PaperCut 16.1 is now available to download and install. This new release is designed to provide PaperCut resellers and Admins the tools to monitor the health of their PaperCut installs via the PaperCut System Health API. It is important to understand from the offset this is not a separate add-on or client, PaperCut has included endpoints within 16.1 to make life easier to tie into other systems.

The new System Health system is designed to work with a host of modern 3rd party monitoring tools such as What’s Up Gold, UpTime, Microsoft Operations Manager, Splunk, Nagios, VMWAre vRealize Operations Manager, Amazon CloudWatch and our two favorites PRTG Network Monitor and Zabbix.

The new System Health tool interface uses  monitoring tools to help maximise site up-time by checking on the status of vital systems including:

• PaperCut Application and Site Server health (including – PaperCut version installed, OS levels, CPU, RAM, HDD usage)
• Key Database stability by measuring load and availability
• Print queues and embedded device status including:
  • Warnings and errors reported with the queues or devices
  • Held job load in print hold/release queues
  • Check whether a device or printer processed a job in last X minutes and how many were printed to give Admins an idea on load
• Currently installed license situation
• PaperCut Print Provider availability on the main server and secondary/site servers.

With these services under careful watch the monitoring services can be setup to send (configurable) alerts whenever an issue occurs. This active approach to administration allows IT Staff to react to problems and fix them before users are aware they existed. Printing is an often overlooked but critical service in many organisations, if someone can not print then that may have a financial impact.

On top of fixing real problems, the Heath API can show organisations changes in printing behavior and activity. Armed with this information sites can change their printing setup to meet demand and remove bottlenecks and ease user frustration.

For sites currently not monitoring any of their services, this is a great gateway into the world of end points, to learn a little more see our article on health monitoring solutions. For organisations already using operational intelligence platforms, these new API’s will be a welcome addition to their dashboards.

Is that all?

Don’t be silly! On top of the regular fixes and enchantments listed in the full release notes below the popular Toshiba embedded application has had a graphic overhaul. The following Toshiba e-STUDIO device platforms will now be supported by PaperCut MF 16.1: e-BRIDGE Next, e-BRIDGE X, e-BRIDGE 3 and LeSF. Please note this does not include Integrated Scanning for Toshiba devices (yet…).

What is Early Access?

You may have noticed 16.1 was released under an early access umbrella. For clarity, this is not “beta” software. This build is QA tested and ready for the real world. There should be little to no difference in code between the early access build and the final release. Early Access is for resellers and customers who wish to see what is coming soon and to run update procedures on test systems.

Explore 16.1 with our help

Want to learn the new features 16.1 offers or have questions? Simply get in touch with your Account Manager or give us a call on 01256 246970. We also provided a quick summary of some of the more popular 3rd party monitoring tools available.

Release Notes – 2 June 2016 – PaperCut MF 16.1 (Build 35678)