Universal Print is ready for business
Published Mar 02 2021 06:00 AM 58.4K Views
Microsoft

Today, we are proud to declare Universal Print is now generally available. Universal Print is the premier cloud print service available at scale to businesses and educational organizations.

Universal Print is ready for business. Thousands of customers have been using Universal Print since we announced public preview in July 2020. Universal Print has been deployed to Microsoft datacenters, and customers who have one of the following Windows or Microsoft 365 subscriptions can activate the Universal Print benefits for their workers. Go here for more detail on how to get started.

  • Microsoft 365 Business Premium
  • Windows 10 Enterprise E3, E5
  • Microsoft 365 Enterprise F3, E3, E5
  • Windows 10 Education A3, A5
  • Microsoft 365 Education A3, A5

 

Universal Print would not be complete without the support of print industry partners. And we are excited to see so many partners are announcing solutions that are Universal Print ready! You can easily identify hardware and software solutions on the Universal Print partner integrations page.

Many of you asked about printers supporting Universal Print out of the box, as they offer the best cloud print experience. Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Lexmark, Ricoh, Toshiba, and Xerox are currently delivering updates to existing devices or are bringing new printers to market with native Universal Print integration either today or later this year. Some partners are bringing intelligent edge devices to market that can quickly connect one or more printers to Universal Print, functioning as a connector. And for customers looking for print management solutions, a robust set of software partners are bringing software and cloud services that build on Universal Print.

 

Here is a short overview:

You can start registering Brother Universal Print ready printers with updated firmware.

Canon is a pioneer of Universal Print ready devices with the imageRUNNER ADVANCE DX and imageRUNNER ADVANCE Generation 3 portfolio of multifunction printers.

Celiveo 365 extends Universal Print to Intelligent Secure Pull Print and Tracking, full SAAS.

Epson will soon release a set of firmware updates so printers are Universal Print ready.

ezeep Hub by ThinPrint brings Universal Print to any printer as it functions as a secure connector device.

HP Inc has been working on a Workpath platform app so HP printers can be registered natively in Universal Print. The Workpath app will be available June 1.

Kofax has integrated Kofax ControlSuite with Universal Print delivering a seamless user experience for secure print and intelligent capture across the enterprise. Available today.

Konica Minolta partnered with Microsoft to integrate Dispatcher Paragon with Universal Print and made its bizhub i series Multifunction Printers Universal Print ready!

Kyocera will offer integration with the Universal Print on selected Kyocera devices.

Lexmark, an early Universal Print partner, has a large set of Universal Print ready printers available.

With MPS Monitor 2.0 and Universal Print integration, companies can enable printing from zero-trust networks and monitor printing devices.

MyQ made Universal Print and MyQ X integration available so customers can securely print from anywhere.

PaperCut is building native support for Universal Print into PaperCut MF and PaperCut NG. And don’t forget to read how PaperCut helped the Val Verde school district overcome the last hurdles to move to Microsoft 365 and Universal Print during the pandemic.

Pharos integrates their Beacon cloud services with Universal Print to secure your printers for authorized use, protect the confidentiality of printed documents, and enable printing from multiple desktop and mobile platforms.

PriApps’ enhanced integration with Universal Print allows users to securely release print jobs at any printer or multifunction printer, as well as track & analyze print usage, apply print rules & quotas, and assign cost codes to any print job.

Printix is a native cloud print management platform on Azure that extends the capabilities of Microsoft Universal Print with comprehensive modern printing features for all printers and multifunction devices.

Process Fusion’s UniPrint Infinity integrates with Universal Print to allow Print-to-Physical with Secure Release & Print-to-Digital for Process Automation.

Ringdale is enhancing Universal Print with FollowMe® to secure printing for hybrid environments.

Ricoh will start supporting Microsoft Universal Print including native support with our Smart Operation Panel application.

Toshiba e-BRIDGE multi-function printers have been tested to be compatible with the Universal Print connector.

With uniFLOW Online, users print from their Windows PCs to a single print queue and securely release their print jobs at any device after authentication regardless of the network configuration, including zero-trust networks with micro-segmentation.

Universal Print, together with Xerox® Workplace Cloud print management solution, adds a comprehensive layer of security and control across the print environment.

If you are looking to connect in-market printers to Universal Print, YSoft OMNI Bridge, a serverless edge device, is a secure and cost-effective cloud printing solution with high availability options that is generally available today.

YSoft SAFEQ print management solution, now offers a Universal Print connector. Y Soft is pleased to announce that it is globally available.

We are not done yet; additional partner will certainly be added as the momentum for Universal Print grows.

Universal Print will continuously evolve to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers.

Universal Print is available for Windows 10 devices today; however, workers are increasingly using smartphones and mobile devices for productivity. Today, we are announcing that later this summer workers will be able to use the browser of their choice to print documents from the OneDrive for Business web experience on any device. This functionality will be available for customers to test in preview and we will let you know in one of our next posts.

Dynamics 365 Business Central is a business application solution designed for small and midsized organizations. In release wave 1 available in April, Business Central will support printing via Universal Print so customers can send documents and reports to any of the printers registered with Universal Print.

