Where is my report?

When we have lots of users with lots of reports for lots of printers, this can be a problem.

Understand Queues

One of the biggest issues for new users coming from an environment of stand-alone PCs, is a failure to recognize the implications of network queues.

A new user, unaccustomed to a multi-user system, is accustomed to doing SOMETHING, then IMMEDIATELY expecting to find the results on the printer. But

• Their task might still be in JOBQ.
• Some software, when selection criteria would create an empty report, generates nothing.
• Their report might not print until someone else's report has finished printing.
• Their reports might be going to an OUTQ that does not have an attached printer writer.
• If they slow to get to printer, relative to when report prints, someone else may have torn it off and set it aside, or accidentally when tear off reports, a user goes off with THEIR report(s) with someone else's attached.

Where 400 places report

• Did you ever play Dungeons and Dragos?
• Do you remember "levels" going down into the adventures?
• Each level more challenging than the last?
• You learn the rules for a level, then go down to next level and find there are more rules to learn if you have any hope of proceeding into deeper layers.
• Well IBM Printer management also has "levels" but fortunately some levels are simpler than the last. It is possible to navigate with only a superficial understanding of the rules at some levels.
• And guess what? When I am going to mess with the rules that govern how printers behave, I prefer to do so at a level that is simple.