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Discovering and Managing Devices

How Print Tracker scans for devices, how to run an on-demand scan and watch its progress, how to change scheduled scan settings, and how to enable, disable, remove, and bulk update devices.

Written by Joshua Kern

Print Tracker's primary purpose is to discover your devices and collect meters from them. Once discovered, you can view and manage those devices remotely from anywhere.

How Discovery Works

Discovery means scanning every IP address in a range to detect whether a printer is at that address. Print Tracker scans your network periodically and automatically. You can also trigger a scan manually at any time.

Running an On-Demand Scan

Use this when you have just added a device, or just corrected a scan range and do not want to wait for the next scheduled scan.

Running an on-demand scan from the View devices screen

  1. Using the sidebar, click Devices, then View devices.

  2. In the top-left corner, click Scan for devices.

  3. Enter the IP address, range, network, or CIDR block you want to scan.

  4. Click Add devices.

  5. If there are multiple installs at this entity, select which installs should run the scan.

  6. Click Confirm.

The address field accepts:

  • An individual IP address: 10.0.0.1

  • A range: 10.0.0.1-10

  • A single subnet with a wildcard: 10.0.0.*

  • A CIDR notated network: 10.0.0.1/24

If the install is online it begins scanning immediately. If the install is offline, the scan is queued and starts the next time the install comes online, so a scan that appears to do nothing may simply be waiting on an offline agent. See DCA Offline or Checking In Late.

Watching scan progress

Viewing a Custom Scan job under Jobs

  1. Using the sidebar, click Jobs, then View.

  2. Click the job named Custom Scan.

You can see the progress of the scan along with the logs the install produced while running it. This is the fastest way to tell the difference between a scan that found nothing and a scan that never ran.

Setting Which Networks Get Scanned

Print Tracker regularly rescans to find new devices and to catch devices whose IP addresses have changed. The scan range can be set at an entity, so every install beneath it inherits it, or on an individual install.

  1. Navigate to the entity or install you want.

  2. For an install: click Installs, then View installs, click the install to expand the row, and open the Settings tab. For an entity: click Admin, then Manage entity, then Settings.

  3. Expand the Network discovery section.

  4. Add addresses to IP addresses to scan, pressing Return or Tab after each entry. The same four formats listed above are supported.

  5. Click Save settings.

Scanning whole subnets in CIDR notation is more resilient than listing individual addresses, because devices are found wherever they land. The tradeoff is that larger ranges take longer to scan, so add only the subnets known to contain printers.

Setting When Scanning and Uploading Happen

Three separate timings live together under the Data Collection Agent settings group, and they are easy to confuse with each other.

  1. Navigate to the entity or install.

  2. Open Settings and expand the Data Collection Agent section.

  3. Adjust any of the following:

  • Check for alert frequency (in minutes). How often the agent polls devices for alert conditions. This is separate from meter collection, so a device can be checked for alerts far more often than it uploads meters.

  • Upload daily meter read. A time range within which meters are uploaded each day.

  • Scan for new device on days. Which days of the week the network is scanned for newly added devices.

Click Save settings when done. The install picks up new settings on its next scheduled run, so none of these take effect immediately. Pair a change with an on-demand scan if you need results now.

These settings inherit down the hierarchy like everything else. See Settings Inheritance: How Entity and Device Settings Work.

Managing Your Fleet

Keeping the fleet tidy matters. When devices move from one location or contract to another, disable or remove the old device record. This is especially important if you use a third-party integration such as the e-Automate data processor, where stale device records cause billing problems.

Enabling and disabling devices

Print Tracker may discover devices you do not want to manage or pay for. Disabling makes them non-managed: they continue to upload meter reads once per quarter at no charge, which is an inexpensive way to keep periodic snapshots of a device without full monitoring.

Video walkthrough: disabling devices

To disable a device:

  1. Using the sidebar, click Devices, then View devices.

  2. Select the devices by clicking the checkboxes next to them.

  3. At the top of the column, click the drop-down arrow.

  4. Click Disable selected.

To enable a device, follow the same steps and click Enable selected.

Removing devices

Do not remove devices that are still on the network. Print Tracker will simply rediscover them on the next network scan, and you will lose the device's history for nothing. Disable the device instead.

Only remove devices that are genuinely off the network and that you no longer want to see.

Video walkthrough: removing devices

  1. Using the sidebar, click Devices, then View devices.

  2. Select the devices by clicking the checkboxes next to them.

  3. At the top of the column, click the drop-down arrow.

  4. Click Remove selected.

Bulk updating device information

You can add custom information to any device:

  • Asset ID: any identifier you use internally, such as an equipment ID or asset tag

  • Custom Serial Number: overrides the serial number returned by the device

  • Custom Location: identifies the physical location of the device

  • Notes: any other custom information

A bulk update overwrites any data that has already been entered into these custom fields, and the change is permanent and cannot be reversed.

  1. Using the sidebar, click Devices, then View devices.

  2. Click the gear icon at the top of the table and click Bulk device update.

  3. Click Export devices.

  4. Open the exported CSV, update any of the fields listed above, and save it.

  5. Proceed to step 2 of the bulk device update process.

  6. Import the updated CSV and click Import changes.

Only the devices you modified in the CSV are changed.

Non-Managed Devices

Non-managed devices are free of charge but upload meters only once per quarter. They are useful for periodic snapshots of devices where you do not need alerts or frequent meter reads. You create them by disabling a device, as described above.

Because they report quarterly, do not rely on non-managed devices for supply alerts or for anything billing-critical.

Devices Not on the Network

Devices connected directly to a computer rather than to the network cannot be discovered by a scan. They can still be tracked. See Monitoring Locally Connected Devices (USB and USB+).

Related Articles

  • Device Not Automatically Discovered, including how to run a Network Topology Scan

  • SNMP v3 Configuration and Troubleshooting

  • Device Identified as "printmib"

  • Monitoring Locally Connected Devices (USB and USB+)

  • Settings Inheritance: How Entity and Device Settings Work

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