The process here is much the same as troubleshooting printing issues in an on premises / network System Five environment.
Reference : https://support.windwardsoftware.com/a/solutions/articles/66000506216
Problem:
A customer calls in complaining that they can’t print from System Five. Start by asking the customer a few questions, because these questions may tell you right away where to begin looking.
- - Were you ever able to print to the printer from this computer?
- If No, then check to see if the printer was ever set up on this computer. You may need to install drivers, do a test print from Windows and setup the printer and invoice tree in System Five.
- If Yes, then you need to ask more questions.
- - When did the issue start?
- - Was something changed on this computer just before the issue started occurring such as a System Five upgrade, Windows Upgrade etc?
- - Was anything done to the printer or printer driver prior to this issue occurring?
If the questions do not reveal anything about the problem, then the next thing you need to ask yourself is “How can I break this issue down to smaller pieces”.
Before you start looking at System Five, there are other pieces to this puzzle that need to be looked at first.
Obviously, we have System Five and Microsoft Windows, but we can break the issue down further. Remember the customer says that they can’t print, so we also need to look at the printer and the printer driver on the workstation and the printer driver and System Five on the Windward Cloud environment..
When I approach the issue, I look at what pieces are the simplest to eliminate, and I generally try to start at the closest thing to the problem. What I mean by that is, if it is a printing issue, I start at either the printer, or the Windows Printer Driver.
Can I print a test page from the Windows Printer driver?
- Yes – Great. We have eliminated the printer and the Windows Printer driver as the source of the problem. We can now move on to the cloud environment..
Or
- No – Then we need to look at either the printer or the Windows Driver.
If this is a networked printer, ask if anyone else prints to that printer, and if they do, have them try to print to it from that other computer.
- - Can they print to it from any other computer?
- - Yes – This would eliminate an issue with the printer.
- - No – Then the printer is probably the issue. Have the customer check that the printer is on line, and that there aren’t any error messages or error lights showing on the printer. Also if no lights are showing, have the customer check the power cords or check that the printer is even turned on. Yes I have had calls where the customer called in and said that they could not print, and it turned out that someone had unplugged the printer.
Once we have eliminated the printer as the source of the issue, and that others can send print jobs to that printer, the next logical step would be to look at the Windows printer driver.
Check the settings. You may need to look at the settings on another computer to verify the settings in this PC.
Another common issue is that the printer driver is a Class driver (class driver is part of the driver name). Class drivers are essentially a generic driver that encompasses several printer models, and these drivers will not work in an Remote Desktop or Cloud environment. If you do see a class driver installed, you will need to download and install the correct printer specific driver for the customers printer.
Another thing you may note is that they have multiple copies of the printer in the Windows Print Manager. This could point to a hardware change, or some change in the network. Try printing from any copies of the printer driver to determine if any of those copies can print to the printer. If one of them can… Delete the copies that can’t print to the printer. This will help prevent this type of confusion in the future and will reduce the time needed for the printers to be forwarded to the cloud environment.
System Five Cloud Environment
Now, if we have eliminated the printer and the Windows driver, and you are able to print from the Windows Printer driver, we can move on to troubleshooting the System Five on Cloud environment.
The first thing I always check is that the printer exists in Print Management, and that we can do a test print from the driver. If this doesn’t work, you will need to make sure that the settings are correct in the driver.
If this works, then the printer was successfully forwarded to the cloud environment and we can move on to troubleshooting System Five.
Again, we need to break this down to smaller pieces. You may be able to break it down further than I am in this document, but this would be a starting point.
Be aware that Microsoft has a hard limit of 20 printers that can be forwarded to a Remote Desktop or Cloud environment.
And also be aware that the more printers you are forwarding to the cloud, the longer it takes for them to be available there. If you have 10 printers being forwarded, it could take between 20 seconds to 1 minute for all of them to be available to the cloud environment.
If you Start System Five before all the printers are available to the cloud environment, they won’t yet be available to System Five. You can verify that by opening the printer setup in System Five and check to see your printer is listed there..
Again, you need to ask the user some basic questions.
- Can they print at all from System Five?
- Is it an invoice printing issue or a label printing issue?
- Is it just a specific invoice type or label type?
These questions help direct you to a specific area within System Five.
- If it is an invoice printing issue, then you will likely need to look at the invoice tree.
- If it is a Label Printing issue, you may need to look at the System Five Printer settings or the label design.
Getting to the Solution
The Secret to successful troubleshooting is to keep eliminating pieces of the problem.
As you eliminate what is working from what is not working, you will further refine your search, eliminating more areas, and through process of elimination, you will get to the root of the problem.
= Created by Steve Wind May 17 2024 =
