Choose your language

Choose your login

Contact us

Blog

The easy way to selectively delete PaperCut users

I love making life easier. And let’s face it – some repetitive administrator tasks are prime targets for streamlining. Take the case of a boatload of inactive PaperCut users. Removing them’s too much trouble, but letting them take up valuable licenses is a big no-no. Here’s where scripting can really help.

What if we created a script that deletes users who meet certain conditions? Maybe it’s because they haven’t logged in or printed in 30 days; or they have a username starting with “guest-”; or they’re a student from a previous academic year. Any criteria in the PaperCut database can be used to select and delete a user (or anything else a server-command can do) automatically.

Below is a working PowerShell script that connects to SQL Server to get a list of inactive users, and then calls a server-command to delete each selected user. For this example, we’re saying that an inactive user is one who’s never logged in or printed (i.e. last_user_activity is null).

# Delete inactive users from PaperCut

# This version of the PowerShell script is written for SQL Server
# It's possible to use PowerShell for the other databases as well, but you need their connector

# Prereq: Install-module -Name SqlServer
# This module has the Invoke-Sqlcmd cmdlet needed to get data from the PaperCut database

# change directory to where server-command is
Set-Location "C:\Program Files\PaperCut MF\server\bin\win"

# the SQL Server instance
$server = "mySqlServerName\SQLEXPRESS"

# This is the SQL command to select users from PaperCut
# You could easily customize this to select users inactive for more than 30 days,
# or users that are guests or have a zero balance or whatever you need for the customer
$sqlcmd = "select user_name, full_name, last_user_activity
from papercut.dbo.tbl_user
where last_user_activity IS NULL and deleted_date IS NULL;"

# select a SQL Server DataSet from tbl_user
$ds = invoke-sqlcmd -query $sqlcmd -serverinstance $server -as dataset

# Now that we have a SQL dataset we can iterate over each user
# In this example we are invoking server-command to delete-existing-user,
# but you could do other stuff too like create a list of the users and email it to the admin
# It might also be nice to report if the user has a remaining balance

# Iterate over the dataset
if ($ds.Tables.Rows.count -gt 0) {
foreach ($Row in $ds.Tables[0].Rows) {
./server-command delete-existing-user $($Row['user_name']) | Out-File -filepath audit.log
write-host "Deleted user: " $($Row['user_name']), $($Row['full_name'])
}
} else {
write-host "No inactive users found."
}

This PowerShell script could be a starting point for a lot of other PaperCut admin tasks. Let us know about the cool things you’ve done with OS scripts! Contact us on  solutions@papercut.com.

Newsletter

Subscribe for the latest in print management and product updates!

By filling out and submitting this form, you agree that you have read our Privacy Policy, and agree to PaperCut handling your data in accordance with its terms.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.