Printers
Printers
Find and manage every label and document printer across your sites: live status, health, settings and profiles, all through your on-site connectors.
DataMagik prints through the connectors you install at each site. A connector reaches the printers on its network, or plugged into its computer by USB, and sends them the labels and documents your scripts, automations, apps and the API ask for.
For Zebra label printers, the connector also reads what the printer says about itself. That gives you its model, serial, firmware and resolution. It also tells you whether it can print right now, how worn its printhead is and when it needs maintenance. You can change the printer's settings from DataMagik and copy them from one printer to many.
Permissions: Printer Management needs the DataMagik - Builder permission. Tracking a printer as Shop Floor equipment needs DataMagik - Shop Floor Admin (see Printers as Shop Floor equipment).
Connector version: status reasons, held jobs, discovery of Zebra and USB printers, health, settings and profiles need connector 1.5.0 or later at the site. Older connectors keep printing exactly as before, and show printers as online or offline only. Use Update Connectors on the Connector Setup page to upgrade.
In this section
- Printer status and held jobs: what each status means, and why a job waits instead of failing.
- Printer health, settings and profiles: printhead wear, maintenance, changing settings and copying them to other printers.
- Printers as Shop Floor equipment: alarms, work requests and maintenance every so many labels.
- Printing labels and documents: formats, ZPL labels, DPI scaling, and printing from scripts and the API.
Opening Printer Management
Go to Connectors → Printer Management. The page has two tabs:
- Printers: every printer at every site, in one list.
- Sites: your sites, with View printers to open the list filtered to one site.
The printer list
The list shows every printer across your sites, a page at a time. Each row shows:
| Column | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Status | Ready, Needs attention, Not ready or Offline, with the reason. A printer that is not a Zebra shows Online or Offline. See Printer status and held jobs. |
| Name | The printer's name, and how many jobs are held for it, if any. |
| Site | The site whose connectors print to it. |
| Model | The model the printer reported, such as ZD420-300dpi. |
| Connection | Its address and port, or USB with its serial for a printer plugged into a computer. |
| DPI | The resolution labels are rendered at, with a warning when the printer reports a different one (see DPI below). |
| Last seen | When the printer last answered a status check. |
| Jobs (24h) | How many jobs it was sent in the last 24 hours. |
Finding printers in the list
- The counts along the top (All printers, Not ready, Offline over an hour, Needs attention, DPI mismatch and Held jobs) are filters: select one to list those printers.
- Search name, address or serial finds a printer by any of the three.
- Filter by site, status and model. The status filter also offers Online, DPI mismatch and Held jobs.
- Sort by Status, Name, Site, Model or Last seen by selecting the column header.
- The filters are part of the page address, so you can bookmark a view or send it to someone.
Acting on several printers at once
Tick printers, or Select all on this page, and a bar shows what you can do with them:
- Refresh status: ask each printer for its status now.
- Move to site…, then Move: move them to another site. A USB printer cannot be moved, because it belongs to the computer it is plugged into.
- Apply profile…: write a saved profile's settings to up to 20 printers (see Printer health, settings and profiles).
- Delete: remove them. Jobs still waiting for them will not print.
Each action reports, printer by printer, what it did and anything it could not do.
The printer panel
Select a printer to open its panel. It has these tabs:
- Overview: its status and the reason, when it was last checked, its model, serial and firmware, its connection and its DPI.
- Jobs: jobs waiting for this printer, including held jobs and why they are held.
- Health (Zebra printers): printhead wear, labels printed, maintenance due and labels per day.
- Settings (Zebra printers): the printer's settings, read live, which you can change.
Along the bottom: Test print, Refresh status, Identify (read the printer's model, serial, firmware and DPI again), Edit and Delete.
Adding printers
Select Find printers to have a connector search for them, or Add manually to type one in.
Finding printers on the network
- Select Find printers and choose what to look for:
- Zebra label printers: a connector at the site searches its network for Zebra printers and reads each one's model, serial and DPI.
- Office printers and MFPs (IPP): a connector looks for printers that announce IPP on its network (AirPrint and Bonjour) and reads each one's name, make and model.
- USB (Zebra): see USB printers below.
