Network Address Book (LDAP) for embedded fax? or for Scan to home from Not-Logged-In printer use

[PartTimeGeek]

You just blew MY mind because you took it even further that I did:

I was thinking:

Services Screen

Choose Email, Choose Network Address book, Search for user, Scan to that email

Choose Fax, Choose Network Address Book, Search for user, Fax to the fax number stored in the AD user

Choose Scan to Home, Choose Network Address Book, Search for user, Scan to that user's home folder.

LDAP query executed after choosing a service.

But your idea? Whoah  Holy occam's razor, batman!

Good stuff man.

And good commentary on the status of colorqube / solid ink.

We are thinking about replacing our dead / Ancient HP Color Laserjet 5500dn with the 8880 with three trays, we could do our quarterly reporting runs to that and free up the MFC, because the output would look the same as our clients are used to and like.

I am going to do some research on Xerox's position / predominant marketing push to see if it is a good way to go.

Thanks!

Answered!

[Joe Arseneau · Accepted solution]

OK, I totally get it now, my limited understanding comes from the fact you can only use LDAP within Email.

What you want is to have a button for LDAP itself on the home screen.

So a guy named Dave goes to the CQ and select Services Home > Ldap Dave searches the LDAP for Dave.

When Dave is selected in the results it prompts him to choose

1.Fax

2.Email

3.Home

So if he choose Fax, it launches Fax with him prefilled, Email launches email with him prefilled and same with Home.

That is a really simple, awesome idea and it pains me to think it never occurred to me.

As for the Colorqube line, I don't know the future plans. Although if they didn't make a public statement I couldn't answer the question anyway.

I really like the solid ink output, but the market, understandably, doesn't like the limitations. I see it from both aspects.

If you were able to double the RAM (You can physically, but the device won't acknowledge it) to make the interface be as smooth as the rest of the Xerox line, it would vastly improve the product. The trouble they would be having at this point would likely be POwer based.

To get an Energy start rating takes a lot more now than it did 5 years ago. Xerox had to drop the Standby power mode to a max of 30 minutes from what was previously allowed to be up to 4 hours for example. Solid Ink devices either stay heated to keep the ink a liquid (burn much more power), or save power and cool the ink, purge the lines (Hello 5 minutes for first page out time)

All this is conjecture though, I am far from a developer, and not an Engineer either, so these are just guesses, but they are not exactly un-educated.

[PartTimeGeek]

Firstly, thanks for the replies I am in agreement and understand it is not a bug.

I just went digging so deep into the hyperlinked CWIS pathways that by the time I actually hit gestalt on the whole thing I suddenly "grokked" that it coulldnt be done and I was frustrated in the time sink I allowed myself to slide into.

I will stop pestering you after this post.. but I figured that if nobody posts questions / wishlists (wishful thinking, more likely?) like this, nobody else will ever see the ideas/concerns/feature cravings. If people do, developers or end users, perhaps it might stimulate something in future consideration.

Some good points you made, but to clarify:

Agreed, Template Pool or Swipe cards might be worth considering

Yes I looked into template pools when I first was hired and was new to connectkey until I found after some trial and error and searching, that I needed some other software product outside of the MFC to enable the template pools / repositories. in a larger scale organization that would make sense. Swipe cards are not an expenditure this company would make. I am here to set the printer back up when needed, it has just been a long road with the problematic 9303 we just replaced which turned out to be a lemon.

They do if they want to autopopulate their from address,

From: address in the scan to email is not a concern for us, most users use it to scan things to themselves or another user within our exchange org, so there is a timestamped paper trail in the audited mailboxes, among other reasons. Very few send outside of the company at present.

Sorry about my clarity, I am a bit dazed as I have pulled my third >12 hour day in a row and crossed the fax interface with the scan to home in my description earlier :)

the to address would use the credentials in LDAP, which would be of no use in scan to home since it would not scan to their directory, just a generic, might as well be a mapped drive for scan at that point.

What I was trying to say is that since the underlying LDAP query returns the specific home directory for any user whose name is entered into the Network Address book search widget, and since scan to home already makes use of the common LDAP settings hence can receive the home folder in the query results, (albeit feeding it a query limited to the name or cn of the the xerox-logged-in-user), it would be logical to have the network address book widget avalable as a mode the way scan to email uses it. Select your name, query comes back WITH the specific home directory for said user which would be used by scan to home if the query had come from the logged-in-user if it was done that way, credentials for the SMB write operation (and the ldap query in our case) are set to a comon AD user with write permissions to all users home folders.

