Special Purpose Zone Missing

I noticed today that the "Special Purpose Zone" used by family history centers is now gone. Is this on purpose or is it unexpected? (Well it is unexpected by me, but what about the network admins?) It was my understanding that this Special Purpose Zone was used so the PCs could be verified to actually be in a FHC and so the printers in FHCs could be monitored for service and toner needs. Are both of these purposes no longer needed?

Having visited some of the FHC Support meetings, this is expected. I'm not sure why, or how they plan to monitor the printers. In my case, the Special Zone disappeared, and a static IP was assigned to the printer, but nothing was done with the FHC computers. So, I got a surprise call that they couldn't print. I had to change the IP address of the printer on each machine.

So, no, it's not an accident. But it is a head scratcher.

We in Europe were informed of the removal of the Special Purpose Zone, several months ago with the dates that this would happen in each country. For the UK that was November 29th. The notice we received asked us to make sure all computers/printers were set to DHCP. I only had to set the printer to DHCP beforehand and on the allotted date of the change the printer was assigned to a Public Network IP address! Subsequently the printer worked without any further intervention on my part! We haven't been informed of any other changes regarding printer monitoring.

Biggles wrote: Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:51 am We in Europe were informed of the removal of the Special Purpose Zone, several months ago with the dates that this would happen in each country.

Was this by email? I haven't seen anything in my inbox.

Biggles wrote: Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:51 amSubsequently the printer worked without any further intervention on my part! We haven't been informed of any other changes regarding printer monitoring.

How are the printers set up on the computers? As in what method do they use to connect? Mine have all been via a "TCP/IP port" with a fixed address. Consequently, when the change was made, all the computers could no longer print.

I had the same surprise call last night, "there is something wrong with the printer.." It would have been nice to know about this ahead of time as I don't recall receiving any notification about this and the church is usually pretty good about that.

lrmeyer wrote: Thu Dec 22, 2022 7:51 am I had the same surprise call last night, "there is something wrong with the printer.." It would have been nice to know about this ahead of time as I don't recall receiving any notification about this and the church is usually pretty good about that.

It would appear that the FamilySearch tech guys didn’t have the courtesy to notify you in the US, about this change.

Personally, until very recently, I’ve found that the FamilySearch tech support has been very haphazard on notifying us of any changes that affect the operation of the FHC computers!

As for printer monitoring, I was told there should be an app on the printer itself that "phones home" with the status. It should show up on the list of apps. So the printer no longer needs to be reachable from the outside, as long as it has a connection to the internet.

However, I can't find any "app" on my printer. Even the "Scan to FamilySearch" feature is gone.

Guess I need to call.

Does anyone know how we can verify the "phone home" feature is working? I have 3 FHCs I'm the tech guy for that are each an hour apart from the other two. I'd like to know things are working so I don't need to make emergency trips. So an emergency trip to all three is more than three hours of driving. (I'm not complaining, just wanting to avoid emergency trips.)

davereb wrote: Thu Dec 22, 2022 1:18 pm Does anyone know how we can verify the "phone home" feature is working?

Open up a web browser and go to the printer's IP address. On the left side, click "Applications". You should see "Printer Configuration Agent". If you click on that, you can find the status.

The printer should be checking in with Lexmark Cloud Services. Based on Biggles's comments, it might not be available in all countries. Especially if the printer is not a Lexmark brand.

Hi, how or who would I contact so I also could receive this type of announcement please? I am one of the stake tech specialists. Thanks!

marcogaertner wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 12:08 pm Hi, how or who would I contact so I also could receive this type of announcement please? I am one of the stake tech specialists. Thanks!

You can go to https://account.churchofjesuschrist.org, and select "Email Subscriptions". However, in this case it appears that no email was sent out - at least to the US.

Ah, thanks very much.

Should that have been "My Calling" or a different one? I have 9 choices... Thanks!

marcogaertner wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 1:57 pm Should that have been "My Calling" or a different one? I have 9 choices... Thanks!

I'd think "My Calling" would do it, but I'd also check "Official Communication Library" as some announcements are pushed that way.

Thanks Russell. You are great.

Thanks, but one of the big reasons I hang out here is to keep on top of what's going on. Church communication is inconsistent at best.

If the church ever got thier communication straightened out, I think about half to 2/3s of all forum traffic would disappear. Collectively we learn more than we can individually.

Yes, indeed, which makes your help super appreciated.

My background is HP, Motorola, 3M, which all have much tighter communications and deployment strategies. All I can say is "Please church, let me help you somehow", which I am able to now (I hope they read the forums sometimes), but I generally find myself forcing my lips shut so I don't appear ungrateful or lacking understanding.

An update would be nice... responding to their email would also be nice, I've been unable to get computer help from anybody with a church email address for the last 2 weeks (trying to get shipping labels to send back old clerk PCs).

I also got a call about the printer not working, which wasn't actually what flagged this issue for me (power cycling the printer solved that issue FYI), but what flagged the issue for me was that several of my PCs in the FamilySearch Center no longer can access any of the "FamilySearch Center Only" records. So I've got patrons getting the message "This film is only available from computers at the FamilySearch Center".

So when they got rid of the special zone, as there a change that was supposed to happen on the PCs to mark them has FSC PCs that maybe didn't get pushed out?

russellhltn wrote: Tue Jan 17, 2023 2:08 pm If the church ever got their communication straightened out, I think about half to 2/3s of all forum traffic would disappear. Collectively we learn more than we can individually.

Not even going to touch that one... *cough*new calendar rollout*cough*

mrbitsch wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 1:56 pm So when they got rid of the special zone, as there a change that was supposed to happen on the PCs to mark them has FSC PCs that maybe didn't get pushed out?

See if this helps: How do we use the FamilySearch center premium content browser extension?

There's additional tools that they'd like installed. I'm a bit leery about surprising the staff with them. Once of the tools is a "logout" button that clears all patron data from the system. That's fine - as long as patrons and staff aren't storing things there.

russellhltn wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 4:54 pm See if this helps: How do we use the FamilySearch center premium content browser extension?

Thanks! I'll give that a shot.

mrbitsch wrote: Mon Jan 30, 2023 1:56 pm I've been unable to get computer help from anybody with a church email address for the last 2 weeks (trying to get shipping labels to send back old clerk PCs).

Our FM Group does this. The administrative assistant is very good about sending me the labels when I need them.

lajackson wrote: Tue Jan 31, 2023 8:27 am Our FM Group does this. The administrative assistant is very good about sending me the labels when I need them.

This last round the instructions specifically said not to use the FM group, and neither the FM group nor the administrative assistant had been responding. We got it sorted out finally, but honestly I was wondering if the church email system had completely gone down. (or maybe they updated it like they did the calendar )