Pharos Cloud Features

The Account Management feature enables the allocation of printing costs to specific projects or budget centers, ideal for use in universities and corporate environments.

Chromebook Printing

Pharos Chrome Print is a lightweight browser extension that makes it easy to print from Chromebooks or the Chrome browser on any OS.

Cloud Connected Devices

Cloud-connected devices (using the Cloud Site Service) provides a true cloud experience, eliminating the need for a locally installed Site Service and also not requiring running in a local network with direct line-of-sight access to print devices.

Data Privacy and Regional Document Storage

Since the General Data Protection Regulation (GPDR) came into full effect in 2018, several countries and organizations have adopted or are considering adopting comparable data protection laws. Failing to meet compliance requirements is costly and may potentially damage an organization’s reputation. Organizations must also deal with a growing number of data breaches. It is important more than ever to take all necessary precautions to protect your personal data.

Pharos Cloud introduces the new Data Privacy and Regional Document Storage feature to help your organization comply with data protection laws regulating the collection and storage of users’ personal data.

Delegate Print

Delegate Print enables users to release print documents on behalf of someone else. With Delegate Print, a job owner can designate another user or users (known as delegates) to release their jobs from any Secure Print capable device. For example, a manager can ask their office assistant to release and collect printed documents on their behalf.

Direct Print

Direct Print is a cloud-based solution that allows employees in your organization to send their print jobs directly to a selected printer.

See Direct Print Overview for more information.

Driverless Secure Printing

Secure Release supports driverless secure printing via IPP Everywhere (IPP/E). Mac users who have taken advantage of AirPrint are familiar with driverless printing: you can print directly from an app using the Print command built into the operating system.

IPP/E printers offer high-quality output and finishing options without the need to download and install vendor-specific drivers or configure print queues.

• Linux Print Scout
• macOS Print Scout
• Windows Print Scout

End-User Portal

The End-User Portal provides a convenient way for users to manage their documents and their passcodes. It also eliminates the requirement for users to install a Print Scout to configure their passcodes.

End-users can perform the following actions through the portal:

• Access the portal by using their OpenID email address.
• Manage documents
  • View documents in the queue including documents submitted from the Print Scout, Chrome Extension, Mobile App, or Microsoft Universal Print
  • Upload documents
  • Update finishing options before uploading documents
  • Delete documents (single or multiple documents)
  • Generate passcode
  • Reset passcode

  See End-User Portal for more information

  Guest Print

  Guest Print allows non-employees (visitors, contractors, etc.) to print documents without requiring a user account in your directory system.

  See Guest Print Overview for more information.

  Integrations APIs

  APIs are available to help you integrate Secure Print into your print environment. You can find these APIs on the Secure > Advanced screen.

  • User Import API - allows IT administrators to programmatically import a batch of users and their associated information.
  • User Removal API - allows IT administrators to programmatically remove a batch of registered users and all associated registrations.
  • User Registration Removal API - allows administrators to programmatically remove any combination of user registrations for a batch of registered print users via a CSV (Comma Separated Value) file. The API allows admins to remove one or more of any of the following logins: PIN, Proximity Card, Mobile Registration, or PIN and Proximity Card.

  See Integration APIs for more information on this topic.

  IPv6 Support

  For computers, mobile devices, IoT sensors, and other connected devices to communicate over the Internet, they require a numerical IP address. The current technology used for this purpose is IPv4. However, with the increasing number of connected devices, the available pool of IPv4 addresses is rapidly depleting. To address this issue, IPv6 was developed to provide a larger pool of unique IP addresses.

  The adoption of IPv6 is becoming essential for larger enterprises that are facing a depletion of IP addresses. IPv6 support for Pharos Cloud and Direct Print allows enterprises to leverage the expanded address space provided by IPv6.

  See IPv6 Support document for more details

  Mobile Device Management (MDM) Support for the iOS App

  Setting up mobile submission functionality on iOS devices has been simplified by allowing IT administrators to push the configuration profile to all managed users via their preferred MDM solution. Secure Release supports the following MDM solutions: MobileIron, AirWatch, and Intune.

  • Downloading the iOS Configuration Profile for use with MDM
  • Deploying the iOS Configuration Profile to users' devices using Microsoft Intune

  Mobile QR Code Release

  With Mobile Release, users release documents by scanning a QR code label attached to a printer. The QR code label contains printer information (e.g. IP address) that makes it easy to identify printers.

  See Mobile QR Code Release for more information.

  Mobile Submission

  Using the Pharos Secure Release mobile app , employees can now submit documents from their mobile devices. Previously, the app allowed employees to only release documents (if using Mobile Release).

  Employees must first download or update the Pharos Secure Release mobile app from the App Store (iOS) or Google Play (for Android). The app installs a secure printer profile that enables driverless printing using IPP-Everywhere technology.

  Multiple Language support for Secure Printers

  Printers (iMFPs) running Secure Release now support translations to the following languages:

  • French
  • Italian
  • German
  • Japanese
  • Spanish
  • English
  • Simplified Chinese
  • Portuguese (Portugual)
  • Portuguese (Brazil)
  • Swedish
  • Dutch
  • Norwegian

  Passcode Authentication

  Passcode authentication provides an alternative way to authenticate at printers. If an employee's ID card is lost, damaged, or unavailable, the employee can use a passcode to authenticate at a printer to release documents.

  Note: Passcode Authentication supports sites with OpenID authentication only.

  See Passcode Settings for more information.

  Policy Print

  Policy Print allows you to easily deploy and manage enterprise-wide printing policies to the employees in your organization. It aims to help change user behavior by communicating proper print resource usage to users. If a user attempts to print a job that triggers a rule in their printing policy, a message is displayed providing more information about the policy.

