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Logical Printers

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Overview

A Logical Printer is a printer that is defined in IFS Cloud, opposed to a physical / local printer that is specific to a computer running an IFS Cloud Web client. Since the logical printer is defined in IFS Cloud it is a printer which is available to all IFS Cloud users. It is possible to configure rules that involves a logical printer - for a certain report or user a specific logical printer should be the default printer and so on. Scheduled printouts can only be printed to logical printers. It's the printers that are available from a server side point of view in IFS Cloud.

An IFS Cloud client like IFS Cloud Web can also print to a physical / local printer, but in that case the actual printout is done from the client and since all users typically have different printers (locally connected or network printers) setup, it's not possible to have rules and logic in IFS Cloud Web that uses physical / local printers.

There is obviously a connection between a logical printer and a physical printer device. This connection is made through a mapping in the configuration of one or several Print Agents. So when printing to a logical printer in IFS Application a printout is still produced by a physical printer hooked up to the machine running the Print Agent (either a locally connected or network connected printer). There are also a couple standard logical printers available in IFS Cloud that are not used to print on paper, but rather used to direct electronic information to other locations and/or trigger certain actions (i.e. SEND_PDF_TO_CONNECT, SEND_XML_TO_CONNECT, SEND_FULL_XML_TO_CONNECT, and NO_PRINTOUT). These special logical printers are never mapped to a physical device.

Managing Logical Printers

There are three management aspects of logical printers. The first one is to add/name them. This is done using the Logical Printers page. The Logical Printers added/named here will be available to users throughout IFS Cloud.

  • PRINTER ID
    The unique name give to the Logical Printer.
  • DESCRIPTION
    The descriptive name give to the Logical Printer. This is the name that is shown in the Print Dialog under the Printers section.

The second management aspect of Logical Printers is to map them to physical printers. This mapping is done in the Print Agent configuration . A standard IFS Cloud installation comes with a couple of special/predefined logical printers (PDF_PRINTER, NO_PRINTOUT, SEND_XML_TO_CONNECT, SEND_FULL_XML_TO_CONNECT, and SEND_PDF_TO_CONNECT). These special printers are never mapped to physical printers, since they are not actually used for printouts. These special printers are used to trigger creation and/or distribution of electronic documents rather than physical printouts.

The third management aspect of Logical Printers is that it's possible to set up rules/logic for what printer should be used/suggested in various situations based on different criteria. There are two ways in which this can be controlled. Either using the support provided by functionality in the APPSRV component of IFS Cloud, where it's possible to control default printers based on report id, user id, and language. For convenience it's possible to see/manage the Logical Printers naming here as well. Refer to IFS Cloud Documentation for Printer Management for more information.

You can also manage default printers by using the Report Rule Engine and create rules for which printer to use based on some desired criteria. This approach provides higher flexibility and you can do a lot more, but it requires the FNDRRE component which is a separate sales article and may not be available in all IFS Cloud installations. Read more about the Report Rules concept and how to configure Report Rules.

Setting up rules for default printers will make sure the desired printer is pre-selected in the print dialog when printing from within IFS Cloud. The default value also affects the printer used when generating print jobs as part of a business flow where no specific printer is specified in the flow itself.

Even if the described configuration has not been made and no Logical Printer has been defined in the print request, it is still possible to configure the Logical Printer to use as the default Logical Printer by using a system parameter.