Network printers – ThinPrint Clients on Windows print servers

Preconditions

Determining printer IDs

Creating ThinPrint Ports and printer template

AutoConnect on the central print server

AutoConnect in the remote desktop session

Network printers – ThinPrint Hub

Preconditions

Determining printer IDs

Creating ThinPrint Ports and printers

V-Layer

AutoConnect

Printers connected locally to workstations or thin clients

Requirements

Determining printer IDs

Configuring Auto­Connect

Local printers for mobile or home users

Preconditions

Procedure

Case 1

Case 2

Case 3

V-Layer (case 3 only)

Configuring Auto­Connect

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For the installation of ThinPrint components, see the Quick Installation guide of Thin­Print Engine on print servers.

Network printers – ThinPrint Clients on Windows print servers

Preconditions

• The following components are installed on remote desktops:
  • the virtual printer driver TP Output Gateway
  • the ThinPrint mapping component AutoConnect
• The ThinPrint Engine is installed on the central print server.
• The following components are installed on a local Windows print server:
  • printers
  • ThinPrint Client (TCP/IP type)

 

print data route: remote desktop→ central print server→ local Windows print server→ printers

Determining printer IDs

• On the local print server (in this example: server002): Open the ThinPrint Client Manager to determine the IDs of the printers (in this example: ID 1 with HP Color LaserJet and ID 4 with OKI C9400)

Creating ThinPrint Ports and printer template

• On the central print server: Open the ThinPrint configuration.
• In the tree on the left side, select ThinPrint→ ThinPrint Engine→ Port Man­ager.
• Create at least one ThinPrint Port (with default settings). To do so, click New ThinPrint Port (top arrow).

AutoConnect on the central print server

To avoid having to create each printer manually you can use AutoConnect to retrieve the printer list from the ThinPrint Client and, thereby, have them created on the cen­tral print server automatically. (In larger environments you can use Management Services.)

• To do so, open the central print server’s printers folder or the Print Management and create a ThinPrint printer template (in this example: _#TPOG) which, with the help of AutoConnect, can be used to retrieve the printers from the local print server. Select TP Output Gateway as the printer driver, so you can use the ThinPrint Driver Free Printing print mode. Connect the printer object to the new ThinPrint Port.

• In the properties for the template (here: _#TPOG), enable port pooling on the ThinPrint Ports, if you want more than one printer to be able to print at the same time.

• To let AutoConnect know which template will be used for printer creation, a new row must be added to the Dynamic Printer Matrix: ThinPrint→ ThinPrint Engine→ AutoConnect→ Dynamic Printer Matrix. Enable at least the col­umns W (for Windows) and T (for TCP/IP) and in the Target Printer column, enter the template name without an underline (_) and without hash sign (#), i. e.: TPOG.

• Click OK to close the Dynamic Printer Matrix and then click Publish.
• On the central print server, run AutoConnect from the Command Prompt. In doing so, specify the address of the ThinPrint Client in question (in this example: lps-8) using the parameter -a:

tpautoconnect -a server002

The result is shown in the following screenshot. 

• Share the printer objects. Include both the client machine’s own printer names and the client machine’s name in the share name to ensure that the share names are unique on the central print server, in this example:

HP Color LaserJet_server002
OKI C9400_server002

• Share the printer objects. Include both the client machine’s own printer names and the client machine’s name in the share name to ensure that the share names are unique on the central print server, in this example:

HP Color LaserJet_server002
OKI C9400_server002

• Verify that the option Auto-create and delete printers→ At session logon/logoff is disabled on the central print server to avoid dele­tion of auto-created printers by AutoConnect with session logoff.

• From the remote desktop computer, manually connect ‒ once ‒ any printer share on the print server to establish Point-and-Print functionality between the computers. You can delete this again afterwards.

AutoConnect in the remote desktop session

The ThinPrint component AutoConnect connects the above applied printers into a session on a remote desktop (= printer mapping).
AutoConnect has two tables to set up the mapping rules:

• Dynamic Printer Matrix and
• Map Additional Printers

Dynamic Printer Matrix is the more easily operated of the two tables. Functioning under the assumption that there is a ThinPrint Client present on the client side, it requests information from the client about its printers, then uses that information for processing the mapping rules. Thus, AutoConnect attempts to create exactly one printer object for each printer for which it receives a report back from ThinPrint Cli­ent.

In contrast, when using the Map Additional Printers table, all those printers that are in the table and for which a rule applies, are created in the session, regardless of the presence of a ThinPrint Client.

Alternative 1 • Dynamic Printer Matrix

Advantage: Printer names do not have to be entered; thus only a few lines are required in the table.

Disadvantage: AutoConnect requires ThinPrint Clients and a logon script for communication.

