Auto-Creating Network Printers

Auto-Creating Network Printers

By default, any network printing devices on the client device are created automatically at the beginning of sessions; however, if possible, XenApp always tries to route jobs directly from XenApp to the print server and not through the client connection.

To specify that specific printers are created in sessions rather than auto-create all the network printing devices available from the client device, configure the Session Printer policy rule.

The key difference between provisioning network printers with the Printing > Client Printers > Auto-creation rule and the Printing > Session printers rule is that the Auto-creation rule automatically creates all printers on the client device whereas the Session printers rule lets you specify which printers are created. Network printers created with the Session printers rule can vary according to conditions where the session was initiated, such as location (by filtering on objects such as subnets).

Before you can configure the Session printers rule, you must import the printer objects stored on your print server into your XenApp farm. After importing printers into XenApp, you can assign them to user sessions through the Session Printer policy rule. See Configuring Network Printers for Users

Note: For printers in domains that do not have a trust relationship with the XenApp farm, configure them as redirected client printers using the Auto-creation rule. When network printing devices are provisioned in this way, the print jobs are routed through the client using the client printing pathway.

Understanding XenApp Printing

Managing printers in a XenApp environment is a multistage process. The cycle for managing printers on a farm requires that you:

1. Design your printing configuration. This includes analyzing your business needs, your existing printing infrastructure, how your users and applications interact with printing today, and what a realistic printing management model would look like for your organization (that is, assessing that the administrative overhead of printing pathway you choose is realistic in your environment).
2. Configure your printing environment, including creating the policies necessary to deploy your printing design.
3. Test a pilot printing deployment before rolling it out to users.
4. Maintain your Citrix printing environment, including updating policies when new employees or servers are added and maintaining drivers on your farm servers.
5. Troubleshoot issues that may arise in your printing environment.

Before you begin planning your deployment, make sure that you understand these major concepts for printing in XenApp:

• The concept of printer provisioning in a session and the two major types of provisioning (auto-created and self-provisioned). To understand these concepts, you need to understand, among other things, the difference between a printer, a printing device, and a printer driver.
• How print jobs can be routed in XenApp.
• The policies that you can create to manage drivers.

XenApp printing concepts build on Windows printing concepts. To configure and successfully manage printing in a Citrix environment, you must understand how Windows network and client printing works and how this translates into printing behavior in a Citrix environment.