Zebra Printer Management module

The Zebra Printer Management module allows an administrator to remotely manage configuration settings and act on Zebra printers that are discoverable on the corporate network.

Important: This module is supported for the IBM® MaaS360® platform 10.70 and later releases, and requires IBM MaaS360 Cloud Extender® version 2.95 and the new Cloud Extender Configuration Tool.

How the module works

The Zebra Printer Management module uses the Cloud Extender to manage Zebra printers that are discovered over multiple subnets on the corporate network. The administrator can also use multiple Cloud Extenders for areas on the subnets that are not reachable from the same network where the Cloud Extender is located.

The MaaS360 Cloud Extender printer sends an alert directly to the SMTP server, which then sends out an email alert to notify administrators of the issue with the printer. (The administrator configures the SMTP server address and the email addresses that receive the alert from a policy setting in the IBM MaaS360 Portal. See Configuring a Zebra Printer policy in the IBM MaaS360 Portal for more information about this setting.)

The module functions as follows.
  • Discovers Zebra printers (any model that supports the Zebra Link-OS) on specific subnets on the corporate network and can use multiple Cloud Extenders to manage different areas of the network (subnet search) if needed.
  • Queries Zebra printers by using the Zebra Link-OS API for status and attribute settings (few managed by policy settings that are configured from the IBM MaaS360 Portal).
  • Builds payloads of Zebra printers and their attributes and then sends the data to the IBM MaaS360 Portal.
  • Applies policy settings to selected attributes for each discovered Zebra printer.
  • Takes administrative actions on specific Zebra printers.
    Note: For the 10.70 platform release, the Print Configuration action (prints the current configuration for a specific printer) and the Reset Printer action (sends a printer reset command to a specific printer (soft reset), but does not wipe all printer settings) are only supported.

Zebra Printer Management architecture

The following diagram illustrates the Zebra Printer Management architecture.
Zebra architecture overview

Module requirements

  • Zebra Link-OS API requires .NET 4.7.1. You cannot use the new Cloud Extender Configuration Tool without this version of .NET installed on your system.
  • New Cloud Extender Configuration Tool
  • Port 4201: The printer discovery broadcasts over this port. Make sure that this port is open.