BarTender Printer Redirection and Failover
This articles applies to BarTender 2019 and later.
BarTender printer redirection and failover allows you to redirect print jobs from one printer to another printer if the initial printer is offline, in an error state, or otherwise unavailable.
Enabling Printer Failover
You can enable printer redirection and failover for a printer by doing the following.
- Open
Administration Console - Click on the
Printer Setuppane on the left side of Administration Console - Choose the printer that you want to enable redirection for
- Select the Failover Conditions that you want BarTender to watch for
- Use the
Redirect Todropdown menu to choose the next printer in the sequence - Set the
Maximum Redirectsfor the selected printer
Failover Conditions
When BarTender executes a print job, it checks to see if the printer is in a state that should trigger a failover. The following list is all of the available failover conditions for BarTender:
- Print server is not accessible - The Windows print server system cannot be reached. This can happen if a print server is offline.
- Printer is not installed - The printer driver is not installed.
- Printer is in an error state - The Windows Print Spooler is reporting some kind of error. It can also be an error reported by status monitoring from the printer driver.
- Printer is offline - Some printers have an actual "online" button that can take them online and offline. Some drivers will report this when the printer is turned off. Windows can report this for any USB printer that is unplugged.
- Print queue is paused - The Windows Printer Queue is paused.
Effective Sequence
By chaining multiple printer failover together, you can build an effective sequence of printers. BarTender will automatically try to print to each printer in the list until:
- One of the printers is available to print to
- the effective Sequence limit is reached