The dashboard

The Dashboard tab is the first page displayed in the PaperCut NG Admin web interface. It provides an overview of system activity from the past and in real-time for devices and users. It does this by using a collection of gadgets that are described below.

• What's Next gadget

  At the top of the page is the What's Next gadget. It gives a list of hints that are particularly useful for first-time administrators of PaperCut NG. They give descriptions of useful tasks to do in PaperCut NG with links to other Admin web interface or help pages. This gadget can be closed for more experienced administrators who no longer need it.

• System Status gadget

  The System Status gadget provides a list of system level statistics. They provide an overview of system information including any warnings or errors that need attention.

• Pages Printed gadget

  The Pages Printed gadget provides a graph showing the trends in printing volume over the last 30 days. The graph displays after three days of data has been accumulated. When upgrading from a version of PaperCut NG prior to a version supporting the Dashboard feature, the data from the previous version is not displayed.

• Environmental Impact gadget

  The Environmental Impact gadget provides overall environmental impact statistics in terms of trees, carbon and energy. For more information on Environmental Impact, see Changing the environmental impact reference values.

• Printer Status gadget

  The Printer Status gadget provides a status overview of the printers managed by PaperCut. The information displayed includes the daily number of pages printed and device alerts such as low toner levels or printer jams. Alerts for printer errors and low toner levels are also available via System Notifications. Refer to Setting up system notifications and emails for additional information.

• News gadget

  The News gadget ensures you're kept up to date with relevant release and development activity regarding PaperCut.

• Real-time Activity gadget

  The Real-time Activity gadget shows a list of current events in real-time. It shows activities such as print jobs arriving, users logging in, exceeding print quotas, print job status, a variety of errors and much more. This tool is designed to help administrators monitor activity and diagnose problems. The events are updated as the occur and errors are highlighted in red. The events are described in a one line summary, but can be expanded by clicking the link to the right of the message. Expand the gadget by clicking the Expand item at the bottom of the gadget to display more events. Refreshing the browser page reverses the expansion. Use the Pause item at the bottom of the gadget if the number of events being reported makes viewing difficult.

  Tip:

  The Real-time Activity gadget alerts you if the PaperCut Account Selection has been configured to use the client software, and the client software is not running on the workstation. For example, if a user has popup confirmation enabled, (see The account selection popup) and the client software is not running, the job stays paused and eventually time out. In this situation, as soon as the user prints a document the administrator is warned in the Real-time Activity gadget that the client software is not running for that user.