In this video, we’ll dive into the permissions that can be assigned to printers. The permissions assigned to printers are a bit different from the standard NTFS permissions. Understanding how they work and operate will give you, the administrator, much better efficiency with controlling your printers.
Show lesson contentPrint
0:36 The first permission we’ll explore is Print. It does as the name suggests; users with this permission are able to print to the printer. In addition, the user with the Print permission will also have control over their own print job in the print queue. By control, we mean they’ll have the ability to cancel, pause or restart any print jobs in the queue that they have submitted. They do not, however, have access to print jobs submitted by other users. You would give this permissions to any user you would want to be able to simply print to a printer.
Manage Documents
1:06 The next permission we’ll discuss is ‘Manage Documents’. A user that is given this permission is allowed to control any of the print jobs in the specific printer’s queue. This basically means they have control over cancelling, pausing and restarting any print jobs that happen to come into the printers queue. This includes any print jobs sent to the printer, including print jobs from other users. You would generally give this permission to an office administrator.
Manage Printers
1:28 The next permission is ‘Manage Printers’. This permission gives the user the ability to configure settings on the printer itself. Essentially users with this permission means that the user can change individual settings on the printer, configure permissions, and delete, rename or share the printer. You would generally give this to an administrator or perhaps a support technician. To have a look at the permissions on a printer, we will first open the Control Panel.
Accessing through Control Panel
1:49 From within the Control Panel, we will select “View Devices and printers” under “Hardware”. This will display all the devices installed on the computer including any printers that are installed. To take a look under the hood at the printer settings, we will right click one of the printers and select “Printer Properties”. Once the printer properties have opened, we will select the “Security” tab. Notice that when the Everyone object is selected, that the permissions below indicates that anyone that has been authenticated will be allowed to print to that printer as well as manage their print jobs on the printer, but they will be unable to control other user’s print jobs or change printer settings. Notice that when I select the “ALL APPLICATION PACKAGES” entry that it has the “Print” and “Manage documents” settings configured. If you are running an application that needs to manage documents on the printer, add the users that are running the application to this group. The “Manage documents” gives the user a little more power than just printing. If you have a user that is a little more tech savvy than other users, it might be smart to give them this access to help other users in the office. You would not normally give this access to regular users as it gives them access to delete other users’ print jobs. Notice that if you select the Administrator, they will have all 3 permissions. That is “Print”, “Manage documents”, and “Manage this printer”. The extra permission, “Manage this printer”, as previously explained allows users with this permission to configure settings on the printer. For example, any of the settings on any of the tabs can be changes if the user has this permission.
References
“Installing and Configuring Windows Server 2012 R2 Exam Ref 70-410” pg 102-103
“What are printer permissions?” http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows-vista/what-are-printer-permissions
Credits
Voice Talent: HP Lewis http://hplewis.com
Companion Document: Phillip Guld https://philguld.com
Video Production: Kevin Luttman http://www.KevinLuttman.com
Quality Assurance: Edward M http://digitalmaru.com