Scheduling alternate printing times

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Scheduling alternate printing times

One way to maximize the use of printers is to schedule alternate printing times for long documents or certain types of documents. For example, if printer traffic is heavy during the day, you can postpone printing of long documents by routing them to a printer that prints only during off-hours. The print spooler continues to accept documents, but it does not send them to the destination printer until the designated start time.

Instead of dedicating an actual print device for only off-hour printing, which is not an efficient use of resources, you can set different logical printers for the same print device and configure each with different available times. One printer might be available from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM, while the other is available 24 hours a day. You can then tell users to send long documents to the printer available only during off-hours, and all other documents to the printer available all the time. To set up printer availability times, see Schedule alternate printing times.

You can also differentiate the two printers with different priority levels to print certain types of documents before any other types, regardless of time of day. To set priority levels, see Set different print priority to different groups.