Email to Print
Long story short, I have a production process that emails a report when it completes. worker down line prints the email out and then works from that paper. Boss would like to cut out the middle step and have the email print directly to the MFP. Printer/copier…
Long story short, I have a production process that emails a report when it completes. worker down line prints the email out and then works from that paper. Boss would like to cut out the middle step and have the email print directly to the MFP. Printer/copier is Canon Imageforce, but we can't use their cloud connector software in this instance because that requires a PIN to print, and the upstream process is dumb as nails and just spits the email with no way to add in the security pin. Anyone know of a lightweight tool that would run on windows server to take an email from an authorized sender and send it to a printer?
Collected discussion
If you want to cut out the middle step, why not cut out two middle steps and just transfer the report without attaching it to an email?
Adding my endorsement of FolderMill. Good product.
Yeah, unfortunately that seems to only apply to consumer MFPs not "Professional" ones... they like to gouge you for every little bell and whistle. *sigh*
It’s also fairly limited - they either receive email via POP (like wtf?) or act as an SMTP endpoint…
because of Federal regulations, certain notices have to be manually posted on a board where everyone can read them for a specific period of time.
iR-ADV 4535, i think?
Does federal regulations allow for electronically posting them, say on a digital display?
Automatic Email Manager does exactly this. Runs as a Windows service, connects via IMAP/O365, filter by sender, prints to any printer queue on the server. FolderMill is a solid alternative, and MAPILab Print Agent if you’re on Exchange. Free option: AutomaticMailPrinter on GitHub, but it’s a hobby project.
Many MFP devices not only have scan-to-email, but also have email-to-print built in. They monitor a mailbox and print whatever gets sent to it. https://oip.manual.canon/USRMA-4297-zz-SSS-320-enUV/contents/devu-prt-various_prt_method-mail_rece_prt.html
What printer is it? We have Canon’s from various tiers, and the only get *more* features the higher they go.
Why does the person even need to print it out? Why not view the email or attachment on a tablet or computer to work from that instead?
In outlook you can make a rule to print the email to the default printer. No need to over complicate it… it just requires the computer to be turned on and outlook open for it to work. —— If you wanted a solution that would work without needing the desktop to be on and logged in then you could use a PowerAutomate script with a connector installed on one of your servers. Have the powerautomate get the email and covert it to PDF. You can then do a file copy to \\print-server\printer and it should print automatically. In CMD you can test it with the following command: COPY report.pdf \\print-server\printer
I doubt it even needs to be on paper.
Can you instead dump it to a .pdf somewhere? If so, there is a tool that watches a folder and takes action when a file appears. Little batch file to call FoxIt viewer with a call to print the file and it would work. We do this with a particular program here - guys don't even see the process - just grab the paper from the printer.
check the canon's own email-rx print first, separate from the cloud connector so no pin. that said, if your firmware's had it stripped, automatic email manager runs as a windows service and does the same job. half hour either way
Thanks for this thread. I also need a function similar to this for a ticketing system.
Personally, I would probably stick to the current workflow but that might just be because of where I work. I do K-12 IT and it is a constant battle where people will print something, not go get it immediately, and someone else grabs it by accident because they've printed a giant stack of papers on top of it and the first person has to reprint it. There's also the possibility that the direct to printer method bugs out somehow and suddenly you have a huge stack of copies that are effectively useless either by quantity or because gibberish has printed as a result of the error. That said if this printer only prints said report then my first point is kinda moot.
PaperCut MF can do this. It's more for larger orgs but it works really well.