How to trap specific details about all print jobs

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Hi there,

for my sins I have been asked to provide a way of accounting for printing jobs presented to all our printers on our 8 print servers...

I'm using the Microsoft Log Parser to get the necessary bits out of each event 10 entry on all servers (printer, user doc name etc) and then putting it into MYSql for access from a nice PHP from end..

This, though, doesn't give me the detail such as "colour" or "duplexing"...

I've had a read through the info in this page Printing Architecture[^] and I think I would have to write a "Print Monitor" to interrogate each print job as it goes through the spooler and then find a way to log it in sql or something...

Has anyone done this?? can you give me a few pointers on how and where to start...

I realise that we could probably just buy something, but where is the fun in that :)

Thanks
nhsal69

Posted 4-Feb-11 2:39am

nhsal69

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Yusuf 4-Feb-11 10:46am

Don't put a comment in the place of Answer.

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Abhinav S · Answer 1 · 2011-02-04T02:53:00

Solution 1

You might want to use a third party control like this[^] to monitor the printer queue.

Posted 4-Feb-11 2:53am

Abhinav S

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Yusuf 4-Feb-11 10:45am

FROM OP: [Moved from answer]
Thanks for that.. it actually led me here:

Monitoring a Printer Queue from VB.NET[http://www.codeproject.com/KB/printing/printwatchvbnet.aspx?msg=2654334]
and between them I'm sure I can come up with something that'll do what I want...

Cheers
nhsal69