School replaces Google Cloud Print with Mobility Print

Cutting to the chase

Problem

Wheatley Park School needed a Google Cloud Print replacement to enable Chromebook printing

Solution

Mobility Print featuring Cloud Print provides like-for-like replacement with improved reliability

Outcome

“It takes minutes. It is one of the simplest things I do. It just works.”

Wheatley Park School, situated in Holton, Oxfordshire (just 5 miles east of Oxford University), is one of the UK’s Google reference schools.

The 1,150-pupil school pioneered the 1:1 Chromebook program in the UK. Running for 5 years now, the program draws visitors from around the world to observe G Suite & Chromebook integrations in education.

After using PaperCut in conjunction with Google Cloud Print for years, the impending deprecation of Google Cloud Print at the end of 2020 meant IT Technical Director Roger Nixon needed a robust replacement.

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It’s better and more reliable than Google Cloud Print, that’s the key thing."

- Roger Nixon,

Wheatley Park School IT Technical Director

Problem

Wheatley Park School needed a Google Cloud Print replacement to enable Chromebook printing

Wheatley Park had been operating a 1:1 staff and student Chromebook program for a number of years using Google Cloud Print to enable printing. Before implementing PaperCut students were wastefully printing, leaving piles of wasted print jobs found at the printer, with no visibility into printing behaviors.

While Google Cloud Print was fine for enabling printing, it did have occasional dropouts that required a system reboot. But primarily the deprecation of Google Cloud Print looming meant it was no longer an option. Wheatley Park needed both print enablement and management solutions specifically for Chromebooks.

The school’s IT technical director Roger Nixon needed a robust solution suitable for schools with limited bandwidth. Not only did he require a solution for print enablement and management, but also to deploy printers without end-users having to do anything.

Solution

Mobility Print featuring Cloud Print provides like-for-like replacement with improved reliability

Roger made the easy decision to implement Mobility Print for Chromebook printing after having years of success with PaperCut MF.

“We’ve been using PaperCut for a decade or more,” Roger says. “In terms of a managed print solution for Chromebook, Mobility Print is the obvious choice. We looked at other print solutions but none of them work as well as Mobility Print.”

Mobility Print was the preferred alternative to Google Cloud Print as print jobs only traverse the internet when students or staff are outside the network. A lot of the schools Roger oversees have limited bandwidth and Google Cloud Print meant jobs had to go out and back again. This wasn’t an issue with Mobility Print: “From that point of view, it’s a bit more robust for those smaller schools with not as good internet connections,” Roger says.

Teachers and staff are also utilizing Mobility Print as a Google Cloud Print like-for-like alternative. “Teachers can send a load of print jobs at home the night before and collect them in the morning without having to spend time in the day onsite doing it,” says Roger.

Outcome

“It takes minutes. It is one of the simplest things I do. It just works.”

Thanks to PaperCut and Mobility Print , Wheatley Park were able to seize control and visibility over student printing behaviors. Management has access to reporting functionality, and hard quotas are set for students.

Now, when Roger and his team build a custom Cloud Print deploy package, it runs off the back of Mobility Print.

“It’s better and a lot more reliable than Google Cloud Print - that’s the key thing,” according to Roger. “It’s one of the simplest things I do! You install it, pick your printers, push it out on the Google console and that’s it. It takes minutes. There isn’t anything to it. It just works.”

PaperCut is now the default print solution that Roger rolls out to schools: “If they don’t have PaperCut, particularly on Windows computers, print deployment becomes a horribly manual job that takes a long time. That’s why we kind of insist on it.”