The following guide is meant to assist educational customers with Universal Print this is done as a hobby to assist educational customers. Please refer to your Microsoft representative for up-to-date information.
Agenda
Partner Integrations
Partners that integrate with the platform today
What licenses are Required?
Subscriptions that include universal print
Overview of Universal Print
Overview of Universal Print and how it can be used in your organization
Printing Previously (Legacy)
On-Prem Print systems and limitations with cloud devices
Native Print Integration
Pre-Requisites & Deployment Strategies
Universal Print Connector
Microsoft Universal Print Connector Integration & Deployment
3rd Party Universal Print Connector
3rd Party Print Connector Integration & Deployment
Hybrid Join Printing
Scenarios that still require hybrid domain join to function.
Managing Universal Print Printers
Sharing printers
Access Control
Printer settings, Location, Defaults
Universal Print Client Configuration
Add, Search, View Printer
Intune/MEM deployment
BYOD
AVD & Roaming Profile Support
Universal Print Client Configuration
End user experience
Advanced configurations & troubleshooting
Endpoint security
Troubleshooting
Additional Resources
Additional Resource Links
Partner Integrations
Microsoft Universal Print Integrates with many partner ecosystems many of which have banded together to make the printing experience more secure and reliable than ever before.
Partner Ecosystem New Features
Printer firmware updates
Intelligent Edge devices to connect in-market Printers
3rd party connectors
Integrations with the Universal Print connector
Pull Print (Secure Print) Solutions
Intelligent Edge devices to connect in-market Printers
3rd party connectors
Integrations with the Universal Print connector
Pull Print (Secure Print) Solutions
Universal Print Licensing
Universal Print has some licensing requirements in the education sector specifically it's important to understand how many print jobs your users are consuming each month. This will help in future Universal Print planning. Below is a chart that lists the educational subscriptions that include Universal Print.
Licensing FAQ's
It's important to also note that Microsoft offers additional licenses for users to print. This is done with what's called "pool licensing". The subscriptions you choose below add monthly print jobs to a pool that your users then deduct from as they print jobs. Each print job deducts from use from the pool. Print job size isn't counted.
Universal Print Overview
Universal Print is used to bridge the gap between hybrid joined and azure AD joined windows devices. Please review the overview below for Universal Print.
Customer Challenges
There are various challenges when migrating to cloud printing.
Universal Print for IT
Universal Print for IT has various advantages especially with remote devices.
Universal Print for End Users
Universal Print makes not only IT more efficient, but printer users at your organization as well, by delivering them an intuitive and user-friendly print experience. The process on the users’ end is seamless and straightforward, eliminating any learning curve.
How it Works
Hardware Compatibility
Universal Print is based on Mopria
MOPRIA is an alliance of print manufacturers who joined together to define the IPP specification. Prior to this, you had to have the right print driver for your printer to be able to print and use the options on the printer. Printers are smart enough now to advertise their options (trays, color, paper sizes, finishing options, etc.). When a printer is registered with Universal Print, it uploads its set of IPP attributes. When the client installs the UP printer, those IPP attributes are sent to the client, where the Universal Print Class Driver consumes those attributes, and then provides those options to the user in the print dialog. One draw-back for this model is that some of the more advanced printing options provided by a full-feature driver will not be available via Universal Print.
How does Universal Print Work?
A high level overview. Because we are now using Azure, there is some inherent network latency which will result in printing being slower, but typically this would be in the 10-20 seconds for UP vs. 2-4 seconds for Point and Print.
Universal Print Benefits
Universal Print addresses some of these issues. Because the Universal Print Class Driver is in-box, there are no dlls being installed onto the system from an external location. This allows the clients to keep the most secure print settings (RestrictDriverInstallationToAdmnistators=1). Using AAD and Azure addresses the RPC Privacy Authentication requirement for connecting with Point and Print servers. In addition, Users can have an AAD-only account and don't need to be joined to an On-Prem AD Domain to access printing.
Legacy Printing
Point and Print printing was designed for ease of administration. Users didn't need to know what driver was needed, or what IP address the printer had. They just connected to the print server and the driver was installed and the connection configured for them. If the drivers needed updating, IT admins updated the servers, and the servers pushed out the drivers to all the clients.
Legacy Print Issues
Print Nightmare
Unfortunately, the same things that made legacy printing ease to administer also exposed several security issues. Most of these were around the Point and Print download and installation of print drivers, which involved using elevated rights to install driver dlls. This could allow malicious dlls to get installed on the client systems. RPC Privacy prevented being connected to an unknown server but required domain configurations.
