Using TC/Probe for IPPRINT

Summary

Description

TC/Probe is designed to perform tests e.g. check fax channels with a fax loop. In general, it's possible to enter any kind of service to TC/Probe.

But if you want to do a "probe" in the common way with IPPRINT just to check if IPPRINT is running, you would produce a lot of printouts to a chosen printer.
If you want to check if the physical printer behind is working, there is another way to do it.

In this article the necessary steps are described to check, if IPPRINT is running without using a physical printer or rather avoiding the printouts.

We are using the feature print a file to a folder with IPPRINT instead of printing to a physical printer.
If the job falls into a timeout, this would mean, it isn't possible to initiate the printing or rather IPPRINT is not running. An error will be visible in the probe status with "undeliverable" or "DELIVERED" if IPPRINT is running.
Optional: with appropriate settings it's possible to send a success or failure alert notification to someone.

Prerequisites

TC/Probe, IPPRINT and TC Management Console.

Solution

Create a new probe definition and set some appropriate values like in this example:

As probe endpoint enter for example:

Name: Anything you want | Service: IPPRINT | Number: printer=C:/test.pcl&transport=file (note: it's a forward slash for the path)

If the probe was successful, you would see in the overview window this:

And here the negative result, when the timeout is reached (IPPRINT stopped manually in KCS monitor):

Failure alert notification in TCfW:

Applies to

• All KCS versions.

Keywords: TC/Probe, IPPRINT, KCS, Kofax Communication Server