PrintVisor is a printer monitoring software that allows you to analyze what’s going on with your printers and printing supplies. It gives you actionable insights about the use of your printer infrastructure. The program sends requests to printers and gets responses; therefore, it can monitor all printers’ availability and activity and display their current state in real-time.
The program should be installed on all computers which have access to printing devices. This way, it can monitor all printers’ operation and status, showing what’s happening with each printer. PrintVisor also provides data on print consumables: ink, toner, and paper consumption.
PrintVisor helps you quickly find out:
- What’s the status of a selected printing device?
- Which printers are rarely used, and which are most loaded?
- How much ink or toner is left?
- What and how many document pages do users print?
Printers: Availability and Statuses
Get an overview of all available devices – local, network, shared, and virtual printers. You can see the current status, possible errors, and additional information on each unit. You’ll also know which devices are most and least loaded.
All printer statuses and additional information on each device are located on the Printers tab:
Printer profile
A printer’s profile contains:
- Ink levels
- Installed cartridges
- Compatible cartridges (available only for some printers models)
By clicking the cog near a printer’s icon or next to its name, you can:
- Open printer properties
- Open print queue
- Open device manager
- Print a test page
Document printing statistics
Each printer shows daily, weekly, and monthly printing statistics. With it, you can view:
- Documents and pages printed last month, week, 24 hours;
- Average time of waiting – Document idle time in the print queue. If many files are sent to the printer at once, it eventually takes more time to print each document.
- Average time of printing – Printing time per page, i.e. the speed of the printer.
This data is also provided in the Admin Panel in more detail.
Printed Documents
Each printer’s profile contains a log of recently printed documents. You can check the person who initiated the printing (User), when it happened (Start time), file name (Name), and the number of pages (Pages).
Why are the document names hidden with ***?The document names and user names in the program’s interface or PrintVisor Admin Panel are partially are hidden behind asterisks (*). Serial Numbers (SN) or ID numbers do not relate to those of real printers or users. Therefore, any information that can identify an individual is not exposed.
Cartridges: Ink & Toner Levels
You can track the current ink or toner levels of each printer. Their volume is displayed as a percentage and is presented in CMYK colors: cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Thus, you’ll always know if a specific printer is running out of ink and buy supplies in advance.
Information about a printer and ink levels is displayed on the Cartridges tab:
Want to get started quickly? Here’s a brief overview of the interface:
How to hide the PrintVisor interface? Want to hide the program’s interface from the users who don’t want or don’t need access to it? Just click the Run in background mode button in the Account tab. PrintVisor will keep working but appear only in the system tray.
Admin Panel: More Statistics!
The program has a web dashboard – the Admin Panel. Compared to the interface, it has more detailed print statistics and information about all connected PCs and their printers. It opens in any browser, and you can access it from any Internet-connected device like smartphone or tablet.
In this dashboard, you can find detailed information on print statistics and recent activity. Here you’ll see volumes generated across your printing fleet, how much is being spent each month on printing, and more specific data such as which users are most active or printers are being used the most. On the left menu, you can switch to categories: Dashboard, Printers, Computers, Printer Statistics, and Computer Statistics.
For instance, Computer Statistics shows how much was printed recently and from which PC:
PrintVisor’s Features in Detail
Run the program in the background mode only
You can configure the program to work in the background mode only – without access to the interface. PrintVisor will be “hidden” in the system tray and will not distract the user. To return to normal mode, entering the password or contacting the administrator will be required.
Deploy the program silently to multiple PCs in the office
The administrator (e.g., an office manager) can install and run the application from one central location so that it does not distract employees. Remote installation on multiple PCs is possible via the command line. Command line examples are below.
To install and run the program in the background (opening the interface from the system tray will require entering the password):
printvisor.exe -client -user C12345678RU1234 -pwd 123456
To install and run the program in active mode (not in the background) plus open the interface after installation:
printvisor.exe -quiet -user C12345678RU1234 -pwd 123456
To install the program in active mode (not in the background) and run in it system tray only:
printvisor.exe -quiet -nogui -user C12345678RU1234 -pwd 123456
Perform automatic updates remotely
It is also possible to set up updates automatically for all connected users within an organization and perform them on multiple computers directly from the Admin Panel.
