Mention the word "printers" to a group of IT pros and watch how quickly they lose interest. In fact, faced with having to deal with printers and printer problems, most of us would rather wander off to the server room to watch the little colored lights blinking on and off. Printers just aren't cool, right? Well, yes, but the ability to search for available printers in Active Directory (AD) is one of the most visible benefits to end users when you migrate from Windows NT to a Windows 2000 domain. And AD printer publishing is what enables these searches.
Printer Publishing
By default, Win2K Server and later print servers automatically publish printer information in AD. You can control whether printer information is published to AD by opening a printer's Properties dialog box, selecting the Sharing tab, and either selecting or clearing the List in the Directory check box, as Figure 1 shows.
Keep in mind that the printer information published in AD is simply a representation of the printer. The publishing process creates an object with an object class of printQueue in AD. The print queue object is itself a child object of the computer object that represents the print server. You can use tools such as ADSI Edit or ldp.exe to view the attributes of the print queue object in AD. Web Table 1 (http://www.winnetmag.com, InstantDoc ID 41104) shows an example of the attributes set for an Epson DFX-8500 printer. This information is useful when you need to verify that you've successfully published the printer information in AD.
For workstations that run Windows XP or Win2K Professional, you can use the List in the Directory check box to publish printer information in AD, but the process isn't automatic. For most organizations, the ability to publish workstation printers in AD is less useful than publishing printers associated with print servers because most workstation printers are dedicated to specific workstation users. Also, workstations are often switched off or otherwise unavailable for long periods.
Although you can also publish in AD those printers associated with NT 4.0 and Windows 9x machines, this process is more labor-intensive. Because a List in the Directory check box isn't available on these systems, you must create the print queue object either manually (by using the Microsoft Management Console—MMC—Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in) or by using the pubprn.vbs script in the system32 folder. For information about how to use the pubprn.vbs script, see the Microsoft article "Publishing a Printer in Windows Active Directory" (http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=234619).
Searching for Printers
From a user's perspective, the biggest benefit of publishing printer information in AD is that doing so makes available a range of search possibilities. Not only can users search for all printers in the forest but they can also perform granular searches by specifying individual printer characteristics and capabilities. For example, users can search for printers by printer name, location, and model (if this information is available in AD) and by printer features (e.g., double-sided printing, color). In fact, by using the Advanced tab within the search function, users can search against just about any print queue object attribute stored in AD.
To access the search function from an XP or Win2K Pro workstation, select Start, Search, Find Printers. Although earlier Windows versions don't offer this functionality, users can still search for printers in AD if you install the Directory Services Client on their machines.
To make life easier for your users, ensure that the Location field is populated for each printer you publish in AD. As part of your initial AD design, give some thought to a workable, scalable naming convention for the location information. The syntax for the Location field is
name/name/name/name/...
proceeding from the most general location name to the most specific location name. For example,
Switzerland/Basel/Building8/Level1/Room18
identifies a specific room in the Switzerland office.
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