Branch Office Direct Print (BODP) Logging in Windows Server 2012 R2

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Applies To: Windows Server 2012 R2

Branch Office Direct Print (BODP) Logging Overview

Windows Server 2012 R2 allows admins to take advantage of the Branch Office Direct Printing feature without having to sacrifice print job logging information.

This enables admins to confidently deploy BODP to save their organization bandwidth and improve connectivity without losing the ability to track print jobs and get logs to help with troubleshooting.

Branch Office Direct Print (BODP) Logging Configuration

This feature is enabled by default for all new print queues, but the configuration may be viewed and configured with Windows PowerShell.

The "set-printer" and "get-printer" cmdlets have been extended with two new parameters.

Name

Type

Description

branchOfficeLoggingEnabled

Boolean

Enables or disables logging for branch office queues. $true by default. Cannot be specified for unshared queues or queues that do not have Branch Office enabled.

branchOfficeOfflineLogSize

Integer

Specifies the maximum size of the offline log size on the client, in megabytes. Default is 10mb and a value of zero disables logging. This file persists logging data if the server is offline or unreachable.

Branch Office Direct Print (BODP) Logging Limitations

This feature is limited in the following manner:

  • This feature requires a Windows 8.1 client and Windows Server 2012 R2.

  • Programmatic configuration of the offline log file size can only be accomplished through Windows PowerShell. A Group Policy is not available.

  • The following non-critical events are not logged.

    • Paused (Event ID 308)

    • Resumed (Event ID 309)

    • Deleted (Event ID 310)

    • Timed Out (Event ID 314)

Branch Office Direct Print (BODP) Logging Diagram

The following chart illustrates BODP Logging.

With this feature, a new communication channel for job event data is created by means of a new RPC entry point named LogBranchOfficeJobInfo. An authenticated client can send job events through this API and the server will add those events to its Event Log as if the job had been processed on the server itself.