  Create a culture of responsible printing with Policy Print by informing users of mindful printing habits at the point of job submission before the print job is sent to the printer. Below are some examples:

  • Encourage users to always print double-sided instead of single-sided.
  • Encourage printing in black and white and remind employees that color printing is more expensive.
  • Discourage users from printing confidential documents.
  • Discourage users from printing high-volume print jobs.
  • Discourage users from printing on USB devices.

  See Configuring Policy Print for more information

  Print-at-Home (Preview)

  This release introduces Pharos Print-at-Home. This licensable product enables your organization to gain visibility and control over your employee’s at-home printing.

  • Enable remote employees to easily add their home office printer to their work computer.
  • Utilizes Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) to create and send the print job for “driverless” queue management.
  • There are no extra servers to install or manage.
  • Supports lower-end laser and inkjet printers that provide AirPrint capabilities
  • This feature requires Direct Print license.
  • Requires printer support for PDF, URF, and PCL file formats.

  See Print- at-Home for more information

  Secure Release Customization

  Pharos Cloud provides a simple way to customize the user interface elements of Pharos Secure Release . Previously, customizing the thematic components of the Secure Release required support from the Operations team.

  Secure Scan

  Secure Scan enables administrators to easily manage printing and MFP scanning across their organization and provides users with a simplified and consistent user experience across all the supported manufacturers.

  Secure Release Failover

  Secure Release Failover for Windows and Mac users ensure that users can continue printing even if a connection problem is detected. You can enable the Secure Release Failover feature by enabling the Offline Print setting. Once Offline Print is enabled, employees can continue to print even in the event of a problem or internet outage.

  See Secure Release Failover for more information.

  Secure Release IPP Queues

  Pharos Cloud includes an IPP Driver built on the Printer Working Group’s IPP Everywhere™ standard to support thousands of printer models across all manufacturers—from low-end single-function printers to large, departmental MFPs. Previously, support for IPP Driver was available for Direct Print only. The Pharos Cloud 3.5.0 release of the Print Scout includes an update that adds support for the Pharos Cloud IPP Driver for Pharos Secure Release .

  See Secure Release IPP Queues for more information

  Segmented Network Support

  Administrators can group Pharos Secure Release components into distinct network segments. This allows distributed organizations to manage printing traffic across separate regions, for example large companies with many sites across geographic locations or companies with remote branch offices.

  See Configuring Networks for more information.

  Single Sign-on via OpenID Connect ( Secure Release )

  Secure Release can tie into OpenID Connect services (e.g. Microsoft Azure AD, Google, PingFederate) for companies that need to secure their print environment without a local Active Directory server. Employees can authenticate at their workstation with the company's selected authentication provider.

  See more information on this topic here: User Authentication Providers

  SNMPv3 Support

  Administrators can configure the Device Scout to securely communicate with a printer using SNMPv3. Support for v3 provides additional security for querying devices using SNMP by providing authentication, encryption, and access control. See more information on this topic here: Device Scout Discovery utility

  Tenant Location Switcher

  Tenant Location Switcher allows you to support employees who travel frequently across different regions and to comply with General Data Protection Regulation(GPDR) requirements. For example, an employee based in the US who travels to Germany can print securely without having to install a new client component (i.e. Print Scout) on their laptops. Also, EU customers can keep their print data within the EU.

  Note: The Tenant Location Switcher is designed for sites with multiple tenants. If this solution is not suitable for your print environment, you might want to explore the Data Privacy and Document Storage Feature as an alternative solution to address your data privacy requirements.

  Touchless Printing via Proximity Cards

  In addition to our existing touchless printing workflows, Secure Release supports touchless printing with proximity card authentication. IT managers can enable Touchless Printing via a simple toggle in the administrative screen.

  Users can then simply tap their proximity card at a preferred printer, and all documents in their personal queue will begin printing after 5 seconds. There's no need to touch the printer interface to print documents. Users can cancel printing before the 5-second timer elapses simply by pressing Cancel.

  Universal Print Integration

  Universal Print is a Microsoft 365 cloud-based print infrastructure that simplifies office printing for IT administrators and employees. Universal Print eliminates on-premises print servers and does not require print drivers.

  If your organization is using Microsoft 365 in an Azure AD environment, Universal Print provides an easy way to manage printers via group policy. Pharos Secure Release provides several extra capabilities on top of Universal Print:

  See Universal Print for more information

  User Management

  User Management system enables Pharos Cloud administrators to effectively manage and end users and groups comprehensively. Administrators can now quickly identify users and access user information at a glance. User details, user groups, or user activity are now conveniently accessible within the Pharos Cloud .

  See User Management for more information

  Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

  The Print Scout component of Secure Release can be used with some Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) systems such as Citrix® XenDesktop or Microsoft® Terminal Services. This allows organizations with VDI environments to take advantage of Secure Print.

  For information on how to install the Print Scout on VDIs see Installing the Print Scout on VDIs

  Pharos Cloud Web Console: Federated Identity Management (IdM) Authentication Support

  Pharos Cloud adds Single Sign-on (SSO) support for logging into the Pharos Cloud Web Console. With SSO, system users can log in to Pharos Cloud using their credentials from an identity provider. When a system user logs into the HP Insights web console for the first time, they are redirected to the identity provider’s login page. System users enter their credentials from the identity provider and once successfully authenticated with the identity provider they are then redirected back to Pharos Cloud and logged on with their account.

  Pharos Cloud supports the following authentication protocols:

  • Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)
  • OpenID Connect