Proceed as follows:

• Go to Dynamic Printer Matrix on the remote desktop ‒ alternatively on the Active Directory server (see ThinPrint group policies).
• Enter a new row with the following content in its Target Printer column:

\\server_address\share_name, in this example:
\\server001\%LCPRN%_server002
(%LCPRN% is a variable for printer names. To run properly, the print server’s share names and the client machine’s printer names must match.)

• Click OK to close Dynamic Printer Matrix.

• Click OK to close the Dynamic Printer Matrix and then click Publish.

• Create logon scripts for the users, with the following content (server002 as an exam­ple for the local print server):

c:
cd C:\Program Files\Common Files\ThinPrint\
tpautoconnect -d
tpautoconnect -a server002

(-a specifies ThinPrint Client’s address, -d deletes all printers created with AutoConnect as a precaution, -dl deletes only local printers, -dn deletes only connections to printer shares)

• Start a session on the remote desktop, and perform test prints on the automatically mapped printers.

Alternative 2 • Map Additional Printers

Advantage: ThinPrint Clients and logon script are not required.

Disadvantage: A rule must be entered for each printer.

• Go to Map Additional Printers table on the remote desktop ‒ alternatively on the Active Directory server (see ThinPrint group policies).
• Create a rule there for each printer to be connected. To do this, enter in the Target Printer column:

\\server_address\share_name, in this example:
\\server001\HP Color LaserJet_server002
\\server001\OKI C9400_server002

• Click OK to close the Dynamic Printer Matrix and then click Publish.

• Perform an update of the group policy for the remote desktops, if necessary.
• Start a session on the remote desktop, and perform test prints on the automatically mapped printers.

Network printers – ThinPrint Hub

Preconditions

• The following components are installed on remote desktops:
  • the virtual printer driver TP Output Gateway
  • the ThinPrint mapping component AutoConnect
• The ThinPrint Engine is installed on the central print server.
• Printers are created on the ThinPrint Hub.

print data route: remote desktop→ central print server→ ThinPrint Hub→ printers

Determining printer IDs

• In the Hub’s ThinPrint Client: Determine the printer IDs (in this example: ID 1 for HP Color LaserJet and ID 4 for OKI C9400).

Creating ThinPrint Ports and printers

• On the central print server: Open the ThinPrint configuration.
• In the tree on the left side, select ThinPrint→ ThinPrint Engine→ Port Man­ager.
• Create at least one ThinPrint Port (with default settings). To do so, click New ThinPrint Port (top arrow).

• On the central print server, open the Printers folder or Print Management and create ThinPrint printer objects that you can use to print to the ThinPrint Hub printers. Select the native printer driver and the ThinPrint Port (here: ThinPort6:) if it is a type 3 driver or the ThinPrint v4 port (here: \.\pipe\TPv4_ThinPort6:) if it is a type 4 driver.

Please observe the printer name syntax:
printer_name#client_address:printer_ID, in this example:
HP Color LaserJet#TPHub-6b2c14:1
OKI C9400#TPHub-6b2c14:4

• If you receive the following error message, you probably tried to connect a type 4 driver to a classic ThinPrint Port. Instead, select the associated v4 port (whose name starts with \\.\pipe\TPv4_).

• Share the printer objects. Include both the client machine’s printer names and the client machine’s own name in the share name to ensure that the share names are unique on the central print server, in this example:

HP Color LaserJet_TPHub-6b2c14
OKI C9400#TPHub-6b2c14:4

• Enable port pooling on the ThinPrint Ports, for both printers, if you want for more than one printer to be able to print at the same time.

V-Layer

• Use the V-Layer mode to connect the Output Gateway, rather than the native printer drivers to the remote desktop sessions. To do so, navigate to ThinPrint→ Thin­Print Engine→ V-Layer in the console tree. Then select Enable V-Layer (in the context menu) for all printers that use a native driver.

The result is shown in following screenshot. 

AutoConnect

For information on mapping printers from the central print server to the remote desktop ses­sions see the section AutoConnect in the remote desktop session of the first scenario (see above).

Printers connected locally to workstations or thin clients

Requirements

• The following components are installed on remote desktops:
  • The virtual printer driver TP Output Gateway
  • The ThinPrint mapping component AutoConnect
• ThinPrint Engine is installed on the central print server.
• The following components are installed on the workstation or the thin client:
  • Printers
  • ThinPrint Client (TCP/IP type)

print data route: remote desktop→ central print server→ workstation→ printer

Determining printer IDs

• On the workstation (in this example: ws-87): open the ThinPrint Client Manager to determine the IDs of the printers (in this example: ID 6 for HP Photosmart and ID 11 for HP Color LaserJet).

• Proceed as described in Creating ThinPrint Ports and printers (see above). On the central print server, add printers with the following names:

HP Photosmart C4780#WS32580:6
HP Color LaserJet#WS32580:11

• Assign these printers to the same port pool.

