The Melbourne Office Kanban

Steve, our Partner Alliance Manager joined us from Sydney on Tuesday. We spent most of the day flowcharting our sales and distribution channel partner strategy. That and the ever changing Melbourne weather gave me a headache that had me limping back to the hotel at the end of the day instead of socializing with the team as I had hoped to do. As I rested in my hotel room that night I wondered if the trip was going to be worth the expense and inconvenience. The following day was much better. Steve and I finished up the channel process flowchart, and I went out for beers with Tom, Hendrik, and Ian after work. Things were back on track.

On Thursday I watched the team go into action birthing release 11. 6, better known as the iPad Printing release. We don’t have pointy haired managers or project team meetings at PaperCut –instead we use the Kanban method of project management. For PaperCut that means pasting colored pieces of paper on a wall and moving them through stages starting with concept and ending with completion. Everyone on the team stood in a circle and each of us reported the progress of the previous day as the papers were moved from “Review” to ”Done”. The build was completed by Tom and Chris in the late evening hours in order to keep to our policy of not posting new releases on Friday.

Thursday night I went to an art museum opening with Hendrik and met several of his artist friends. I really enjoyed that. The experience kicked my creative juices into high gear. On Friday, I was able to finish the tasks that I had planned, and we all got together for the Friday Christmas dinner.

Saturday was my one play day in Melbourne. We spent the day in the Yarra Valley at Healesville Sanctuary, a beautiful wildlife park that houses some of Australia’s most interesting animals. We finished the outing with lunch at the Chandon Winery. I spent the evening dining with John and Christine the anchors of our Customer Service team. They keep the orders and licenses flowing to the resellers and customers in the 60 countries where PaperCut supplies print management solutions.

I had a great time overall and left with a few new insights that were not on my list of stated goals:

• Steve is still a rock star. Sure, he stopped touring years ago, but he doesn’t skip a beat synchronizing our development and operational teams with our business partners globally. That’s not an easy gig.
• I saw a different side of Hendrik. He introduced me to an eclectic group of artist, complete with a personal tour of the backroom of their gallery in downtown Melbourne. I wouldn’t have guessed that he had mates with such a different background. We had a great conversation about art and psychology over dinner that expanded my thinking, and my view of Hendrik.
• Face time is important. I experienced my team mates in a way that can’t be done via chat, email and phone calls. Thanks to everyone that invited me into their space and took time to share with me.
• Finally, my brief time with Chris helped me to focus on what I need to do to fulfill my role at PaperCut. My job is getting PaperCut into the hands of everyone in the Americas that can appreciate its benefits. The message that I took away from the meeting with Chris is summarized best in a quote that was shared with me by the traveler that sat next to me on the flight from Sydney to San Francisco:

Anyone wishing to conduct performance, functionality or “what if” testing can download the latest version from the PaperCut download page. This is the same version of PaperCut that is used by over 30,000 sites worldwide when they upgrade to the current version. At the end of the 40 day trial period you will be prompted for a license key when you open the PaperCut Admin Console. The printing managed by PaperCut will continue to work just as it did during the trial period, however many of the PaperCut administrative and print reporting capabilities will be disabled until a valid license key is entered.

The trial version is primarily used by prospective customers to evaluate PaperCut, but some sites go into production during the trial. I know this because one of the questions that I am asked most frequently is if the configuration and print log data from the trial will be retained in the permanent version. I love hearing that sigh of relief when I tell someone that it only takes about 10 seconds to register the license and they will be off and running with everything intact! Some folks wait until after the trial license has expired before they contact us. No problem, PaperCut keeps tracking after the 40 day license has expired and all of the information will be current when the license key is entered.

Sites that have purchased PaperCut do not need to buy an additional license for testing. A test server can be set up with either the trial license or the purchased license. Uses include testing with different operating systems, new versions of PaperCut and new network configurations. In addition, the purchased license can be installed on multiple servers during a server migration. This eliminates the need to uninstall or decommission the previous PaperCut installation before activating the new server.

If you need additional time to test or evaluate PaperCut, or if you have a situation that requires additional flexibility in order to be fully tested in your environment, please contact support and we will issue you an extension license that will allow you to complete your testing.

Image “Measuring Up” by lowjumpingfrog / CC BY

Power Features!

It is difficult to predict which of the many features will become the most popular, but I would like to share with you my personal list of secret power features. These are feature that are off the beaten track, but are received with great enthusiasm when I explain them to customers. Many of the features are not new, but provide critical functionality for a site once they are discovered and implemented.

