Blueprint Print Center Secure Printers

Use the Secure > Secure Printers tab in the Pharos Print Center to secure and manage Pharos Sentry Print–capable devices. The following action buttons are available:

• Secure Printers - Use this button to secure or unsecure devices. See “Securing Printers” section below for more information.

• Reset Printer - The Reset Printer option resolves mismatches between the printer's actual deployment status and Blueprint’s recorded status. For example, if a deployment (e.g., securing a printer) fails but Blueprint incorrectly shows the status as "securing," the printer cannot be retried without waiting for a long timeout.

  This button resets the printer's status in Blueprint to an unsecured, "clean" state by deleting all related database records and disconnecting any terminals linked in Blueprint Administrator. This ensures the printer is ready for a new securing process, allowing administrators to quickly fix deployment issues and reprovision printers.

Note

The Secure tab is available on Blueprint 5.3 or later only.

Before Securing Printers

To successfully secure a device, you must ensure that the following conditions are met:

• The device exists in Blueprint Administrator ( Device Management > Devices screen).

• The device has the following details: Manufacturer, Model, and IP address.

• The Model of the device is supported. See the Supported Models list at https://www.pharos.com/products/supported-printers-mfds/ for Sentry Print-capable devices.

• The device has no associated Terminal (or if it has it's of type SE50).

• In Blueprint Administrator, for the “Standard Authentication Method”:

  • “User Logon” needs to be set to “Users can logon using a card or network ID and password”, and

  • “Registration” set to “Users can register with their network ID”

• A credential for the manufacturer has been created in Print Center. To create a credential, refer to the "Blueprint Sentry Print Credentials" topic for detailed information on how to manage credentials.

Securing Printers

To secure printers

1. Review the “Before Securing Printers” section of this document.

2. Navigate to the Secure > Secure Printers screen of the Print Center.

3. Select one or more devices that you want to secure.

4. Click the Secure Printers button.

5. In the Secure Printers dialog box, configure the following:

   1. To enable a logon method, select it under Available Logon Types and click the right arrow. To disable a logon method, select it under Enabled Logon Types and click the left arrow.

   2. In the Hosting Server option, select the server desired as the secure printer’s host. All available Blueprint servers (Analyst and Collector) that are configured to host Sentry Print devices will display in this list.

      Note

      By default, all Blueprint servers (Analyst and Collector) with a Sentry Print Service are listed. In Blueprint 6.1, administrators can control whether a server is allowed to act as a hosting server for Sentry Print using the Sentry Print Provisioning setting. Servers set to Not Allowed will not appear in the list. For details, see the Allow or Block Servers for Sentry Print Provisioning in the Blueprint System Monitor documentation.

6. Click the Secure button to initiate provisioning.

7. After a brief delay, the Status value of the printer will change to show progress (as a percent) with the tag “Processing…”.

The length of time it takes to secure a printer is dependent upon the manufacturer, as some printers require other activities to set device-based options, install other components, and possibly reboot to initialize and launch the newly-installed software. Once the device is secured, the Status will change to Secured and it can be used by employees to release awaiting jobs.

After Securing a Printer

• A terminal record (in Device Management > Terminals screen) is automatically created in Blueprint Administrator with the Terminal Type SE50 (1.0.0). The terminal name corresponds to the serial number of the device. If the device has no serial number, then it uses the hostname or IP address of the device as the Terminal Name.

• Authentication Method is set to Standard Authentication Method.

Note

If the authentication method should be something else, edit the Default Settings for the SE50 terminal type in the Secure Release Here group within Blueprint Administrator.

Reset Printer

The Reset Printer button allows administrators to reset a printer's status to an unsecured, "clean" state in Blueprint. This addresses issues where a mismatch occurs between the printer's deployment status and the status recorded in Blueprint—such as when securing a printer fails.

The Reset Printer button deletes the terminal record associated with the printer, and any database records related to securing the device, in this state Blueprint is ready for a new securing process.

Show Only Securable Printers

The Show Only Securable Printers toggle switch filters the display to show only devices that can be secured. Previously, the Print Center displayed all devices, including those that were not securable. Filtering the view to display only securable printers reduces the data set returned, significantly enhancing performance.

By default, the Show Only Securable Printers button is enabled when the Secure Printers screen loads in Print Center, ensuring faster performance. Administrators can disable the button if they wish to see the full list of all discovered printers, including non-securable ones.

Printers are considered securable when they meet the following criteria:

• They are not associated with a terminal that was not created by Sentry Print.

• The device model supports Sentry Print. Pharos maintains a dynamic list of  supported devices on our website, at https://pharos.com/supported-printers-mfds/.

• Blueprint must know the device’s IPv4 Address.

Secure Printers Columns