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Direct Printing Overview

ScrewDrivers Direct provides an alternative approach to print management that doesn't require traditional print servers. Instead of routing print jobs through centralized servers, Direct printing allows you to create printers directly from local drivers and network-discovered devices, then assign them to your users' workstations. This chapter shows you how to use the ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery application in combination with ScrewDrivers Administration to build and manage your Direct printing environment.

What Is Direct Printing?​

Direct printing represents a fundamental shift in how you deliver printing capabilities to your users. Rather than consolidating all your print drivers and queues on print servers, you'll import local print drivers into the ScrewDrivers database, discover network printers on your subnets, and create associations between drivers and printers that become "direct printers." Once you've created these direct printers, you can assign them to workstations, users, or groups just like you'd assign any other ScrewDrivers printer type.

This approach offers several advantages. You're not managing print server infrastructure or worrying about print server availability. Your users' print jobs go directly to the target device without an intermediate server hop. For organizations with distributed locations, branch offices, or remote workers, Direct printing eliminates the need to route print traffic back through central print servers.

The ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery Application​

You'll use the ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery application as your primary tool for setting up Direct printing. This application provides a dedicated interface for managing the three core elements of your Direct printing environment: drivers, printers, and their assignments.

When you open Printer Discovery, you'll see five tabs represented by icons on the left side of the main window. When the application first opens, this tab bar is collapsed—you can hover over the icons to see tooltips showing each tab's name, or click the hamburger menu icon to expand the full tab bar.

Assignments Tab​

The Assignments tab shows you all the printers you've imported into the ScrewDrivers database along with their currently assigned drivers. If you've imported a printer but haven't assigned a driver to it yet, this tab is where you'll make that connection. The tab provides a clear visual inventory of what's been configured and what still needs attention.

Printers Tab​

The Printers tab displays every printer you've imported into the ScrewDrivers database. This is also where you'll find the Import option that kicks off the network printer discovery process. By default, ScrewDrivers Printer Discovery finds both Bonjour-compatible and IPP-compatible printers on the same subnet as your discovery workstation.

Drivers Tab​

The Drivers tab lists all the print drivers you've imported from local workstations into the ScrewDrivers database. You'll see an Import option here as well, which lets you pull drivers from the local workstation's driver store. You'll need to repeat the import process on each workstation or server that has unique drivers you want to make available.

Profiles Tab​

The Profiles tab gives you access to printer profiles—predefined collections of printer settings that ensure your users' printers are always built with specific defaults. Profiles let you standardize settings like paper size, duplex mode, and print quality across your organization without relying on users to configure them manually.

Settings Tab​

The Settings tab displays the current version of Printer Discovery and provides options for controlling what you see on the other tabs. You can filter which drivers and printers are displayed, switch between 32-bit and 64-bit driver views, and configure the printer discovery settings that determine what types of network printers are queried.

Using Filters Effectively​

Every tab in Printer Discovery (except Settings) includes a filter field at the top. As you type in this field, the displayed items update dynamically to show only those matching your search string. The filter isn't case-sensitive and will match your string anywhere in the item name—so searching for "JET" on the Drivers tab will find "HP OfficeJet," "Color LaserJet," and any other driver with those letters in sequence.

Keep in mind that filters behave differently depending on the tab. On the Printers tab, you can filter by printer name or IP address. On the Assignments tab, the filter searches across printer names and IP addresses but not the assigned driver names.

The Direct Printing Workflow​

Setting up Direct printing follows a consistent sequence. First, you'll import local print drivers from workstations or servers into the ScrewDrivers database. Next, you'll import network printers that Printer Discovery finds on your network. Then you'll assign drivers to those printers, creating the direct printer objects. Finally, you'll assign those direct printers to owners (users, groups, or workstations) in ScrewDrivers Administration.

This workflow ensures that you've got all the pieces in place before you start deploying printers to your users. You'll see each step detailed in the next article.

Printer Assignment Types​

When you assign a direct printer to an owner, you'll choose from three assignment types that control how the printer appears and behaves:

Always show this printer (Admin Assigned) means the printer is always built for the owner and the owner can't remove it. Use this for printers that users must have available at all times. The owner can still set an Admin Assigned printer as their default printer through the ScrewDrivers Printers application.

Show this printer by default, but allow users to remove it (User Assigned) means the owner must use the ScrewDrivers Printers application to add this printer to their session. Once added, the owner can delete and re-add the printer as needed. This gives users control over which optional printers they want to build.

Don't show this printer by default, but allow users to add it (User Allowed) means the printer automatically builds for every session, but the owner can delete the assignment if they don't want it. Once deleted, the owner cannot add the printer back—this is a one-way removal.

Session Settings for Direct Printing​

Like other ScrewDrivers printer types, Direct printing supports session-level settings that control printer behavior across sessions. Tricerat doesn't provide a default set of Direct printing session settings because the internally programmed defaults typically work well for most environments. However, you can create your own Managed Printer Session Settings and assign them to owners when you need to customize behavior.

These session settings let you control driver version management (whether to allow upgrades, downgrades, or neither) and printer naming schemes. When you assign session settings to an owner, they affect all Direct printers for that owner—you can't apply settings on a per-printer basis.