Too many printers in policy?

[mike_pinto]

Hey all, I have already created a case about this, but thought I would ask here as well. Unfortunately, all of our teachers either have their own printer or share with another. We have always managed these through MCX, however this year we're moving away from that.

The problem I'm having is the client hanging while attempting to run the policy. I'm assuming this is due to the amount of printers I am trying to add - on average about 60-80 per site.

This brings me to my current setup that I've Frankenstein'd together. I have a policy that will create a receipt (to decide which event to run next in the future), run a custom event to install printer drivers, which will then run another custom event to finally add the printers with a script.

I've been running this through Self Service and this will crash about a quarter of the time while the rest it will complete without error. The suggestion was to break down the policy until I can get it to run successfully. We can then separate policies by building or floor or some other scheme. This is going to add so many more policies than I'd like. Does anyone have any other ideas?

[AVmcclint]

Probably the best possible way to approach this may be to create a Printers category in Self Service and just make single policies for each printer that installs the drivers for only that printer. That way you don't install every printer known to man on a computer that may only use 1 or 2 at any time. Have users just install the printers they want from Self Service and it's a lot more efficient and stable. If you don't want to manage 60-80 separate policies, then maybe meet in the middle and create policies that contain a group of printers on a floor or in a building. It would keep the number of printers being installed on a given machine to a minimum and keep the number of policies to manage down to a possibly more reasonable number.

Breaking it up like this also allows you to limit access to install specific printers (like expensive large format color or the CEO's office printer) if your organization has such a need.