AnywherePrints


  • 5¢ black/white and 12¢ color
  • AnywherePrinter Locations
  • Secure and encrypted VPN (AnyConnect) required when printing from off campus to a campus location.
  • Print wirelessly as long as you're connected to NIUwireless and not NIUguest.
  • Huskie Bucks accounts are required for personal printing that won't be charged to a departmental cost center. Even faculty and staff can use a Huskie Bucks account for personal printing on an AnywherePrints device.
  • Print files from your workstation, tablet or smartphone using webprint.niu.edu

AnywherePrints Features at No Additional Cost

  • Scanning with options to email a scanned copy to any email address.
  • Advanced finishing options like duplex (double-sided) and collating available on all printer models. Stapling available on the Ricoh IM3500 and Ricoh IM3510 models.
  • Departments must make a special request to include the fax feature, but departments will not be charged a monthly fee for the fax (phone) line.
  • Letter-size (8.5x11) is available on all model printers. Ledger size (11x17) is only available on Ricoh IM3500 and IM3510 models.
  • Secure and suitable for confidential documents, allowing pages to print only when the requester is present to swipe their OneCard and removing unwanted print jobs from the queue within 24 hours.
  • Redundant and flexible locations. A single printer breakdown is of little consequence because print jobs can be picked up from any printer, anywhere on campus. If you’re meeting in another building and need to print something quickly, you need not have individual printer drivers installed on your laptop nor do you need to email someone your copy to print: just print and pick up where you are.
  • Faculty, staff and students can print from home, print by email and print from their phones

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know which print driver to select when submitting a print order?New

PaperCut is the new print management solution replacing the previous Pharos print environment.  Canon printers which used the Pharos print management have been replaced with new Ricoh printers using PaperCut print management. 

Once your Canon printer has been replaced with a new Ricoh printer you can begin using the PaperCut print client.  You will choose your printer in the same method as you have done so previously with AnyWhere prints.  When selecting the printer you will choose “PaperCut on anywhereprint.it.niu.edu”. 
This will become your new default printer.

During the replacement period of the old Canon printers you will continue having the “AnywherePrints” and the new “PaperCut on anywhereprint.it.niu.edu” print queue available for printing.  Once all Canon printers across campus have been replaced the old AnywherePrint queue will removed.

Where do I swipe my OneCard on the Ricoh printers?New
The card reader is located on the right hand side of the Ricoh IM350F, Ricoh IM3500 and Ricoh IMC3510 models. On the Ricoh IMC300F model you will find the card reader located on the top near the printer screen.
Do I need to swipe or tap my OneCard at the printer?New
The OneCard office has started the process of rolling out new cards with Near Field Communication which allows a user to tap or swipe their card on the card readers.  If you have an older card you will continue swiping at the card reader.
My printer is attached to scientific equipment. Will you take it away?
Printers attached to specific pieces of equipment and used only with that equipment rather than for general printing would become obvious exceptions. That said, anyone wishing to shed the cost or maintenance of existing printers by trying to configure the equipment to print to the cloud instead would be welcome to do so. DoIT would work with you to help do that configuration if you request.
Is the AnywherePrints system secure?

With AnywherePrints you don't have to print and sprint to grab your confidential prints. Your job will not be sitting on the printer where someone else can pick it up.

You print at any of the hundreds of printers across campus, all of which have the same swipe requirement. Thus, you have backup printing that is as secure as your primary printer. Imagine a broken personal printer where you have to email a confidential document to someone and ask them to print it for you. Then maybe you need to ask them to delete that email. And then delete it permanently from the trash. Are you sure they’re going to do that? With secure AnywherePrints your print job is safe and private at every printer, even if your primary one is unavailable.

Will printers be in locked locations for security?

Printers today occupy public, private, and locked spaces according to the needs of each department. We expect to see a mix of public, private, and locked spaces in the new printer deployment as well.

Concerns about the physical integrity of the machines are a bit of a surprise. DoIT staff have seen over a dozen universities in person with large printers in halls or other types of public spaces and the issue of notable amounts of vandalism or theft hasn’t come up. If anyone has data on how widespread the theft of paper or damage to printers is, please share this with ServiceDesk@niu.edu.

