PPS Printing
Frequently Asked Questions

Using the F5-Gen Doc runs a print job at Office of the President and then sends the printout to your local printer. In order for PPS to know where to send your printout, you need to set up your printer's address on the PPS PRNT screen. See the entry for "Setting up the Printer in PPS".

On the PRNT screen, move your cursor to the LPR1 or LPR2 line and type in the printer address according to the table below and press the F5 Update key. After you have updated the address, the "S" in the Selected Printer column will show on your updated line. A simple test is to immediately press the Function key 4-Print button and see if you get a copy of the screen.

The main difference between using RPM, Interprint or directly addressing the network printer is the format of the printer command on the PRNT screen:
Printing Solution Command Format
RPM on a PC: printer@yourIPaddress - i.e. printer@128.120.94.174
Intersolv on a Mac: lp@yourIPaddress - i.e. lp@128.120.94.174
Straight to Network Printer: text@printerIPaddress - i.e. text@128.120.94.100

On a Windows 9x system, Go to the Start Menu. Select the Run menu or open a command prompt and type "Winipcfg". On a Windows NT or Windows 2000 system, go to the Start Menu and open a command prompt and type "ipconfig".

If your department is using a randomly-assigned IP address (DHCP), you will need to ask for a static IP address because you would need to update the PRNT screen each time you logged in and got a new IP address.

• Step 1: Have you printed from PPS before? If you have never printed before, get your IP address and follow the instructions for identifying your printer in PPS. Try printing the screen using Function key 4. A "printed" message should appear near the bottom right corner of your screen. If it doesn't print, check the following steps.
• Step 2: If you are using RPM or Intersolv, it the software running? Many users have this software started automatically as part of their "startup" procedure each morning. If it isn't running, click on the icon (located under the PPS Software folder) to start. Try printing a screen using Function key 4. If it doesn't work, continue sleuthing.
• Step 3: If you are using RPM or Intersolv, is the queue status "enabled"? We have seen a few Help Desk calls come in with RPM queue status "disabled". If the RPM Queue window shows that it is disabled, pull down the QUEUE menu and click on the "enable" entry. Try the test again.
• Step 4: If you are not using RPM but going directly to the network printer, is the printer command on the PPS PRNT screen in the format "text@printeripaddress"? The proper format of this command is needed depending on which way your office is printing. Try the test again. (NOTE: If you are printing directly to the network printer, you do not need to have RPM or Intersolv software running. Continuing to run this software doesn't cause any problems - it just isn't needed.)
• Step 5: Can anyone else in your office print? If everyone else is also having problems, complete the PPS Help Request form and indicate you are having printing problems in PPS. Identify your UserID, when you tried to print and how long you've been waiting. If others in your office can print but you can't, check for office network changes, incorrect IP address and if you still have problems send a request for assistance.
• Step 6: Were there any changes done to your office network or to your individual PC? If you or your technical support changed your network, this may have changed your IP address so you would need to update it on the PRNT screen. If your IP address is now dynamically-assigned (DHCP), this will stop you from printing (see notes below). PPS needs to have either a static IP address for your PC or for your printer. We have also seen a department install a "firewall" for security and block all transmissions from the computer at Office of the President where PPS is running. This security software blocks incoming connections from other than previously-approved systems. If this software has been installed, print jobs from "uccmvsb.ucop.edu" need to be included in the acceptable connections. Finally, twice now we have seen the RPM software log file get corrupted for no apparent reason. Re-installing the RPM software corrected this problem in both cases.

As soon as the Help Desk receives your request, they test to determine whether the campus is having a campus network problem or whether the delay is due to a problem at Office of the President. Unfortunately the majority of the time the delay is caused by a printer problem on campus. When the PPS system at Office of the President can't find the printer that it is trying to send the printout to (i.e. bad IP address, network printer out of paper with its print queue full, incorrect printer name) it stops processing all the print jobs until that one problematic job is deleted. The Help Desk then works with Office of the President to delete the bad print job after determining whose it was and then contacts that department so the problem can be fixed for the future.

If your department is using a randomly-assigned IP address (DHCP), either your PC needs to be set up with a static IP address or a designated printer has to be set up with a static IP address in order to print from PPS. There is no way around putting the IP address in the PRNT screen in PPS. Your DHCP server can be configured to do a static hdcp lease which will always return the same IP address on that given subnet or your machine can be set up as a static host. More information about DHCP can be found on the campus website at http://netaccess.ucdavis.edu/.