 The beauty of this is that with very little upkeep, and very simple walk up ease of use, a small to medium business can set up a couple of ldap fields, a standard scanning template, and boom, use Exchange / Outlook / AD to maintain one set of information that all their devices use, and the xerox slaves to it.

In most small businesses that I have done consulting for over the past 10 years, and even larger entities like SIAC (NYSE technology division, where I worked for a few years before that) they really don't implement user logins at the MFCs in most workgroups. The only places I have seen it (where the customer is not at a tier that would spend the money on swipecard infrastructure and maintenance) is with some Konica-Minolta machines with real slide out ultrabook-style keyboards)

Again, this is nothing like scan to home, they are searching for a place to send to, not automatically populating a personal home directory

You ARE actually looking for somewhere to send to, just like scan to email, but instead of utilizing the email address returned by the ldap query, you are scanning to an SMB share returned by the query.

The scan to home template would (just like the workflow scanning smb templates) have the same designated "scansmb" AD user that can only do ldap queries and have the rights to place a file in a subdirectory of the home directory returned by the ldap query. All user home folder shares have write permissions for that user.

We do this with workflow scanning templates now. "scanuser" is stored in every template, allowing us to copy templates for new users and the only thing we have to change in the copy is the name, description and target share (which happens to be the home folder of the user the template was created for) There's still a lot of clicks but not half as bad as it was before I learned the trick.

I get it, not a bug, but a good idea?  (Wishful thinking :-)

Anyway, I thank you for your time and thoughtfulness.

One last question: are they abandoning the Solid Ink / ColorQube line? or will there be a totally new model that uses Solid ink to replace the 9303 flagship?

Thanks

Chris.

[Joe Arseneau]

• The scan method I am referring to as an example is the EMAIL scan method, not selecting from a list

Email is the one function where LDAP works.

• I would love it if I didnt have to even do an import, and the xerox could dynamically present whatever information is already In AD for relevant fields for faxing and scan to home the same way it does with scan to Email.

Agreed, it doesn't though. It isn't a bug, for whatever reason, the developers don't code for it.

• Workflow scanning is a more time consuming way to set up SMB scanning to each user's home folder separately. And we use it because it is the only way to do it when nobody here will deal with logging into the xerox for every job (there are TONS of jobs all day)

Agreed, Template Pool or Swipe cards might be worth considering

• It is vastly easier to configure a couple of fields in the LDAP config for the xerox than to use any other method

Agreed

• I have LDAP configured and working for Email scanning; it is intergral to our workflow, and requires no imports or manual configs each time we have had to have the 9303 re-done.

Agreed

• Nobody needs to be logged into the xerox to use it

They do if they want to autopopulate their from address, the to address would use the credentials in LDAP, which would be of no use in scan to home since it would not scan to their directory, just a generic, might as well be a mapped drive for scan at that point.

• They select EMAIL from the services panel, select the network address book, and enter any part of their first or last name or cn (I have custom filter with ambiguous name resolution, it also is filtered to the members of an EmailScanUsers AD Group)

• Up pops the Active Directory user , which contains their email address, which is used to scan to email without logging in.

Again, this is nothing like scan to home, they are searching for a place to send to, not automatically populating a personal home directory

• Email Scanning has both address books, it would be a logical extension to add the network address book to the Scan to Home and Fax equivalent functions.

Agreed

Also, I am surprised to hear that the 9303 is at end of life, considering our vendor told us it was the latest and greatest.

I am new here so I was not privy to my company's experience with the last  model, which I found out was exactly the same hardware with a new Operating System but no increase in CPU power etc.

It launched May of 2011, the hardware can't keep up with the 073 firmware releases, it will continue on 072 releases which will not gain the new features

Oh, and it has McAfee's name in the sofware.. ugh. After 20 years of doing IT that is a name I havent liked since the days when it was lean an mean and the best in the biz.

The McAfee thing is nothing like their AV, it will make no performance hit at all.

[PartTimeGeek]

Thanks for the quick reply!

>If you are not logged into the device how could it possibly know your home directory?