Microsoft Endpoint Manager admins can download a Universal Print tool today that lets them deploy printers and set the default one on users’ Windows 10 devices we will make this workflow more seamless.

If you have not tried Universal Print yet, now is the time to get your feet wet. You can start small, no need to jump in headfirst. You can count on our 24/7 support to help you out or call on out FastTrack team to help you with the initial deployment.

We'd love to welcome you into the Universal Print Community where we update you on new features, partner solutions, and answer questions.

Technical details are available in the Universal Print documentation and if you cannot wait, go to TryNow.

18 Comments
Brass Contributor

Issa, Congratulations to you and the Universal Print team!   The team has done exceedingly well developing new cloud-based printing technologies and building a strong and inclusive ecosystem amongst all the print solution vendors.   Again, kudos to you and the team!

 

Copper Contributor

Is this available for GCC? If not, is there an ETA? Thanks!

Brass Contributor

I was following the development of this and was using the beta for a bit, so I was excited to see this launch. Unfortunately I think you've killed it with that licensing model. The idea that I'm supposed to spend time deploying a new print solution that requires me to keep an eye on usage to ensure I add extra packs of 500 jobs to that pool in plenty of time to prevent a complete shutdown in printing across the company is clownshoes thinking, and that 5 jobs per user starter limit is ridiculous.

 

To present a forecast of costs to get sign off on deploying something like this, I would need to have something like PaperCut in place for a few months to gather the information on how many print jobs are submitted across the company each month, and translate that into add-on packs. By the time I've deployed that why wouldn't I just keep on using it to manage my printers?

Microsoft

@Garrett Brown We are working on GCC. It is important but we don't have an ETA yet.  As soon as we have one, we'll share.

Iron Contributor

nclinch_0-1614893828728.png

So when is the Azure going to be updated?
When is the documentation going to be updated... is there anything we need to do to move from preview to GA?

Copper Contributor

Universal Print.pngAzure still showing this.  We have the correct licensing, as required per listed requirements from Microsoft, however are still unable to access this service.   

@RavenC1 Sorry to hear you're having issues accessing Universal Print. We'll need a bit more info to figure out what's going on. Can you please either open a support ticket or send me a message directly to collect the required info?

 

@nclinch and @RavenC1 The preview label will be removed from Azure Portal shortly.

Copper Contributor

@Braeden_Petruk_MSFT we have the same issue as @RavenC1 and I opened a support ticket for it. We see the preview too.

Copper Contributor

Hello Issa, is Microsoft Universal Print available for China?

Thanks

 
Brass Contributor

Print job limits being imposed is a really sneaky and unfortunate move that has removed a lot of enthusiasm I had for this product. As mentioned above, 5 print jobs pooled per license is absolutely unrealistic especially if it's a smaller company, and the price for adding on 500 jobs is way too high. I really hope this is reconsidered, as it is now I can't see this being recommended to any of our clients. Why should they have to pay to print from their own printers at the end of the day?

Copper Contributor

Completely agree with the previous criticisms of the licensing. We print a LOT and this licensing info took us straight from "we're definitely trying this" to "yeah, never happening."

Copper Contributor

Universal printing is a great concept, been following this for a while now. 

* I understand the need for print job licensing, but 5 licenses by default? That's really what we want, manage add on print licenses... 

* I hope you guys work on the way it's deployed through Endpoint configuration manager, I was surprised on how that's configured. 


I'll definitly keep an eye on this. 

Brass Contributor

My college campus was pretty excited about this product, but it is so far stillborn without native Mac support. While we don't have a requirement, over 85% of our students opt for Macs, and it seems counterintuitive to have to pay yet-another-partner to get that support.  Is native Mac support on the roadmap, and if so, when? 

Iron Contributor

5 print jobs per user per month as part of a M365 E5 plan? Are you guys joking?

Copper Contributor

Yep, print job limitations make this a no go.  Way too small a pool of print jobs.  For our firm, we'd blow through the monthly limit in about two days in our busiest time of year.  There's just not enough here to justify the cost.  I was all on board until I read the licensing model.

Iron Contributor

Same here, as soon we were made aware of the licensing costs and limitations, we had to stop talking about this. It is a nice product, but the licensing model is really poor. We will not use it going forward and from my networking group of IT professionals, everyone is thinking the same way. Nice idea, badly executed with this license model and no one will really use it.

Copper Contributor

The licensing model effectively kills this.  We were really keen on using this alongside uniFLOW Online so that we get follow me printing and secure scanning, but setting the maximum print jobs as low as 5 per user per month is absolutely ridiculous, especially given the money already shelled out by E3 and E5 customers.  Companies would need to have someone continuously monitoring usage to ensure sufficient add on packs were purchased in the allowance was close to being used up.

 

Another own goal by Microsoft I'm afraid.

Copper Contributor

Hi 
I would like to understand from BC's mobile App how to print Universal Printing with Bluetooth Printer. I manage to install a connector ZebraCPCL at Universal Printing connector. However, I was not able to link that connector with my physical Zebra printer using Bluetooth. Please enlighten me on this issue, if anyone encounter this before. 

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