to such servers. To view print queues on UNIX or Linux servers, you must authenticate to \\server_name\ipc$ before you can add the server to the list of print servers you want to monitor.