Monitoring Printers, Print Queues, and Print Jobs

Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Scripting Guide

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Monitoring is an important part of print management: It allows you to be notified of problems as soon as they occur and enables you to spot potential problems before they occur (for example, noticing that one printer is receiving all the print jobs while other printers sit idle).

In addition to the administrative benefits, monitoring also helps minimize disruptions for users. With an effective monitoring strategy, printing problems (such as paper jams and low toner) can often be identified and corrected before they have an adverse effect on users. Monitoring enables you to better distribute print resources, ensuring that some printers do not sit idle while others are unable to keep up with the printing demands made on them.

Monitoring can even be important for economic reasons. If invoices cannot be printed, customers cannot be billed and revenue cannot be collected. If proposals cannot be printed, deadlines might be missed and job opportunities lost. Because printed documents are a crucial component in day-to-day business transactions, it is important for administrators to ensure that printers are available and that those printers are being used appropriately.

In Windows 2000, several WMI classes, such as Win32_Printer and Win32_PrintJob, can be used to monitor various aspects of the printing infrastructure.

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