Printers | Smart Flows

Overview

Printers is the Control panel item where you make physical printers available to your Smart Flows project. Once a printer is added there, flow designers can select it in the Print flow step, and a flow can send a generated document straight to that printer.

A printer in Smart Flows is not the printer itself. It is a named set of print settings that points to a printer, for example number of copies, page range, duplexing, and paper source. This is why the same physical printer can be added more than once, with different settings each time.

Permissions

Printers are available to administrators only.

Glossary

Term	Definition
Source printer	The physical printer that a Smart Flows printer points to. Smart Flows discovers source printers, it does not create them. In the interface they are also called Available printers.
Printer	A named set of print settings in Smart Flows that points to a source printer. This is what a flow selects.
Default printer	The printer that Smart Flows uses when a flow does not specify one. A project has exactly one default printer.
Print job	One instruction sent to a printer: this document, this many copies, these pages.
Printer connector	A connector that gives Smart Flows access to printers it cannot reach on its own. PrintNode is the only printer connector.

Before You Start: Where Printers Come From

Smart Flows runs on a server, and the printers it offers you are the printers that this server can reach. Your own printers are not in that list.

Before you can add anything under Printers, the project needs a source of printers. There are two possible sources:

Source	What it gives you	When it applies
PrintNode connector	The printers registered in a PrintNode account, reached over the internet through the PrintNode cloud printing service.	Any installation. This is the only option for Smart Flows in the cloud. PrintNode Connector
Printers of the Smart Flows server	The printers installed on the machine that Smart Flows runs on, reached through the Java Print Service.	On-premises installations only, and only when the application property `project.exposelocalprinters` has been set to `true`. It is switched off by default.

In practice this means:

Smart Flows in the cloud: set up a PrintNode Connector. There is no alternative, because the cloud servers have no printers of their own.
Smart Flows on-premises: you can use a PrintNode Connector, or you can ask your System Administrator to switch on project.exposelocalprinters so that the printers of the server become available.

If the Available printers list is empty when you try to add a printer, the project simply has no source of printers yet.

Flavor

Once a printer is added, Smart Flows records how it reaches the source printer. This is called the flavor, and there are two: PrintNode and Java Print Service.

You never choose the flavor. Smart Flows determines it from where the source printer was found, and it cannot be changed afterwards.

Trying to change it results in the message Unable to change the flavor of this printer.

The flavor determines whether the Print options tab appears. A printer reached through the Java Print Service exposes the options of the device itself, such as duplexing and paper trays. A PrintNode printer does not.

Opening the Printers List

Open the Control panel and select Printers.

The list shows one row per printer, with the following columns:

Column	Description
Name	The name of the printer in Smart Flows. Select it to open the printer.
Description	The description you gave the printer.
Source printer	The physical printer it points to. Several rows can share the same source printer.
Default	An icon marking the default printer of the project.

The list also shows who created and last modified each printer, and when. Use Filters & Columns to choose which columns are visible.

Adding a Printer

Open Control panel > Printers.
Select Add.
In the Available printers list, select the physical printer you want to use.

This list is filled by your PrintNode connector, or by the printers of the server. If it is empty, see Before You Start: Where Printers Come From.

Check the Name. Smart Flows fills it in from the source printer, and you can change it.

Give it a name that tells a designer what it is for, for example Invoices - double sided rather than the model number of the device. The name has to be unique in the project.

If this is the first printer in the project, you can select Default.
Confirm.

The first printer that you add always becomes the default printer, because a project needs one. From the second printer onwards, Smart Flows shows the note This printer will be selected as the default printer. when the printer is going to become the default anyway.

The new printer is created with neutral settings, which leave every decision to the device. Open it to configure it, and then test it.

Adding the Same Printer Twice

Adding one physical printer several times is not a workaround, it is how the feature is meant to be used. Each entry is a preset.

For example, from a single office printer you might create:

Drafts, single sided, one copy, standard tray.
Customer letters, first page from the letterhead tray, remaining pages from the standard tray.
Contracts, double sided, two copies.

A flow then only has to select the right printer, and no one has to remember the correct settings.

Configuring a Printer

Open a printer from the list and select Edit. The editor has the following tabs.

