How Robbinsdale Schools Eliminated Printer Frustration with PrinterLogic 

Robbinsdale School District includes 20 buildings in and around Robbinsdale, Minnesota.

When Robbinsdale School District switched from Novell and iPrinting to a Microsoft network operating system, they needed a new print management solution.

At first, Microsoft Printing seemed like the obvious solution, LAN/WAN Specialist David Leanger says. But they quickly ran into problems they didn’t expect. They had trouble integrating with Microsoft Azure, and setting up printers was time-consuming and cumbersome. “Unfortunately, we found that Microsoft printing was not as good as we thought it would be,” he says.

Setting up a new printer took over 10 minutes—in a school district with over 500 printers spread across 13 schools, that time adds up quickly.

Many features they had previously relied on were missing: they couldn’t connect multiple drivers to the same printer, and it was difficult for end users to connect to the printers they needed to do their jobs. “It was complicated for staff to understand,” Leanger adds.

For staff and teachers, printing became a time-consuming chore. “In some cases, it was taking four times longer to complete a print job. The printer would lose communication, not print for long periods, or take 15+ minutes to complete a print job. It wasn’t consistent,” Leanger says. “And it was a lot more cumbersome for staff to print than it had been in the past.”

Wasting time was bad, but the frustration the staff was experiencing was worse. “They would hit print, and the printer wouldn’t fire up,” he says. “So they were left wondering, did it print? It just didn’t seem like it was working. They didn’t know if it was going to print when they hit ‘Print’ or if they’d go down to the copier and their documents wouldn’t be ready.”

The IT team would receive as many as 10 print-related tickets daily and allocate most of their time to diagnosing and fixing those printing issues. “Sometimes the job would go through while we were testing it, but other times it would take 20+ minutes because the system sent the print job to the cloud and all the way back here to the printers. It was a convoluted workflow for printing.”

David Leanger and the Robbinsdale School District IT team knew they needed a better print management solution.

After comparing several options, they chose PrinterLogic for its clean user interface and direct IP print environment. “The print job goes directly from the workstation to the printer. It doesn’t have to go through the cloud and back, which makes it much faster and reduces overall network traffic,” Leanger says.

Switching to PrinterLogic has made things much easier for staff. “Of the different options we considered, PrinterLogic had the nicest, cleanest interface for our staff by far,” says Leanger.

When new staff is hired, their account is automatically created and synced to PrinterLogic through Microsoft Azure without Leanger’s team having to lift a finger. This step is now completed before new employees start their first day on the job.

“By day one, their account is already created and set up in PrinterLogic. We don’t even have to think about it. They just log in the first time, and it’s ready for them to start printing,” Leanger says.

PrinterLogic’s Self-Service Printer Installation Portal makes it easy for staff to connect to printers instantly. “One of the best things about PrinterLogic is having a single webpage that staff can go to, find their building, find their printer, and just click on it,” he adds. “It makes setup so easy, and it’s not something that other companies we looked at offered. The ease of use has been great.”

With IP-controlled printing, staff can visit a different school for resource days or meetings, and their devices will auto-install the printer on-site. “It makes it that much easier for our staff. Printers are installed for them without them even realizing it. They can just use them when they need to,”  says Leanger.

With PrinterLogic, printing is more reliable than it’s ever been. “I can’t think of the last time printer services were down. Right now, we have  99.999% uptime,” Leanger says. Robbinsdale School District has dramatically dropped helpdesk tickets for printing issues outside of broken hardware, resulting in easier, faster, and more streamlined printing for both end users and IT.

All of those numbers are great, but it’s the ease of use for staff members that David Leanger and the Robbinsdale Schools IT value the most:

“It just works. The staff don’t think about it. We’ve been very happy,” he says. 

Robbinsdale School District will add Secure Release Printing soon, further reducing costs.

Leanger goes on to share the upcoming functionalities and possibilities he’s excited about by saying, “We still get jobs that sit in the printer because people forget about them. PrinterLogic’s Secure Release Printing will eliminate that problem.”

“PrinterLogic gave us everything we wanted and needed, and it’s giving us the ability to grow and expand what we can do with printing,” he adds. “Now, we can reach our full potential.”