1. PaperCut can stay synchronized with the Office and Department fields in Active Directory or LDAP allowing you to create reports to compare printing within or between offices and departments such as the Department printing – job type summary report.
2. Administrators can receive automatic email alerts on printer error conditions that contain information including the error type (e.g paper jam, toner low), time that the error was first reported, location and number of jobs in the queue. Here is a link to the manual section that covers System Notifications.
3. Print Scripting was introduced earlier this year and has had many “Recipes” and “Snippets” added over the last few months. Scripts can be used to provide precise control of print job handling including configuring PaperCut to perform least-cost-routing, print job redirection, and environmental warnings based on Group, job size, time of day and many other criteria. Maybe you wish to remind people to print duplex/double-sided or even stop printing of emails. This level of print management (print policy control) is all possible! From the Admin Console select the Printer tab then select a test printer or the Template Printer. Select the Scripting tab then the “Import Recipe” or “Import Snippet…” button to get a list of pre-built script and segments. There is also a summery of pre-build recipes at the bottom of this page.
4. Web Print allows unauthenticated laptop computers that do not have drivers for your network printers to upload PDF and Microsoft Office documents to the PaperCut server where they can be printed and tracked to the user’s PaperCut account. This feature has extended the campus print infrastructure to include student laptops in dorms and other wireless access areas. You can even allow students to select the destination printer from a map, floor plan or site plan.
5. There is a version of PaperCut that is available from resellers and Authorized Solution Centers (approved resellers) that can track off the glass copy, fax and scan images using embedded software that connects the multi-function device to the PaperCut Admin Console for consolidated control and reporting with the network printers. In addition, PaperCut MF can use multi-function devices as Release Stations for network printing in a secure printing or find-me printing configuration. Other hardware devices such as Pay Stations can also be integrated with PaperCut MF.

Feel free to comment with any of your own favorite power features.

Image courtesy of schani on flickr

If you use a piece of hardware long enough, eventually it will break. If you use a piece of software long enough, eventually it will work.

This somewhat dark reputation of software has grown over decades of implementation horror stories that have a much longer lifespan than the multitude of boring stories of successful deployments. When things go bad with a software implementation the damages are often characterized as a waste of time, money and productivity; the very areas that the software was supposed to improve! This painful irony is enough to give most system administrators a measure of respect for the bleeding edge of software.

When it comes to adopting new technology healthy skepticism is a good thing, but if overdone it can block the path of innovation and the payoff valuable technology. This is because in spite of the afore mentioned axiom, when it comes to reputable software ‘fresh is best’. If this were not true software versions would be valued for their age, like fine wine. Instead, for most commercial software, six months without an update is usually considered the early warning signs of a dying product.

The fear of early adoption is not limited to the implementation of entire systems, it also extends to installing new versions and using new features of existing systems. The gravity of ‘not broken / don’t fix it’ in a production environment sometimes results in shops running software that is several revisions behind and often out of production.

So how do you decide where to place yourself on the luddite / suicide scale of software deployment? The decision is different for each implementation, but we have some tools that can help you make your mind up. First, read the PaperCut Release History to find out about changes that have been made since the version that you are currently running. The list of new features, fixes and improvements are updated with each minor release. Second, when you find a feature that looks interesting (for example, maybe you like the idea of improving your printer utilization using some of the example recipes in PaperCut’s new advanced scripting), use the search tool on our website to search all of our documentation. You will find links to the Tour, Knowledge Base, and User Guide sections that were updated when the newly added features were introduced. Third, try it. The license allows you to install a copy of PaperCut on a test server (even a desktop system will do) so you can test features before introducing them into your production environment.

One last thing. If you are running an older version of PaperCut, please remember to check that your license will work with the new version. From the Admin Console open the About tab. You will find the Licensed Version, and if you purchased Upgrade Assurance a ‘Software updates available until‘ date. If not, upgrade costs are modest and listed here. You will also find a link to check for and order updates as well as a link to email technical support in case you have any questions about the update.

CC image courtesy of cogdogblog on flickr

I live in Portland, Oregon USA where green has been a hot topic for decades. Portland is a major hub for the timber industry. The people in this area have experienced the downside of ignoring the environment for economic gains. Throughout much of the 20th century clear cutting was the standard logging technique here. In the 80’s as the environmental impact became obvious, public lands were protected from clear cutting. In the following years the timber industry nearly collapsed as enforced protection of the forests worked its way through the economy. The loss was 2 fold – first the environment, then the local economy.

Things are better in Oregon now, the local economy is much less dependent on the timber industry, logging practices are more environmentally friendly, and green is definitely in. When I tell people about my new job at PaperCut and show them our Environmental Impact Gadget I almost always get a ‘cool’ or ‘wow’.

If you would like to try the gadget and you are running Windows Vista, send me an email and I will send you a link to the download. The gadget is a part of our print management software that is used throughout the world to reduce waste by applying print quotas and providing network managers with information that can be used to track printing resources.