- Choose the site to Search from.
- Optionally, enter a range under Also search this range: a CIDR such as
10.0.1.0/24or a range such as10.0.1.20-80, up to 1024 addresses. Use it when the printers are on another subnet from the connector. Only private network addresses can be searched. - For Zebra printers on networks that block Zebra discovery, tick Also search over SNMP.
- Select Search. A search can take up to a minute.
- Tick the printers you want and select Add selected. Each is added with everything the search read about it already filled in.
A printer you already have is marked Already registered as its name. A printer you already have that now answers at another address is marked has a new address: update it. Tick it, and Add selected updates its address instead of adding it twice. Printers are matched by serial, so this works after a DHCP change or a move to a new network.
USB printers
A Zebra plugged into a computer by USB prints through the connector on that computer.
- Select Find printers, then USB (Zebra).
- Choose the Computer the printers are plugged into.
- Select Search, tick the printers and select Add selected.
A USB printer's jobs only ever go to that computer's connector. It is found by its serial number, so unplugging it and plugging it into another port, or restarting the computer, does not break it. USB printing needs connector 1.5.0 or later on Windows or Linux. On Linux, the connector's service user needs permission to use the printer device (the lp group).
If that computer is replaced, use Replace… on the Connector Setup page so the new computer takes over the old one's printers.
Adding a printer by hand
Select Add manually, choose the site, and fill in:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Name | A name people will recognize, such as "Dock A - Zebra 4x6". |
| IP Address and Port | The printer's address. The port is usually 9100 for a Zebra and 631 for IPP. |
| Type and Protocol | Zebra on a raw socket, or a generic printer over IPP. |
| Site | The site whose connectors reach it. |
| IPP endpoint, username, password, TLS | For IPP printers. Probe finds the endpoint for you. |
| DPI | For Zebra printers. Leave it to Identify where you can (see below). |
After saving a Zebra, select Identify in its panel to read its model, serial, firmware and DPI.
DPI
DataMagik renders ZPL labels for each printer's resolution, so a label prints the same size on a 203, 300 or 600 dpi printer. The DPI has to be right for that to work.
- When a Zebra is found or identified, DataMagik reads its resolution from the printer (reported by the printer) or, failing that, works it out from its model name (from the model name).
- If the printer reports a different DPI from the one set, the printer shows a DPI mismatch warning: "The printer reports 300 dpi, but labels are rendered at 203 dpi." Select Use 300 dpi to fix it. DataMagik never changes a DPI you set without asking, because labels may have been adjusted to it.
- If the printer does not report its DPI, it says The printer did not report its DPI. Set it by hand.
Using Printer Management from the AI assistant
The DataMagik MCP server has a printers tool. An AI assistant can list printers, read their status and health, find printers on a site's network, and read settings. Changing settings and applying profiles are write actions: the assistant restates the company and the printers and asks you to confirm first.
Best practices
- Find printers instead of typing them in. Discovery fills in the model, serial and DPI, and lets DataMagik follow a printer when its address changes.
- Fix DPI mismatches. A wrong DPI prints labels at the wrong size.
- Use names that say where the printer is, such as "Dock A - Zebra 4x6". Held-job messages and alarms use the name.
- Run more than one connector at a busy site. Network printers keep printing if one connector goes down.
- Save a profile from a printer that prints well, and apply it to the rest of the line, rather than setting each one by hand.
Troubleshooting
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| "Printer Dock 3 at 10.0.20.200:9100 did not answer." | Check that the printer is switched on and connected to the network. If its address changed, run Find printers: it offers to update the address. |
| "…is busy with another request from this computer; try again in a minute" | The connector is already talking to the printer, for example reading its health. Try again shortly. |
| "The connector that reaches printer Dock 3 does not allow changes to printers" | The connector is a read-only build or has OT writes switched off. Settings can be read but not changed. |
| "…cannot do this. Update it to 1.5.0 or later." | Update the site's connectors from Connector Setup. |
| A job says "Waiting for printer…" | The printer reported a fault. See Printer status and held jobs. |
| No connector at this site can reach USB printers | The computer needs connector 1.5.0 or later on Windows or Linux. |