Planning DCE Extended Environment Groups

The level of printing and administrative functions you can enable spans a wide range; you will want to plan to provide the appropriate functions to your users. Understanding how to group categories of users and provide appropriate printer and queue access and event notification helps simplify a complex print environment.

HPDPS is designed to support three types of users: end-users, printer operators, and administrators. After you install HPDPS in the DCE Extended Environment, you might create a pd_operator group and a pd_admin group using the pddcesetup command. You can define additional groups that have operator, administrator, or end-user levels of permission. For instance, if all of your operators have global access to all servers and printers, you might need only the default operator group, pd_operator. If, however, you have operators with overlapping responsibility or specialized responsibility, such as supporting printer devices used for confidential information, you might want to define additional groups. See pddcesetup(1M) for more information.

Security Considerations

HPDPS security is based primarily on the security services of DCE, and so is available only in the DCE Extended Environment. As you define your groups, you will want to plan to use DCE authorization to control access to printers, servers, and queues. You may have certain printer devices that all users might use and other printer devices that only selected users may access. You can configure logical printers to restrict printer use to certain types of printing, such as duplexed printing. If you have more than one logical printer associated with the same queue, you can set up the security for those logical printers so that some users will have access to all the features of the printer devices and others can use only certain features. See Chapter 8 “Managing DCE Security for HPDPS ” for detailed information.

Notification Considerations

HPDPS provides highly flexible tailoring of event notification for each of its objects. You can select event categories rather than individual events when you set up the notification for any HPDPS object. These categories correspond to the needs of each type of group as described in the following topics. See Chapter 7 “Using Notification” for detailed information.

Planning User Groups

In a DCE Extended Environment, you might group your users according to their physical locations, the type of printing they do, the hours they work, the priority level of their work, or whatever is appropriate in your environment. You can restrict the use of printers for special purposes by creating a special user group when you define an HPDPS logical printer. See “Planning a Group for People Who Will Use Restricted Printers ” in Chapter 8 for more information about setting up restricted printers. By default, the person who submits a job receives notification of selected printing events associated with the job. If, however, you need to make sure others are notified about print events, you can modify the notification profile for the job. See Chapter 7 “Using Notification” for more information.

Planning Printer Operator Groups

Printer operators perform activities that keep the printer hardware up and running. An operator might repair or replace malfunctioning parts, add toner, or perform preventative maintenance. You might only need one default operator group to support the monitoring of printers across your site. The pddcesetup command creates a default operator group, pd_operator, for your use in a DCE Extended Environment. This group has read and write access to the HPDPS objects to which the group is assigned.

Alternatively, you might have different types of support, such as departmental support, for which you want to define additional operator groups. Printer operators can receive messages that indicate printer devices require intervention, or, they can monitor routine messages associated with other HPDPS objects, such as spoolers and queues. By default, only the person who creates a given object receives notification on that object. You can modify the notification profile for each object to support notifying other people. Selecting the class-physical-printer-attention category of events ensures that the printer operator will receive all event messages related to problems at the printer. See Chapter 7 “Using Notification” for more information.

Planning System Operator Groups

Another group you may want to integrate into your print environment is for people who are responsible for managing the flow of jobs through the system. As long as users are sending a balanced number and consistent types of jobs to the printers, and the printer devices are on-line and working well, the job flow requires little attention. However, many sites find that a heavy job flow with a broad mix of small and large jobs, high and low priority jobs, and printers that are occasionally off-line, requires the day-to-day intervention by a print system operator who can address queue backlog, promote jobs in the queues, and monitor the job flow to ensure jobs are running smoothly.

You can create individual groups for your print system operators depending on which sets of queues they manage, or you might find that the default pd_operator group meets your needs in this area. This group has read and write access to the HPDPS objects to which it is assigned. Print system operators might want to receive all attention messages that indicate an HPDPS object requires intervention. And, they might want to monitor routine status messages when troubleshooting job flow problems. Selecting the attention category of event messages for queues, spoolers, or jobs ensures that the print system operator receives information about problems with job flow. See Table 7-2 “Event Classes ” for more information.

Planning Administrator Groups

A significant role in the increasingly complex client-server printing area is performed by the administrator who defines the logical and physical configuration of the print environment, creates the objects needed, and makes real-time adjustments to the configuration as it develops to match the printing needs of the site. Consider grouping your administrators according to the servers or DCE cells they manage. You might find that the default pd_admin group created by the pddcesetup command meets your needs. The pd_admin group has DCE read, write, and delete capability on the system. This enables the administrator not only to monitor the system, but also to configure the system, adding and deleting objects as needed to improve the effectiveness of the print environment.