Gadgets/Widgets and more...
Gadgets/Widgets are a lightweight application that sits on a user's desktop.
Some versions of Windows (for example Windows Vista and Windows 7) have in-built support
for sidebar gadgets. The equivalent on the Mac is the Widget. PaperCut NG offers three useful Gadgets as well
as a series of AJAX/JSON style embeddable components that can be leveraged by intranet developers.
Paper-Less Alliance Widget
PaperCut has teamed up with Do Something, the non-profit organization behind many environmental initiatives
including Save Paper (http://savepaper.com.au/category/save-paper/what-software-to-get). The Desktop Widget,
developed in Adobe Air works off the data in PaperCut. It is designed to help organizations reduce paper in a fun positive way.
Highlights include:
Draw user's attention to their environmental impact upon login
Allow users to compare/benchmark their usage with the company/organization average
Highlight facts fun about the environment and paper use
Support a non-profit organization leading the paper reduction initiative
To download the widget, visit: https://www.apms.com.hk/products/save-paper-widget/
Note
Organizations deploying the widget are asked to make a small donation of less than $1.00 a user to
the Paper-Less Alliance. All proceeds go to the non-profit supporting paper saving initiatives and awareness.
Two small footprint Windows Gadgets are available:
The Print Balance Gadget: Used to display user's personal balance on the desktop or sidebar. This is called
PCBalance.gadget.
The Environmental Impact Gadget: Used to provide the users with feedback on the environmental impact
associated with their printing activities. Highlighting the environmental aspects is useful in modifying a user's
behavior towards printing. For more information about how these values are calculated, see the section
called the section called “Environmental Impact”. This gadget is called
PCEnvironmentalImpact.gadget.
To install a Gadget:
Log in as administrator
Browse to the share on the PaperCut NG server at \\server\PCClient\win\Gadgets
Copy all *.gadget folders to the local directory
C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets
Users should now see the PaperCut NG Gadgets as available Gadgets on the system.
PaperCut NG also provides web widgets that can be easily embedded within pages on your intranet site.
These widgets work in a similarly to Google Web Gadgets or the Google Maps APIs. All that is required is to paste a
few lines of HTML/JavaScript on your pages. There are two built-in web widgets that offer balance and environmental
impact (and look identical to the Vista widgets above). However if the built-in widgets do not suit your needs you
can create your own that better suit your site.
There are only two requirements to running web widgets on your intranet site:
You require edit access to the intranet pages to add the required HTML/JavaScript.
The username of the logged in user is required so the web widget knows whose details to load.
This will usually require that users login to the intranet. When using a Microsoft Active Directory
domain and Microsoft IIS web server the user can be automatically detected if using NTLM or Kerberos
authentication which provides a transparent login process via the Web Browser.
The simplest way to get started with web widgets is to look at some examples. There are detailed and well commented examples
available on the PaperCut NG server in the directory [app-path]/server/examples/webwidgets/examples.html.
These examples should be used as a starting point to implement web widgets on your site.
The basic steps to adding a web widget to a page are:
Add a <div> element to your page. The widget will be drawn within this tag. The div element must
be given a unique ID.
Include scripts into your page to load the widget and user data from the PaperCut NG.
Edit the included script to set pcUsername to the logged in user.
Edit the included script to set pcServerURL to base URL of the PaperCut NG server.
Add some script to draw the built-in widgets to the page. You can use one of the built-in widgets, or create your own.
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