>If you are picking the scan location from a list then you are using a template or the address book, that has no relation to scan to home, you are just doing an FTP/SMB scan.

How could it possibly know? How does the EMAIL scanning service know the email address field from the AD record when using the network address book?

1. The scan method I am referring to as an example is the EMAIL scan method, not selecting from a list
2. I would love it if I didnt have to even do an import, and the xerox could dynamically present whatever information is already In AD for relevant fields for faxing and scan to home the same way it does with scan to Email.
3. Workflow scanning is a more time consuming way to set up SMB scanning to each user's home folder separately. And we use it because it is the only way to do it when nobody here will deal with logging into the xerox for every job (there are TONS of jobs all day)
4. It is vastly easier to configure a couple of fields in the LDAP config for the xerox than to use any other method
5. I have LDAP configured and working for Email scanning; it is intergral to our workflow, and requires no imports or manual configs each time we have had to have the 9303 re-done.
6. Nobody needs to be logged into the xerox to use it
7. They select EMAIL from the services panel, select the network address book, and enter any part of their first or last name or cn (I have custom filter with ambiguous name resolution, it also is filtered to the members of an EmailScanUsers AD Group)
8. Up pops the Active Directory user , which contains their email address, which is used to scan to email without logging in.
9. Email Scanning has both address books, it would be a logical extension to add the network address book to the Scan to Home and Fax equivalent functions.
10. 
11. You can use the field mapping utility in LDAP setup to prove that a xerox-non-logged-in user can derive a home folder and a fax number, without being logged into the xerox as said user
12. 
13. Oh, and by the way, this is a HUGELY useful custom filter, which can resolve users even if they are in groups nested inside the group you specify as memberof
14. 

 The point is, All the information we need is in our exchange server, and hence the global catalog, and available via LDAP.

Maintaining contacts in one place makes MFC lemons almost a trivial issue to deal with.

Just point the printer at LDAP, put in your filter, set up the default template for scan to home email and fax, and you are done.

Also, I am surprised to hear that the 9303 is at end of life, considering our vendor told us it was the latest and greatest.

I am new here so I was not privy to my company's experience with the last  model, which I found out was exactly the same hardware with a new Operating System but no increase in CPU power etc.

Oh, and it has McAfee's name in the sofware.. ugh. After 20 years of doing IT that is a name I havent liked since the days when it was lean an mean and the best in the biz.

Thanks!

[Joe Arseneau]

If you are not logged into the device how could it possibly know your home directory?

If you are picking the scan location from a list then you are using a template or the address book, that has no relation to scan to home, you are just doing an FTP/SMB scan.

Why not just use the Address book? It does fax, scan to email, scan to SMB/FTP (ala Scan to), it can be exported as a CSV that is cross compatible with every current Xerox MFP

It is vastly easier to upload the CSV file than to get networking setup and get LDAP working.

Or setup a template per user and don't point at repositories.

Then you can just Clone the printer (The 93xx has pretty much reached End of line development wise, so you don't have to worry about incompatible Clone files since there will never be an 073.xxx.xxx.xxxxx firmware release due to the hardware limitations.

But yeah, none of the Xerox devices have the fax from LDAP ability.

[PartTimeGeek]

I find it odd that when you set up LDAP on a ColorQube 9303, or other connectkey devices, you can use the network address book to scan to email addresses derived from, say an Active Directory environment, but, even though the user mapping configuration page shows that queries retrieve a fax number, it is utterly useless within the context of sending a standard phone line fax.

We would like to keep customer and vendor contacts in our global catalog so that we can have the fax numbers and email addresses in one place. When we have to replace an MFC with a new model, or we have had to alt-boot the lemon one we had and reconfigure it from scratch no less than 6 times over 6 months, we would not have to repopulate a device address book every time.

We also have been forced 6 times to fully repopulate Workflow Scanning templates for each active directory user to scan to their home folder, using only one limited access AD user credential with permissons dedicated to just doing ldap queires, and the rights to write to the AD user's home directory.

We would love it if we could scan to home using network address book with the same ease with which we use Scan to Email with network address book (all while not logged in to the colorqube)

The way our office workflow goes, there is no patience or time for tapping in a username and password every visit to the printer's front panel on a touch screen that is not always responsive or fast. I know I suggested it and got shot down.

Anyway, I was wondering if this was something that has been asked for in the past, or if it is possible to implement

Thank you!