How to Define a Printer in SAP

Printer administration is done with transaction SPAD in a SAP system. Basis administrator needs to define printer in SAP as per the requirement given by client. Steps to define a printer in SAP. 1) Login to SAP system. Go to transaction SPAD. You will see following screen, click on output devices to see defined output devices defined on SAP instance.

2) In the screen below you can see output defined in SAP system. To create a new output device click on Create (Shift+F1)

3) You need to give an Output Device name to printer, and a short

description. In the case given below we have kept it same ZTST. 4) Tab Device Attributes In this, you need to select Device Type for the printer. Device type can be understood as a printer driver defined in SAP system. To run a printer in SAP, you must attach an appropriate Device type to it. Here in this case we have chosen device type as EPESCP9: EPSON ESC/P 9-pin Printer the printer used was Epson FX-2190 Dot Matrix Printer.

Spool Server you need to give a spool server to queue spool request. It is name of the server. If you select Host Spool Access Method in tab Access Method as X: SAPcomm or F: Printing on Front End Computer then you dont have to maintain Spool Server. Here we have chosen the default spool server idesdev_DEV_00. To define a printer you must choose Device Class as a Standard Printer. Authorization Class - You can enter the name of an authorization group instead of an output device in a user authorization. You can keep is as blank or maintain with DEFAULT authorization group. Printer information You can store general information for printer administration like model, location of printer, in example its in SDB - 1, 3rd floor, behind lift. Also you can post a message to a user using this printer. Like what we have mentioned in the example this printer is to To print Invoice

5) Tab Access Methods In this tab, you need to select Host Spool Access Method. If the spool work process for this printer is running on the host system you specified for Computer name, choose from the following: C: The spool server is running on a Microsoft Windows NT server and requests for this printer are to be transferred to the local Windows NT Print Manager.

 E: The printer is connected through an external output management system (OMS). F: Output requests for this printer should be output locally on the user's PC or workstation. I: This device is an archiving device. L: The spool server is running on a UNIX system and output requests for this printer are to be transferred to the local host spooler. If print formatting is running on another system, choose from the following: U: The formatting process is to transfer the output data to the remote host system using the Berkeley protocol (BSD). The formatting process uses this protocol to transfer output data directly to the host spooler on the remote system. S: The formatting process is to transfer the output data to the remote system (a Microsoft Windows PC) using the SAP protocol. The formatting process transfers the output data to the SAP output processor (SAPLPD) running on the remote PC. X: The device is a SAPcomm device.

Here in example we have used U: Print Using Berkeley Protocol So the printer will use this protocol to print a job. When you use protocol as Berkeley, you can maintain entry of IP address against printer name (ZTST) in Host file of an application server and use printer name directly. Here printer is attached to a machine with IP address 10.76.74.69. You must make sure that SAP-LPD is running on the machine where printer is attached. Host Printer- Hostname/IP address of a host attached to a printer. Destination Host Hostname where SAP-LPD is running. Query status through polling - The spool work process keeps track of print requests sent to the host spool system to be able to update the status of the requests in the R/3 System. To do this, the host spooler must be queried periodically. If a host spool system is slow or there are problems querying network or remote printers, the query may take a long time. This may affect printing performance as the spool work process cannot process any other print requests while waiting for a response from the query. In cases like this, you can deactivate querying using this switch.

6) Tab Output Attributes SAP Cover Page: Select this field if you want a cover page to be printed out along with print requests at this printer. A cover page is only printed if one was defined in the cover page action of the formatting actions used by the printer. All SAP R/3 device types have predefined cover pages. Users can change the default setting and decide whether to print a cover page (if one is defined) or not Host Spool cover page: Specify whether the cover page defined by the host spooler for this printer should be printed by default. You can choose from the following settings: A cover page is never printed A cover page is only printed if set in the operating system A cover page is always printed

Users can decide themselves whether to print a cover page when they select their print options. Monitor using monitoring infrastructure: If this option is activated, the monitoring architecture monitors job processing as well as the host spool requests for this device. The system adds an entry for this device under the spool - devices node of the relevant spool server. The entry is updated by the system. This object uses part of the memory in the shared memory segment of the monitoring architecture. This memory is limited; if a large number of output devices are monitored, you may not be able to add additional objects to be monitored (even if the objects are of a different type). This is the reason why monitoring is optional. Synchronization of requests of a device: The default is to process output requests in the order they are created. If multiple spool work processes are defined on the application server for this output device, multiple output requests from this output device can be processed in parallel. If you want to do this, deselect the check box. Is this option is not selected; some requests may overtake others, as they will not be processed in the order they were created. Create a print request for each copy: Indicates whether a print request should be generated for every copy.

Color Printer - Set this flag if the printer defined is a color printer. Print Mode - choose Default / Simplex / Duplex / Tumble Duplex as per the requirement. Paper tray: Select tray to have printouts.

Here in example, we do not want to print cover page and its a black and white printer. 7) Tab Output Attributes Tab Tray Info You can enter information about printer trays in this tab.

As printer Epson FX-2190 has single tray, we have not maintained any definition for tray info. 8) After giving all this information you need to check your definition, save and activate the printer settings.

Check the printer settings Transport the printer settings Activate the Printer

General Information: 1) See to Note 8928: A list of available device types with SAP. 2) Transportation of a printer definition: In the target system, you must adapt the spool servers for each device transported. This is because the system name is used in the instance names and it differs in the target system from the name of the current system. Logical instance names are an exception; they are defined identically in both systems. 3) If you define a printer with F: Print on front End Computer, then you need not maintain host spool entry. In this case, SAP-LPD will be automatically evoked when a user fires a printout.