Printing

Is there any way to add Google Cloud Print to the Clerk computer? We (the Bishopric & clerks) would like to be able to print to the clerk's printer from our smartphone/tablet or laptop.

On a similar note... is it possible to print to another ward's printer that is in the same clerks office, and I assume (probably erroneously) on the same network?

ctbarrett wrote:Is there any way to add Google Cloud Print to the Clerk computer? We (the Bishopric & clerks) would like to be able to print to the clerk's printer from our smartphone/tablet or laptop.

I would guess so, but I don't know if the firewalls (software or hardware) might block it. I'll give it a try tomorrow.

ctbarrett wrote:On a similar note... is it possible to print to another ward's printer that is in the same clerks office, and I assume (probably erroneously) on the same network?

That's certainly possible. You just have to enable printer sharing on that ward's computer. Or if the printer has an Ethernet port, you can simply make it a network printer.

Remember that if you want to set up google cloud print you would have to create a ward-specific gmail account for that machine (unless you want your own personal account to be associated)

As for your 2nd question, we have one building with three clerks in a single office. All three are on the same network.

This just out: http://chrome.blogspot.com/2013/07/simp ... laces.html .

I'm going to see what it is like to see if this is a solution to allow a few select people to print to the same printer.

That raises an interesting set of questions. It all seems to be tied to a Google/Gmail account. Whose account? What happens when they get released? And what about the folks who use iOS devices? And what are the security implications?

Yeah, it is a good question... I'm also curious what the management of it looks like (I was going to install it at home and see how it goes). Does that user have to save their username/password in Chrome? Or is it a printer service that runs with it's own credentials?

I'll report back and see what I find out.

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BTW: I'm not sure of any other good/easy ways to share a USB printer with many people. (Right now many people have laptops and they only need to print, not use the computer... so the bottleneck ends up being printing... I'm trying to think of an easy way to make printing easy for people).

The last few times FM supplied new printers to my stake, it was a Xerox Phasor 3250N. They do have a network port, but unless assigned a static IP they might not be usable. Especially if the user ends up in a different IP pool from the printer. I don't mind sharing the printer, but I'm leery about doing it though the clerk computer. You never know when that software turns out to have a flaw that makes it vulnerable to attack.

Hmmm, I guess I'm also nervous about 5 different people typing in their email credentials to the same computer (to download a PDF they emailed themselves)...(our clerk computer had some malware on it a few years ago... it seemed like it was introduced via USB stick, or at least it propagated that way since my USB stick I only used for MLS backups got infected).

Unfortunately the printer we have does not have a network adapter.

Hmmm... I can't think of any other ways to make this easy for a USB connected printer without a network adapter...

I'd guess that Sophos is blocking the Cloud Print App Port....

Buy a RaspberryPI device and setup Bonjour, share the printer from there... that way you don't need to worry about the firewall killing your ability to make life easier for the Stake Presidency or Bishopric.

Printer works fine. How come I can't print some forms (Eg. Patriarchal Blessing recommend and others)? I just see a swirly in the middle of my screen and nothing happens? Nothing is being sent to printer. No screen comes up with document in it to print- is that the problem??? Please help.