Charge On Schedule

Ah!  That's a great question!  I'd like to have that option.

Every semester and for certain events, I'm asked to make printing free at certain locations on our campus to accommodate things like new student orientation, enrollment, new arrivals because these are times when people may have need to print some forms, info, etc critical to being enrolled however their accounts (and in some cases their campus ID) have not yet been completed (and may be why they need to print a form) which makes it hard for them to pay for print jobs as their account isn't active yet.

To accommodate, I have to "tweak" the billing settings temporarily and then remember to set back to normal later.

Ability to schedule such things would be great!

Thanks,

- Paul L.

This is definitely possible. However, are the periods when free printing is required regular or ad-hoc and are they always the same printers or groups of printers? If they are regular (i.e. every Mon 10-11, 1-4, Tues 9-10, 3-5 etc) then its quite easy to configure a BillingScript and or a JobCost Script to do this. Ad hoc is more problematic as there isn't a nice button in Uniprint admin that can be hooked into to turn on/off the charging and you end up with the scenario that Paul has mentioned.

A script could be written to use the Pharos Access times as a way of scheduling the billing. The only other thing to consider is whether you want to charge the print jobs to another user/cost centre when they are released or just set the job cost to zero.

If I get a chance, I may write this script as techinical exercise...

Nic

Hi All,

Here is what I have done in the past.  It relies on several things being static and not changing like the Job Cost Method that is assigned to the Print Group you wish to change the cost for and the name of the Print Group.

1. You need to determine what the Job_Cost_Method_Id is for the Print Group you wish to use from the Print_Groups Table in the Pharos database and the Job_Cost_Method_Id of one that does not have a charge.  Replace myprintgroupName below with your Print Group name.

For the Job_Cost_Method_Id to use you can use a query like below to determine this.

select

  pg.print_group,

  jc.job_cost_meth_id

from print_groups pg

join job_cost_methods jc

  on pg.job_cost_meth_id=jc.job_cost_meth_id

  where pg.print_group = 'myprintgroupName'

For the Job_Cost_Method_Id that has your zero cost.

select * from job_cost_methods

2. Once you have the two Job_Cost_Method_Ids for each we now create two batch files that that use OSQL (or SQLCMD) to make a T-SQL Query to the database.  Label one batch file your "On" and one your "Off".

The T-SQL query to change the Job Cost for a print group is below.

update print_groups

set job_cost_method_id = 'x'

where print_group_name = 'x'

3. For the automation you use a Windows Scheduled Task to run the "On" batch file to change it to the free Job Cost Method and then the "Off" batch file to set the Job Cost Method back to the one you would like it have normally.

Regards,

Jeff Geller

Pharos Support