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Print Management: Approval Systems & Rules

Print Management Approval System

All major print management systems these days will provide options, often referred to as rules, where the system will perform automated actions based on certain print conditions. Common examples are when users in a particular group have their prints forced to mono or when any emails are printed, regardless of the user, they are automatically changed to duplex. More than anything, these conditions allow your organisation to save valuable funds on unnecessary printing, along with controlling the flow of printed data and documents within your business.

How do you set up a print approval process?

We often see cases however where one or more specific user requirements simply cannot be met. For example could be an organisation that wants to implement a rule to find & request a manager’s approval for certain print jobs before the user can release it on a device. This would not suit a simple yes or no rule to whether they can or cannot print. In this blog, we will explain how these more refined print management rules can save your business a lot of time and money when it comes to printing.

Print Management Rules

Using a print approval system we can address these requirements. When a user prints, the print stream is analysed to look for the conditions in the job. In the example below the condition is the job containing colour. The user’s manager is found via a lookup and both the user and manager are notified that the job is held.

Print Approval Process

Instead of the job being available for secure release straight away, the job is held in the Print Approval system and notification emails are sent to the user and their manager.

Manager Email Print Approval
Manager Email
Print Approval Process for Users
User Email

Approve / Reject

The manager is now free to login to their Approval Console via the desktop application or web interface and review the print job.

Document Viewer Print Approval
Document Viewer

Once a decision has been reached, the manager can route the print to the Secure Release Print system or reject it & delete it. A second email is then sent to the user informing them of the decision.

Routing to desired destination
Routing to desired destination

Common Print Rules & Approval Conditions

These are several widely used print management rules and approval conditions that can help your organisation reduce print costs and minimise ink and paper wastage. Below is a list of some of the most common print rules to which approvals can be added:

  • Page Size – limit the size of the document that users can print.
  • Job Title– You can define certain phrases or keywords in document titles that you don’t want users to print. This could apply to sensitive documents or administrative forms that don’t need to be printed off.
  • Page Count – Any document exceeding a certain number of pages will be automatically denied.
  • Duplex Printing – This will ensure that documents with multiple pages automatically revert to double-sided prints.
  • Time based restrictions – You can set manual dates and times for periods that you don’t want any users to print off documents. Some businesses choose to do so in the weekends or after hours.
  • Colour/ Black & White – Set rules based on the colour settings of your documents. Many businesses choose to do so with colour documents as this will cost significantly more than black and white prints.

Beyond the Metadata

But the Print Approval System can do much more than simply analyse the Metadata such as colour, duplex, page count etc. It can also analyse the content in the print job down to the words themselves. This allows you to setup approval rules for more advanced situations such as security concerns.

For example, you could trigger an approval notification based on the print job containing words like “password” or “confidential,” which helps to add another level of security to your print management system.

Print Management Services

Betasoft are Print Management experts who can help your business implement the right custom solutions. We can also help with Print Approval Addons so that you can expand the functionality of your existing Print Management System.

Our Print Approval system provides you with the option to customise approval triggers, conditions, destinations, alerts and more, all of which can be configured to suit the needs of your organisation.