redirect print jobs when one printer is faulty

It seems your product is so powerful!
I have three same model printers, I need to send some photos to those printers through workstations. Can your product automatically redirect photos to other two printers when one is failure? how can I do that? Thx.

Pat,

It can't talk directly to the printer, it just looks at the queue to see how many jobs are pending.

Does it mean it can check how many queue for particular printer? If the print queue increases, it will be regarded as some fault here. Then I can write vb script to avoid sending print jobs to that printer, right?

Sorry I gave you slightly misleading information there, it actually checks the status of the jobs on the queue, if there is a job with an error status then it skips that printer.

For instance if a printer ran out of paper the next job would show an error status when you looked at the printer in Windows and Print Distributor would skip that printer.

Yeah, that is really what I want.
Wound you mind showing me in details, how does Print Distributor skip the printer?

Pat,

To setup load balancing there are two stages.

The first is to make sure you have the printers configured in Windows, we will call these the physical printers.

The next stage is to open the Print Distributor manager and create a new virtual printer, select a name for the printer and the correct printer driver. When you get to the actions part of the wizard add a Load Balancing wizard. In there add three rePrint actions, one for each of the physical printers

Tony,

Thank you for your soon response.

I have installed the trial version for testing, but finding one printer offline, print jobs are still sent to that offline printer as I see that print queue for that faulty printer increases one bye one on the printer & fax properites.

It seems Load Balancing doesn't skip the faulty printer. what else do I need to configure?

Pat,

If you open the Printer from the Printers folder in Windows what is the status of the first job in the queue for the broken printer?

Tony,

When I open the Printer from the Printer folder in Windows, I can see 'offline' in status column and number increases in pages column. When I send print jobs to the virtual printer, Load Balancing sends the task to each printer in turns. If one is faulty, print jobs are still distributed to that printer. Now, I am seeking a method to avoid sending print jobs to that printer.

Pat,

I don't think we check whether the printer is offline or online, we assume it is online all the time. Is there any reason you need it to be offline?

Tony,

All printers are assumed in well operation all the time. But sometimes one of them is out of paper or jammed, that is reason why we need to skip the faulty printer, forward print jobs to other printers.

But the offline setting is meant for another purpose (printing when you are disconnected from the network.) Is there a reason you can't just set the printer online again?

If you were to pause the printer it would be skipped or if a job in the queue had an error status it would get skipped.

In an ideal world we would be able to talk directly to the printer, unfortunately although there is a mechanism for this within Windows it is poorly supported by the printer manufacturers. There are a few products about which use SNMP to do this but they are a lot more expensive and require a network connection, no usb support.

Tony,

Yes, sometimes we need to set the printer offline for maintenance.(that is fine for us, we can set up several Load Balancing patterns to distribute print jobs)

Let us don't concern offline problem. Suppose all USB printers are connected to one workstation with Print Distributor installed, and they are in operation. Amount of photos are sent to PD through various workstations at the same time. If one printer is suddenly with error, for instance, out of paper or paper jammed.
1> will PD automatically skip that faulty printer?
2> will printer jobs stored on print queue for that faulty printer be redirect to other printers?

Pat,

Print Distributor will only stop sending jobs to that printer if it is either paused or has a job at the front with a status of error.

Jobs already on the queue won't be redirected, once they have left Print Distributor that's it.

I'll look at getting a check for the printer being offline for the next major release, we should treat it as if the printer had been paused.

Tony,

Let me test what you said first.

Can you tell me when the new version releases? Eager to learn more functions from your product. If PD can fully check the printer status, it will fully satisfy our requirements.

Thank you for your detailed explanation.

Pat,

Sorry I can't give you a date at the moment.