Printer Activity Monitor: An Introduction

Printer Activity Monitor was another very useful tool created by Red Line Software whose job was to monitor the activities of the printers in an office. This product came in two different modules. One remains unobtrusively placed in the tray logging every document that is printed while the other goes ahead and takes the data being thus generated and turns it into meaningful statistics, diagrams and reports.

Many people may not realise this but observing the amount of work and the nature of work a printer is put through is very important. The reason is simple: the usage of printer is related to the amount of paper and ink cartridges being bought by the company. If there is wasteful use of printer and the employees are printing their own personal documents, the company would be incurring unnecessary charges. Cutting down on these would be of great help to the finances.

Another great advantage of this application is that it provides information about the amount of use different printers are going through. This means those printers which are lying idle most of the time can be given greater work while those which are being overused relieved of their workload.

This would reduce the need to buy new printers and cut down on unnecessary costs. The statistics generated can also inform you about the printing needs of different departments in the office. So, you can procure the required amount of resources to each department rather than buying maximum paper and ink cartridges for each one. Another way in which costs would be reduced.

Lastly, if the employees are aware that their printing activity is being tracked, they wouldn’t dare to print their own personal documents.

So, better discipline and greater economy of resources are the twin benefits of this application.

How Printer Activity Monitor Works?

This massively useful application works through its connection to the main server of the office. This server is connected to each system in the office, be it desktops or laptops. Whenever these systems give a command to their connected printers to print a document, it registers on the server and is logged by the application.

The Printer Activity Monitor then takes all the information it has collected and transforms it into statistics which it expresses in the form of diagrams and charts. These provide thorough information and details about the printer usage in the company.

Other Advantages Of Printer Activity Monitor

As has been noted above, this application provides great advantages to the users. But the list is not exhaustive. So, here are some other gains that will accrue to your company through the use of this application.

Conclusion

Printer Activity Monitor was highly useful in offices and the fact that it is still available makes a lot of bosses and administrators happier. While the parent company which created this software, Red Line, is no longer available, there are plenty of websites from which this software can be obtained.

It’s only after you have installed this software in your office that you will find out its importance. It’s very easy to overlook the overuse of printers and imagine that it would have negligible impact on your overall business.

But the extra costs incurred by you along with the wastage of time that can be utilized for other purposes are things that would be avoided with Printer Activity Monitor and the rewards would be rich.