Pull print in Docuflair

With pull print, print jobs are not printed straight away but stored in a central queue. For that to work you have to install a particular Windows printer driver and share it. Users then print to that virtual printer and collect their jobs at the device they want.

Devices outside a Windows domain

For computers that cannot reach the shared queue — notebooks managed by Intune/Entra ID, home-office, macOS and Linux workstations, for instance — the Docuflair Print Agent is available: it passes print jobs straight to the Docuflair server over HTTPS.

Support for pull print in Docuflair requires a Windows printer driver to be installed and shared. When choosing the printer driver, pay attention to its compatibility with the output devices in use, since no conversion between the different print data streams of different manufacturers is carried out.

Installing a Windows printer driver

To set a new printer driver up, open the Windows settings, or Printers & scanners from the start menu. Add printer or scanner starts the setting-up process.

During the search, various printers on the network may be listed. The printer that I want isn’t listed starts the setting-up by hand (the preferred method).

As the port type, choose a new port of the type Local Port — regardless of whether a network printer is used for the output later. As the port name you should use nul.

When choosing the printer driver, use a driver from the device manufacturer that suits the printer in use and on which the advanced printing features can be switched off.

Where Xerox devices are in use, the following printer drivers can be used, for example:

• Xerox VersaLink Generic PPD
• Xerox AltaLink Generic PPD

In the next step you enter a printer name. You can choose the name freely — but use one that is clear and understandable for the users.

The dialog that follows shows the options for sharing the printer on the network. Where the printer is to be available across the network, enter a share name, which you can likewise choose freely. Every other field is optional and does not have to be filled in.

The closing question of whether the printer should be set as the default printer is immaterial to the installation and can be answered with No.

Configuring the pull print queue

To configure the print queue for Docuflair, one additional configuration step is needed. Select the printer in the list of printers; three options are shown. A click on Open queue opens a window with the print jobs pending for that printer.

Through the Printer menu and the Properties sub-item you reach the advanced printer settings.

Advanced takes you to the advanced settings of the Windows print queue.

Now tick the Keep printed documents checkbox and — where it is available — clear the Enable advanced printing features checkbox, as shown in the illustration below.

Where needed you can make further settings you want for this print queue (the paper trays available, for example). Click OK at the end to save the settings and close the window.

Switching the pull print printer on

To be able to use the pull print printer, the next step is to assign it to a print queue in Docuflair.

The print preview

To make the print preview of pull print jobs possible, install an additional component. It is not supplied with the Docuflair installation package by default and can be downloaded free of charge here.

Once the download has finished, install this extension by starting the file downloaded (gs10021w64.exe).

The Ghostscript for Windows (64 bit) APGL release is recommended. At the time of the screenshot the version number was 10.02.1 and the file name gs10021w64.exe; those values may differ from the ones currently available.