Basic Settings

Field	Description
Name	The name of the printer, as a designer sees it in a flow. Required, unique, up to 255 characters.
Description	A free description. Use it to say what the printer is for, for example which floor it is on or which paper it is loaded with.
Source printer	The physical printer this printer points to. Shown for reference. It cannot be changed after the printer is created.
Default	Whether this is the default printer of the project. Shown for reference. To change it, use Set as default in the printer list.

The tab also shows who created and last modified the printer, and when.

General

These settings apply to every printer, whatever its flavor.

Field	Description	Default
Number of copies	How many copies to print. The lowest allowed value is 1.	Printer default value
Job name	The name the print job is given. This is what identifies the job in the print queue, so a recognizable name makes it much easier to find a job that is stuck.	Document name
Document to print on the back side	Defines the document you wish to print on the back of the page. You can define separate document to print on the back side of the document(recto side). An example of this would be a contract on the front side(verso) and any legal text related to the contract on the back(recto).	None
Page range	Which pages to print: Default, All pages, or Some pages.	Printer default

A flow can override these for a single job. See Printing a Document from a Flow.

Print Options

This tab is only shown for a printer whose flavor is Java Print Service.

It contains the capabilities of the physical device, so the fields you see depend on the printer. Smart Flows asks the device what it supports and shows only those options. If a printer has one paper tray, the paper source fields do not appear at all.

Field	Description
Chromacity	Print in color or in black and white.
Collate	Whether the pages of multiple copies are collated.
Duplexing	Whether to print on one side or on both sides of the paper.
Orientation	The orientation of the printed page.
Paper source	The tray the paper is taken from.
First page paper source	The tray the first page is taken from, for example a tray loaded with letterhead paper.
Paper size	The paper size to print on.

Every field offers a Default value, which leaves the decision to the device. Leave a field on Default unless you have a reason to force a value.

A flow cannot override these settings. They belong to the printer, which is one of the main reasons to add the same physical printer more than once.

Dependencies

This tab shows which items depend on this printer, and which items it depends on. Check it before you delete a printer, so that you know which flows would be affected.

Testing a Printer

You can send a test page to a printer without building a flow first. Do this whenever you add a printer or change its settings, because options such as paper source and duplexing depend on what the device actually supports.

Open Control panel > Printers.
Select exactly one printer in the list. The action is not available when several printers are selected.
Select Print test page.

Smart Flows generates a test document and sends it to the printer using the settings you configured. While the job is being sent, the window shows Connecting to printer...

Result	What it means
Success - Successfully printed	The printer accepted the job.
Failed to test the printer	The job was refused. The message includes the reason reported by the printer or by the connector.

A test sends a real document to a real printer, so paper will come out. Success also only means the job was accepted, not that it printed correctly, so it is worth walking over to the device and checking the page.

Setting the Default Printer

The default printer is used whenever a flow prints without naming a printer. A project has exactly one.

Open Control panel > Printers.
Select a printer in the list.
Select Set as default.
Confirm. Smart Flows states that the selected printer will become the default printer.

The printer that was the default before loses that status automatically.

Deleting a Printer

Open Control panel > Printers.
Select one or more printers in the list.
Select Delete.
Confirm.

Smart Flows warns you when the printers have dependencies, because deleting a printer also deletes the items that depend on it. Check the Dependencies tab first.

The default printer cannot be deleted while other printers exist. You can only delete it when it is the last one left. To remove a printer that is currently the default, first make another printer the default.

Printers in Import and Export

Printers are included in import and export archives, so they travel with a project.

When you import an archive containing a printer that already exists, and you choose not to overwrite existing items, the printer is imported as an additional printer and a sequence number is added to its name.

Troubleshooting

Situation	Cause and solution
The Available printers list is empty.	The project has no source of printers. Set up a PrintNode connector, or, on-premises, have `project.exposelocalprinters` switched on. See Before You Start: Where Printers Come From.
Failed to load the printer definitions. Please check your printer connector or the connected printer(s).	Smart Flows could not reach the printers. The problem is with the connector or with the device, not with Smart Flows. Test the connector, and check that the PrintNode client is running on the computer that hosts the printers.
A printer is missing from the Available printers list.	The device is not known to the source. For PrintNode, check that it is registered in the PrintNode account and that the computer it is attached to is online.
An option such as duplexing is missing from Print options.	The device did not report it as supported, or the printer's flavor is PrintNode, which has no Print options tab.
A flow fails to print.	Test the printer first with Print test page. That tells you whether the problem is the printer or the flow.