Any Details known about Poolprinters ?

[Former Member]

Dear Community,

is there any information about poolprinters ( SPAD Host Spool Access Method "P") available additional to the help.sap.com ( ["Printer pools"|http://help.sap.com/saphelp_nw70/helpdata/EN/d9/4a938451ea11d189570000e829fbbd/frameset.htm] )?

The following info is seeked:

• how is the lock (manual) of a printer in the pool is handled

• how is dealt with, when one printer is currently in use by a longer spool request

Or simply: what are the actual selection criteria for selecting a printer from the pool.

I did not find any official info aubout this neither on hel.sap.com nor in the Notes.

can anyone give me some hints ?

SAP Basis is 7.00 SP 13

regards

Stefan

[JP_Barcenas]

Hi Stefan,

This will work even if one (or more) of the output devices is locked.

When you print something to the Printer Pool, an spool request is created with the pool printer as destination device. Once the output request is created, the physical printer is selected. A locked printer will never be selected. If all the printers in the pool are locked, then the output request will get the status "Printer is Locked" and it will be processed until one of the printers from the pool is available again.

Now, the only thing I don't like from pooled printers is that if one of the printers is offline for any reason (no paper, for example), the pool device will still send output requests to it and those will stay in "Waiting" status. Nevertheless, you can overcome this by using Logical Output Devices.

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Juan

[Former Member]

Hi

As far as I know the printing pool is used, if you want to print a single document to more than one printer at a single point.

In printing pool, you add some of your printers that requires the same printout. Then when you specify the print from SAP instead of actual printer name you specifies the pool name.

So if you want to print to a specific printer then instead of Print pool name, specify the direct printer name.

And if one of the printer is performing the large spool then the specific pool request would wait for the current request to be completed. And then the pool request would be completed.

[Former Member]

Thank you Deepak for your answer.

the way we want to use poolprinters is to print spoolrequests once on one of the printers in the pool.

So we want to use it as a loadbalancer and failover-light. It's not intended to print copies on different printers.

Example: We have two printers PR01 and PR02 listed in printerpool BILLPRINT.

Now we start a print job on BILLPRINT.

The documentation i've linked to in my post says that the printer (PR01 or PR02) would be selected more-or-less randomly.

So let's say PR01 was selected.

So my questions are:

What happens if this printer is locked in the SAP-System ? Will it be selected and then the spool waits or will the other printer be selected ?

What happens , if we start a second printjob on BILLPRINT while the first one is still printing on PR01 ?

kind regards

Stefan