COVID-19 is far from over.
Whenever you’re returning to business-as-usual, the hard fact is we’ll have a new business-as-usual.
With that in mind, we’ve knocked together this small survival kit for you to consider when returning to the office or the campus.
1) Contactless printing
In the middle of a pandemic, harm minimization is key. Printers and print rooms are overflowing with touchpoints for users and administrators. It’s crucial to reduce the number of surfaces you need to come into contact with. Your school or office MFD or printer is one of those touchpoints.
We have a way of you printing without coming into direct contact with MFD. It’s a customization of our secure print release feature. When configuring self card association , check the “Automatically release jobs upon login” tickbox. After pressing print on your computer or device, you’ll just swipe your card at the reader and then pick up your job.
Yes, not completely “contactless” in the most literal sense as you’ll have to pick up the paper. Sysadmins (as well as others) will also come into contact with trays and the MFD screen occasionally. But we’ve got some tips for you there too…
2) Printer room hygiene
We’ve been in our distributed working model for nearly 3 months now. But being in the print management game, and leading up to our big 20.0 release, some of our team have needed access to the office.
Specifically, our “printer nurseries” (they’re big rooms full of printers, not nurseries for baby printers). For both access to the office and the printer nurseries, our office advocates have implemented some hygienic protocols to follow, which we suggest you adapt to your working and printing environments.
i) Regulated access - When you can, assign a small number of team members to be in charge of the space and all hygienic practices. They can oversee exactly who, when, and how often people access high traffic areas.
ii) Sanitization stations - A print room is a good example of a shared space that requires a sanitization station: hand sanitizer, paper towel, sanitary wipes, gloves. You, of course, can also wear protective masks if that makes you feel more comfortable, so long as procuring them doesn’t come at the expense of healthcare services.
One of our printer nursery “Sanitization stations”
iii) Wash your hands before and after your visit
iv) Minimal touching of surfaces and immediately wipe down anything you do touch
v) Employ social distancing (1.5 meters separation) whenever you’re sharing the same space. This might be difficult depending on the physical conditions of your office or school. In that case, regulated access will be the utmost priority.
3) Remembering your PaperCut login
Here’s one mainly for the students of the world. With schools reopening there’s bound to be many an instance of forgotten PaperCut login details.
To be honest, this isn’t a new issue so we highly recommend you bookmark our blog purely on the subject . But here’s the key how-to part for sysadmins to solve the problem::
Log in to your admin dashboard
- On the left panel select Options
- Scroll to section called _Branding
_There are four sections available for customization:
– Background image
– Logo
– Instructions
– Button color - To provide more detailed instructions for your students, simply enter in the instructions and add the URL
(e.g., www.https//schoolname.edu/papercutuserhelp) to direct the student for help - Hit Apply and log out to see your changes on the login screen.
4) PaperCut Pocket
PaperCut Pocket is a brand new product - the first off our cloud platform. In fact, it’s so brand new it’s still in beta , but it’s already solving printer problems in the coworking space and wide release is right around the corner.
It’s an elegant solution to limiting contact with physical work stations for any SMB. Print from your device, then release your job from the printer using your mobile phone to identify you - easy and safe.
Stay safe
COVID-19 is one of those moments where you’re aware 24/7 that you’re living and breathing history. This pandemic has impacted lives and livelihoods drastically and tragically.
We’re all desperate for a return to normalcy. But the fact is there may be no normal for some time. The best we can hope for is a new normal. We will only forge that by maintaining vigilance and fending off complacency.
Here at PaperCut, we’re assessing our capacity for sustaining a heightened level of distributed working. Many of us are keen to return to the office, but when we do, we will reenter the same way we left, by constantly doing our utmost to keep ourselves, our colleagues, our friends, our family and our community safe.
Visit the Better Ways to Print hub on our website to find better ways to stay safe, work more flexibly, and reduce costs.