Will we have enough printers in case one goes down?
Yes. You're not really printing to any specific printer, but to an AnywherePrints queue in NIU's data center. When you send your print job, it’s waiting anywhere and everywhere for you. When you show up at a printer, the printer downloads your print job and prints it. If the printer closest to you is broken or out of paper or whatever, just walk to another printer and print it there. We’ll have hundreds of them on campus so in essence, you have plenty of backup printers at all times!
How will students and student employees or staff who work in multiple locations or departments be billed for printing?

As approved, the business case described this situation and the project team designed a solution to allow student employees to bill work-related print jobs to their employer-department. Concerns raised in the first two months of implementation suggest this core design feature may not work for all units. Accordingly, a more widespread review of options is underway.

Students who have multiple ID’s (an A-ID and a Z-ID) can choose which account to charge their printing to after they swipe their OneCard. For other situations, perhaps where the student is not really a student employee but still needs to print, departmental courtesy cards can allow them to swipe to print. The same courtesy cards can be used for employees. Their primary appointment would be associated with their A-ID and their other appointment would arrange for a courtesy card.

Concern that student employees will choose to print their homework (or even entire textbooks) using the option to bill their department could be addressed by reviewing the monthly billing for print. This bill will be modified to include the name, and not just the PeopleSoft Employee ID (EMPLID) of the person and his/her monthly print billing. The bill also includes an HR code that describes whether a person is faculty, staff, student, affiliate, etc.

Currently if there are concerns about billing, employers may request a Pharos report that can further detail the filenames and locations of this person's print jobs. If a student who is not supposed to charge printing to the employer’s department has done so, this issue is addressable as either a student conduct or a progressive discipline matter. 

DoIT staff will review the period detail reports from PeopleSoft FMS to determine the potential scope of the problem with student employees or even terminated employees fraudulently billing to their current or former departments. This information along with an estimate of the time and impact of reverting to a system where no student employee or employee student could charge to a department cost center will be discussed at a variety of governance and advisory committees across campus.

Is duplexing (double-sided printing) on by default?

For Windows platforms, the default AnywherePrints pop-up client will default to duplex, black and white printing. Users can override this setting when they are printing.

For Macs, we don’t have the ability to set a default, so users will need to set up their defaults after they install the pop-up client.

I'm an employee at NIU. Can I use AnywherePrints for personal printing?
Yes and this is a great option for faculty or staff. Submit your print job as usual, but then when you go to an AnywherePrinter and swipe your OneCard, you'll see an option to either bill to your personal account or bill to your department. If you choose to bill to your personal account, that means you'll need a Huskie Bucks balance on your OneCard. If you never intend to do personal printing on NIU devices, then you don't need the Huskie Bucks option.
Can I print from a wireless device? What about NIUGuest?

You can print from any device connected to NIUWireless, but you cannot print when connecting via NIUGuest.

Unauthenticated guest wireless is a more open environment with extremely reduced security controls. All NIU students,faculty and staff who mistakenly use NIUGuest to connect to our wireless network are actually treated as external users. And we want to ensure that all our users are afforded all the security scans and protection provided by our authenticated and secure network.

Remember that when you print from off campus, NIU users should use VPN to securely connect to the AnywherePrints service.

I'm an employee/student employee with more than one NIU department as an employer. How do I know which cost center is being charged when I choose to bill to my department?

The cost center that will be charged is the one attached to your "minimum employee record number." To view this record number for any status or student employee, go to the HRS website and login with your NIU credentials. You can view all NIU Department Codes there and then click on Employee Lookup to view all the jobs for a particular employee.

A position number and a minimum record number are two different things: a position number is unique to the position and is assigned an employee record number. When Person A is hired, they are assigned an employee record number of "0". As long as they only have one job, they will retain the same employee record number even if they change jobs with the university.  If Person A is hired into a second concurrent position, their second job information will now be associated with employee record number "1". Typically the lowest employee record number is the primary job that will be charged for printing that is "billed to my department."    

DoIT will be creating a query against the PeopleSoft HR system that will allow authorized users to view the record number that is being charged. The Period Detail report from the PeopleSoft FMS system already allows authorized users to view the names and Employee IDs (EMPLIDS) of status and student employees who are billing their print jobs to a particular cost center.

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