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Thanks for joining us today for an AMA on Universal Print. We appreciate your questions and feedback—and look forward to continuing the discussion on the Windows community!
- thank you Meenah! there are some interesting question around. I really hope that universal print will be a universal solution to make on premises print services obsolete so that users can not only print from AVD but also from Windows clients and Windows Server from everywhere, at home, in Azure and on-premises. Is this the scope of Cloud Print?
- Issa_Khoury
Microsoft
Yes, we are helping cusomters who want to migrate from on premises server-based solution to a cloud print solution. Print from everywhere is in scope. We have Universal Print support for AVD in Windows 11. We prioritize the feedback we get from the Ideas at aka.ms/UPCommunity.
Welcome to the Universal Print Ask Microsoft Anything (AMA)! This live half hour gives you the opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback to the engineering and product teams building Windows. Introduce yourself by replying to this thread. Post each question in the Comment on this event… box above.
Supporting today's live Q&A are Isaa Khoury, Alan Meeus, Soemin Tjong, Priyanka Vegesna, and Jimmy Wu.
- Where can we get more details on what Universal Print can do, how we install, pricing, etc.? I thought this was going to be a learn about Universal Printing.
- Alan_MeeusIf you go to https://aka.ms/updocs you get all the documentation. It is a good place to start.
- Will you be considering lowering the cost per employee for Universal Print, or embedding it into the MS365 Business Premium SKU? Currently the pricing and features are not in-line with competing offerings from Printix for example
- Alan_MeeusGlenntja Universal Print is part of Business Premium. https://aka.ms/updocs is a good guide to help you get going.
- I already know this, however Universal Print licensing model is based on the amount of jobs - The one included in MS365 Business Premium includes 5 print jobs per licenced user pooled for the entire company - This is a nickel and diming model Although Business Premium includes a lot of value, Universal Print should be licenced per user as a small monthly cost, or bundled into other SKU's to increase value Printix for example allows easier installation, easier deployment, easier administration and that's for basically $0,99
- Will there be a SMB SKU for universal print? While printing is down, I can't see how a SMB can function using universal print when each employee only receives 5 print jobs per month? I would like to use it for smaller companies but with the limit set so low, it doesn't pay. --Tracy
- Issa_KhouryHi Tracy. Thanks for the feedback. Can you please provide more information about the situation you are seeing with smaller companies? Also for completeness, you probably know there are the add-on pack that can be purchased to increase the limit. In addition, the 5 prints per user per month are pooled. Some people don’t print at all in a given month leaving more capacity for others.
- This way of thinking is flawed and makes it needlessly complex As outlined above, it should be streamlined This is how it should be Solution #1 Business Premium includes a partial licence for Universal Print, however it's limited to printing on the devices with the Connector installed, and you cannot print across the internet Universal Printing SKU includes the full product for $1,5 per user per month and includes unlimited printing with full integration and access to print across the internet Solution #2 Business Premium includes the full version at no extra cost, increasing said SKU's value and the adoption As it stands now, no sane business, should make use of Universal Print as the licencing makes it needlessly complex and there is no killer feature - You really should consider making it easier, or giving an option where you do not need to consider purchasing 500, 1000, 10000, 100000 print jobs - Which none of your competitors are doing (Printix and Uniflow Online for example)
- Since March 2021 we see a lot of printer vendors struggling to keep up with their V3 drivers making them compatible with the needed security patches provided by Microsoft. If we think about Cloud printing how will this affect regular issues you have on-premises. like V3 printer drivers that are not packaged V3 drivers that packaged and "modern" but no longer properly signed (e.g. Seagull 2021 drivers), why there are so few vendors using V4 drivers and if so they have a lot of drawbacks in featureset compared to V3 Would we need V3 or V4 drivers with cloud printing and what about point and print, would this become legacy? Are printers supported that have very special features like sorting, different output, or special after print handling (stamping etc)?
- Jimmy_WuWith Universal Print, the printer driver used on the end-user's Windows client is a OS built-in class driver that automatically adjusts and shows the printer capabilities depending on what the physical printer can support. Customers would not need to worry about managing printer drivers. On the physical printer side of the deployment, Universal Print ready printers connects and supports Universal Print directly so no printer drivers are needed as well. For printers that need to use the Connector software package as the proxy between the printer and Universal Print, then there is still printer drivers involved and need to be managed.
