Printer visibility in Citrix / Terminalserver environment

[oskpm]

Hello,

creation/destruction of the virtual printer is synchronous to our software start/end. This works fine on a local system.

In a multiuser environment (e.a. citrix or microsoft terminal services) there are multiple instances of our software
in different sessions.

Because the printers all have unique names, this is no problem, but all users see the printers of all others.

We create multiple printers, because they can have different settings, dependend to our software.

Is it possible that the users only sees the printer he has created himself? All created printer have "all users" in the security option dialog. Can we affect this while creating them?


Many thanks in advance.
Regards
PM

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello PM,

I will need to check with my colleagues to answer the question regarding creating a printer for a particular user only, but a better approach might be to only create the printer when an actual conversion to PDF is needed, and then release it - this way the appearance of printers from other users in the list will be limited, and most people won't even notice them.

Best,
Stefan

[oskpm]

Hello Stefan,

our users should also be able to print from other application e.a. office-products. The resulting pdf is passed to an separate application, which saves it in our structure. The structure is dependend on the main application the users starts. That's why we do it this way.

Perhaps we could have a solution with windows printer creation policies? I will investigate in this (and post the solution here if possible).

If you have another idea please let me know.

Thanks
Peter

[John - Tracker Supp]

Hi Peter,

A general licensing point you should be aware of - without wishing to be overtly aggressive - please ensure your intended use is not in violation of the agreement ...

You are not allowed to use the driver in anyway that enables your users to directly print from any 3rd party application to our print drivers.

For example; it is allowed for you to enable your users via your application interface to open a word document programmatically and print the document to our driver as in our example - but your users must not be able to directly print from Word to our driver.

This same principle follows not just for Word - but any 3rd party application - you must control the process programmatically.

If this is not clear or you require further clarification - please feel free to email sales@pdf-xchange.com with a description of your intended use and we will be pleased to advise if the intended use is allowed or not.

Many thanks

[oskpm]

Hi John,

though most prints came in fact of a word instance we created ourself the users is able to print from another application. If this is a violation of the agreement I have to remove the 'alltime aware' printer and so the problem is solved. thanks for this hint.

But at this point another question. I've tested with some offic plugins especially microsoft outlook. Is it also a problem if there is a second print button (as plugin) which enables the user to print emails to your pdf printer? that's to say. the plugin creates the printer, prints the mail and destroys the printer?

thanks
peter

[John - Tracker Supp]

Hi Peter,

The issue is related to your potential creation of a means to output from Word (or other applications) directly to PDF and thus create a general PDF creation tool for your users to generate PDF files from - our SDK products licensing is specifically intended to allow you to generate PDF files from your own application software rather than 3rd party products and not create a general purpose PDF creation tool that would compete with our own end user products - and there is the real conflict.

If the purpose of your Word (or 3rd party app) Print button however is to create a PDF that is used solely to store documents in your own application that is a structured document management system - this is the one allowed variation as you are not competing with our end user products for general PDF creation - but creating a document storage archive.

Hope that makes sense

[oskpm]

Hi John,

Hi Peter,
If the purpose of your Word (or 3rd party app) Print button however is to create a PDF that is used solely to store documents in your own application that is a structured document management system - this is the one allowed variation as you are not competing with our end user products for general PDF creation - but creating a document storage archive.
Hope that makes sense

Thanks for your detailed explanation.
This is exactly what we want to achieve. The user can only store the pdf in our storage archive. He does not even see the generated pdf file in filesystem, as it will be deleted directly after archiving.

Peter (relieved)

[John - Tracker Supp]

Excellent - thanks Peter - always best to be sure all is clear )