Printers

There is more to setting up new printers than can be achieved on the printers setup page alone. If you're looking to set up a new printer for use with PTS see the Label Printer Installation page.

The printers setup page is a lookup table that links PTS to already configured printers and as such is one of the final stages in the printer installation process. The rest of this document will assume that a printer is up and running as per the Label Printer Installation instructions and that you are looking for a more detailed explanation of the printers setup page.

Accessing the setup page

The PTS sidebar with Setup selected.

Like many of the different PTS utilities, setup is found in the left-hand side bar.

Hover over the sidebar with the mouse cursor and the side bar will expand. Select Setup to reveal a drop-down list of the various setup pages you have permission to access.

To choose a setup page click on its name in the list to be taken to the setup page.

PTS 5 is the most user configurable version of our Prescription Tracking System to date. As a result parts of this Wiki assumes that the reader has permission to access the elements of the system in question. If you don't see specific items and utilities where they are supposed to be you may not have permission to access them.

Adding new printer

You'll be asked to fill in a few details about the printer.

To create a new printer access the actions menu by clicking on the actions menu icon at the top right of the page, then from the actions menu click the New Printer button.

You'll be asked for a few details before you can create the printer:

• Dispensaries that will use this printer
  Select any dispensaries that should have access to this printer. In most cases it only makes sense to select a single dispensary.
• Name on Server
  The name given to the printer on the PTS server as it appears in Control Panel, Devices and Printers, Print Management etc. This forms the link between PTS and the physical printer.
• Which prescription types will use this printer as their automated printing default?
  If PTS is configured for e-prescribing then you can specify whether or not this printer is used for automated printing for the selected combination of dispensary and prescription types.

Click OK when you're done. The process then continues in the printer popup.

Editing existing printer

To edit an existing printer, select the printer you wish to amend by clicking on its entry in the list to load the printer popup.

Printer popup

The printer details tab.

The printer popup appears after adding a new printer, or clicking on a printer in the list to edit it.

Enter the following information and click the Save button to finish creating or editing the printer. Some fields may be optional.

Printer details tab

This tab contains two settings that are easily confused; please read carefully.

• Printer's name
  Not to be confused with the Name on Server setting. This setting is the human readable or 'friendly' name for the printer that will be read and chosen by the user when they want to use the printer.
• Name on Server
  Not to be confused with the Printer's Name setting. This setting is the name given to the printer on the PTS server as it appears in Control Panel, Devices and Printers, Print Management etc. This forms the link between PTS and the physical printer.

Dispensaries tab

Here you can specify the dispensaries that can use the printer. Use the Plus button to add a dispensary to the list.

Clear Print Queue option

Sometimes when using network printing a document will fail to print for a trivial reason, such as the network being temporarily unavailable, the host PC being switched off, or the printer being unplugged. Frustratingly, the document will then enter an error state in the print queue on the server and require manual deletion before the printer will work again, even if the temporary problem has resolved itself. Because the print queue is on the server and not the host PC, it can be difficult to gain access to cancel the documents.

For this reason PTS provides a facility to attempt to clear the print queue via PTS itself, using the Clear Print Queue option that appears in the actions menu on this page.

However it should be noted that the PTS application will often not have the necessary permissions to perform this task itself on your server, and the button won't be able to achieve anything. Consider installing the "Print Queue Monitor Service" from the Downloads & Updates section at tmsinsight.com. This should prevent errored documents getting stuck in the spooler in the first place.