Configuring Auto­Connect

In this scenario, ThinPrint Engine sends the print output to printers installed locally, either on workstations or on thin clients, so the ThinPrint Client is installed on those. Consequently, the printer mapping is carried out here with Auto­Connect’s Dynamic Printer Matrix. Proceed as follows:

• Go to Dynamic Printer Matrix on the remote desktop ‒ alternatively on the Active Directory server (see ThinPrint group policies).
• Enter a row with the following content in the Target Printer column:

\\server_address\share_name, in this example:
\\server001\%LCPRN%_WS32580
(%LCPRN% is a variable for printer names. To run properly the print server’s share names and the client machine’s printer names must match.)

• Click OK to close the Dynamic Printer Matrix and then click Publish.

Note! For multiple workstations with locally attached printers, the variable %LHOST% can be used (Variables) instead of the workstations’ host name. So only a single row is needed for all clients. For example, enter in the Target Printer column:
\\cps47\%LCPRN%_%LHOST%

• Start a session on the remote desktop, and perform test prints on the automatically mapped printers.

Local printers for mobile or home users

Preconditions

• The following components are installed on remote desktops:
  • the virtual printer driver TP Output Gateway
  • the ThinPrint mapping component AutoConnect
  • Virtual Channel Gateway, to deliver the print output via RDP, ICA or PCoIP
  • ThinPrint Engine is installed on the central print server.
• The following components are installed on the workstation or the thin client:
  • printers
  • ThinPrint Client (RDP type) or ThinPrint Client (ICA type) or VMware Horizon View Client (with embedded ThinPrint Client PCoIP type)

print data route: remote desktop→ central print server→ remote desktop→ workstation→ printer

Procedure

• On the central print server, select Port Manager on the left side of the ThinPrint Engine configuration.

• You can create multiple ThinPrint Ports with the property Use Virtual Channel Gateway. Do so by selecting, in each case, New ThinPrint Port.

• Open the central print server’s Printers folder, or Print Management, and create ThinPrint printer objects with which it will be possible to send print jobs to mobile or home users.

When creating the printer objects on the central print server, there are three cases to be distinguished:

• Case 1: Windows clients are used, and print jobs are sent only to the local default printer.
• Case 2: Windows clients are used. If more than one printer is used these are to be selected directly in the session.
• Case 3: Non-Windows clients are used. To be able to print using V-Layer, the native printer driver has to be assigned.

Case 1

• Create a printer that uses TP Output Gateway as driver, and assign it to the ThinPrint Port of the type Use Virtual Channel Gateway, or to the respective port pool. Do not specify a printer ID. Share this printer: share name = printer name.

Case 2

• For each printer model, create a printer that uses TP Output Gateway as driver. Assign the printers to the port pool of the type Use Virtual Channel Gateway. Do not specify printer IDs. Share these printers: share name = printer name.

Case 3

• For each printer model, create a printer that uses its native driver. Assign the printers to the port pool of the type Use Virtual Channel Gateway. Do not specify printer IDs. Share these printers: share name = printer name.

• Connect printers with type 3 drivers to (classic) ThinPrint Ports (see Printer column) and printers with type 4 drivers to v4 driver ports (see Printer (v4) column).

V-Layer (case 3 only)

• If you created printers with native drivers (case 3), switch to V-Layerin the console tree. For each printer with a native driver, select Enable V-Layer.

The result is shown in following screenshot. 

Configuring Auto­Connect

In this scenario, ThinPrint Engine sends the print jobs to printers installed locally, either on the workstations or on thin clients, the ThinPrint Client is installed on those. Consequently, printer mapping is carried out there by AutoCon­nect's Dynamic Printer Matrix. Proceed as follows:

• Go to Dynamic Printer Matrix on the remote desktop ‒ alternatively on the Active Directory server (see ThinPrint group policies).
• Add one or more row(s) with the following content in the Target Printer col­umn:

\\server_address\share_name, in this example:
\\server001\mobile or home
\\server001\%LCPRN%

• Choose mapping rules so that for each client or user, only one row will match –  W (Windows), A (Mac), L (Linux/Unix), J (Java), T (thin client) and/or x (other) for the client machine’s OS as well as T (TCP/IP), R (RDP),  I (ICA) and/or P (PCoIP) for the ThinPrint Client type (in other words: printing via Virtual Channel Gateway).
• Click OK to close the Dynamic Printer Matrix and then click Publish.

• Perform an update of the group policy for the remote desktops, if necessary.
• Start a session on the remote desktop, and perform test prints on the automatically mapped printers.

Example for case 1 (mobile or home on server001 sends print jobs to the ThinPrint Client's default or current printer):

Example for case 2 and 3 (the local printers can be specifically selected in the session):