Printer redirection enables users to redirect a print job from a remote application or desktop to their local printer, which can be connected to the user's computer or be a local network printer attached via an IP address. RAS Universal Printing simplifies the printing process and solves most printer driver issues by eliminating the need for a remote server to have a printer driver for a specific local printer on the client side. Therefore, a user can print regardless of which printer they have installed locally, and the RAS administrator doesn't have to install a printer driver for each printer connected to the local network.
Fonts need to be embedded so that when printing a document using Universal Printing the document is copied to the local spooler of the client machine to be printed. If the fonts are not present on the client machine the print out would not be correct.
To control the embedding of fonts within a print job use the Fonts Management tab page and check/uncheck the option Embed Fonts.
To exclude a specific font type from being embedded, click Tasks > Add in the Exclude the following Fonts from embedding section and select a font from the list.
To automatically install a specific font type on servers and clients, click Tasks > Add in the Auto install fonts section and select the fonts from the list.
Note: By default, fonts added to the auto-install list will be excluded from the embedding list because the fonts would be installed on the Windows clients, therefore, there is no need for them to be embedded. Clear the option Automatically exclude font from embedding in the select font dialog so the font is not excluded from the embedding list.
To reset the list of excluded fonts to default, click Tasks > Reset to default.
You can also specify a universal printing compression policy. For more info see Client Policies > Experience.
A system administrator can control the list of client-side printer drivers which should be allowed or denied the Universal Printing redirection privileges.
Using this functionality you can:
Avoid server resource overloading by non-useful printer redirection. Since the majority of users choose to redirect all local printers (this is default setting), a large number of redirected devices is created on the server which are not really used. It's mostly related to various paperless printers like PDFCreator, Microsoft XPS Writer, or various FAX devices.
Avoid server instability with certain printers. There are some printers that might create server instability (spooler service component) and as the result deny printing services as a whole for all connected users. It is very important that the administrator has the ability to include such drivers to the "deny" list to continue running printing services.
To specify printer drivers:
In the Parallels RAS Console, navigate to Universal Printing > Printer drivers.
In the Mode drop-down list, select which printers should be allowed redirection from the following options:
Allow redirection of printers using any driver — (default) This option places no limitation on the type of driver a printer is using to use redirection privileges.
Allow redirection of printers using one of the following drivers — Only the printers using the drivers listed in the box below the Mode field are allowed redirection. To add a printer driver to the list, click the Tasks > Add (or click the + icon) and type the printer driver name in the edit field provided.
Don't allow redirection of printers that use one of the following drivers — This is probably the most useful option in the context of this feature. The printers that use the drivers specified in the list will be denied redirection privileges. All other printers will be allowed to use redirection. To add a printer driver to the list, click the Tasks > Add (or click the + icon) and type the printer driver name in the edit field provided.
To delete a printer driver from the list, click Tasks > Delete or click the minus-sign icon.
When done making changes, click the Apply button to save the changes.
Please make a note of the following:
When adding a printer driver to the list, type the printer driver name, not the printer name.
The driver names comparison is case insensitive and requires full match (no partial names, no wildcards).
The settings that you specify on this tab affect the entire Site (not an individual server).
To configure RAS Universal Printing, select the Universal Printing category in the RAS Console.
By default, the Universal Printing driver is automatically installed together with an RD Session Host Agent, VDI Guest VM Agent, or a Remote PC Agent. Therefore, upon adding a server to the Farm, the Universal Printing is already enabled. The Universal Printing driver is available as a 32 bit and 64 bit version.
To enable or disable the Universal Printing support for a server, right-click the server in the Servers in Site list and click Enable or Disable in the context menu.
By default, Parallels RAS renames printers using the following pattern: %PRINTERNAME% for %USERNAME% by Parallels. For example, let's say a user named Alice has a local printer named Printer1. When Alice launches a remote application or desktop, her printer is named Printer1 for Alice by Parallels.
To change the default printer renaming pattern, select the Universal printing category. On the Universal printing tab, specify a pattern in the Printer rename pattern field. To see the predefined variables that you can use, click the [...] button next to the input field. The variables are:
%CLIENTNAME% — the name of the client computer.
%PRINTERNAME% — the name of a printer on the client side.
%SESSIONID% — RAS session ID.
%USERNAME% — the name of the user connected to RAS.
<2X Universal Printer> — This is a legacy mode where only one printer object will be created in the RDP session.
You can also use certain other characters in a printer renaming pattern. For example, you can define the following commonly used pattern: Client/%CLIENTNAME%#/%PRINTERNAME%. Using this pattern (and the user named Alice from the example above), a local printer will be named Client/Alice's Computer#/Printer1
You can specify a different printer renaming pattern for each server in the Servers in Site list.
Note: Redirected printers are only accessible by the administrator and the user who redirected the printer.
When client-defined printers are redirected to a remote session, it takes time and impacts overall session establishing time. To improve user experience, you can reuse previously created user's printers. To do so, on the Universal printing tab, set the Printer retention option to On.