duek / monitor-printer

Monitoring and Alerting for printers and print jobs

Monitor-Printer

ReadMe

DESCRIPTION

This Powershell script it is designed for monitoring status and number of jobs in the queue of any installed printer on a Windows Workstation or Server.

If the number of jobs exceeds the specific threshold set by the user a notification is sent with the critical state to the user via a chat message via a Teams/Slack channel.

The execution can be scheduled or run on demand.

REQUIREMENTS

All the requirements for this solution were provided by Kay Van Aarssen (ICTWebSolutions). Please see the note section for updates.

AUTHOR

Paolo Frigo (www.scriptinglibrary.com)

NOTES

• Author notes and informations
• Improvements after the first release

CONFIGURATION / USER SETTINGS

User settings are included in the config-setting.ps1 script.

$PrinterName                = "AutoDoc HSE"
$CriticalThreshold          = 8 
$NotificationChannelTokens  = ("", "")# expects multiple values, comma separated like https://hooks.slack.com/... or https://outlook.office.com/webhook/...
$LogFile                    = "monitor-printer.log"
$PrintingJobXMLFile         = "last-printing-job.xml"
$TimeThresholdPrintingJob   = 5 # minutes

This a summary of the settings with type and description.

Key	Type	Description
PrinterName	String	Name of the printer to monitor (e.g. "AutoDoc HSE")
CriticalThreshold	Int	Number of pring jobs in the queue which if breached will trigger a notification
NotificationChannelTokes	String[]	List of webhook url (uri+token) addresses for sending inbound messages to MS Teams or Slack channels
LogFile	String	Name of the log file including the extension (e.g. monitor-printer.log)
PrintingJobXMLFile	String	Name of the xml file including the extension (e.g. last-printing-job.xml)
TimeThresholdPrintingJob	Int	Max number of minutes for a job in PRINTING state (e.g. 5)

RUNNING THIS SCRIPT AS A SCHEDULED TASK/JOB

This script can run on demand or can be scheduled to run periodically.

Regarding scheduling this script the choice between using Task Scheduler or Powershell Scheduled Jobs is left to the administrator.

CUSTOMIZING NOTIFICATIONS

MS Teams Slack Notifications can be tweaked by changing the template in the slack-notification.ps1 or teams-notification.ps1 script included the lib folder.

These settings have been left 'hard-coded' to avoid validating or managing malformed request and errors with the respective services.

All information to edit these templetes will be available on the official website of the service provider.

LOGGING

If you need to change your logging settings or format you can edit your append-log.ps1 script.

This shows the simple log functionality.

02/07/2020 11:28:06 - CRITICAL: AutoDoc HSE (state: Paused). Jobs currently in queue: 9 at 07/02/2020 20:28:06
02/07/2020 11:28:07 - NOTIFICATION: Slack message sent
02/07/2020 11:31:08 - CRITICAL: AutoDoc HSE (state: Paused). Jobs currently in queue: 9 at 07/02/2020 20:31:08
02/07/2020 11:31:09 - NOTIFICATION: Slack message sent
02/07/2020 11:31:11 - NOTIFICATION: Teams message sent
20/07/2020 10:17:36 - CRITICAL: AutoDoc HSE (state: Normal). Jobs currently in queue: 6 at 07/20/2020 22:17:36. Job ID 9 still in PRINTING state since 07/20/2020 21:10:02 by User Administrator on MyServer, document name: Test Page - printed pages: 1/1 - size 4584819
20/07/2020 10:17:37 - NOTIFICATION: Slack notification sent
20/07/2020 10:17:39 - NOTIFICATION: Teams message sent

To display just the CRITICAL status you can use this one-liner

Get-Content .\monitor-printer.log | Select-String -AllMatches "CRITICAL"

02/07/2020 11:28:06 - CRITICAL: AutoDoc HSE (state: Paused). Jobs currently in queue: 9 at 07/02/2020 23:28:06
02/07/2020 11:31:08 - CRITICAL: AutoDoc HSE (state: Paused). Jobs currently in queue: 9 at 07/02/2020 23:31:08
20/07/2020 10:17:36 - CRITICAL: AutoDoc HSE (state: Normal). Jobs currently in queue: 6 at 07/20/2020 22:17:36. Job ID 9 still in PRINTING state since 07/20/2020 21:10:02 by User Administrator on MyServer, document name: Test Page - printed pages: 1/1 - size 4584819

TESTING

I've created few tests for this solution using Pester (v.5).

PS D:\Git\monitor-printer> Invoke-Pester -Output Detailed

Starting discovery in 1 files.
Discovering in monitor-printer.tests.ps1.
Found 4 tests. 7ms
Discovery finished in 12ms.

Running tests from 'monitor-printer.tests.ps1'
Describing DEPENDENCY CHECKS
  [+] fails if one libary is missing 19ms (18ms|1ms)

Describing FUNCTIONAL CHECKS
  [+] creates a log file if does not exists 60ms (59ms|1ms)
  [+] fails if printername "AutoDoc HSE" is not found 39ms (38ms|1ms)
  [+] if number of jobs in the queue > the critical threshold (8) trigger the notifications 46ms (46ms|1ms)
Tests completed in 254ms
Tests Passed: 4, Failed: 0, Skipped: 0 NotRun: 0

LICENSE

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

DISCLAIMER

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.