Finding a printer in a large enterprise can be tricky. Windows 2000 and Active Directory provide a useful alternative to wandering the halls: printer location tracking. Printer location tracking uses Active Directory to store the printer location, allowing users to search for printers based on their names, locations, and a long list of features (as described in the next section). However, even without printer location tracking, with Windows 2000 you can search for and locate printers easily.
To find a printer using Active Directory, point to Search on the Start menu and choose For Printers. With location tracking enabled, when the query form opens the system determines the location of the computer from which the query is being run and fills in the Location box. Click the Browse button to change the location. You can then use the Features tab to specify the particular features needed, or click the Advanced tab to fine-tune the search with a variety of values (Figure 8-18).
Figure 8-18. Possible features for designing a printer search.
NOTE
When location tracking is enabled, you can use the Group Policy snap-in (covered in Chapter 9) to define locations that don't depend on actual geographic locations.
To use printer location tracking, you need to publish your printers in Active Directory with the Location field and other relevant fields filled out. Then users can search for printers in Active Directory based on location, color capabilities, and duplexing. This section covers the requirements for using printer location tracking and explains how to enable this feature. (It is turned off by default.)
Printer location tracking requires a few conditions to work properly. These conditions are easy for most organizations to meet, but the network infrastructure of some companies will require modification. To use printer location tracking, the following conditions must be in place:
For information on how to install Active Directory and create the appropriate subnets for your enterprise using Active Directory Sites and Services, see Chapter 11.
NOTE
Printer location tracking isn't particularly useful until an enterprise is quite large. However, you should use a compatible naming convention so you can enable printer location tracking at some future time.
Once you've prepped your network, follow these steps to set up printer location tracking:
Figure 8-19. The Group Policy snap-in.
REAL WORLD Publishing All Printers in the Active Directory
Most enterprises won't have all their printers hosted by Windows 2000 print servers, yet ideally, all printers that are available to clients should be listed in Active Directory. For this to happen, you'll need to specifically publish printers that are not hosted by a Windows 2000 print server in Active Directory. Open Active Directory Users and Computers (from the Administrative Tools menu), right-click the domain, subnet, or organizational unit in which you want to publish the printer, and choose New Printer from the shortcut menu. Enter the path of the printer to be published in the UNC Path Of Downlevel Print Server To Be Published box, and then click OK.